Did you hear? We went to Spain...

One of the biggest "start your blog" motivators was wanting to share pictures from our trip to Spain. We celebrated our first year together in Madrid, Seville, and Barcelona. Yet the task of sorting, editing, selecting, saving, uploading, captioning, etc proved too tedious. But before we utter another word about what's going on currently, we're airing Spain.

Welcome to MADRID
We arrived at the Madrid airport 4 hours later then scheduled after a Seinfeld-esque delay and hopped into a cab for The Westin Palace. I need to take a moment to praise Jason 's planning and hotel selection. The amount of time we had in each city was perfect and the hotels were unreal. There's nothing I like better than being spoiled at a fancy hotel. When we got there, our room wasn't ready so we left our bags and headed over to the Prado (a 5 minute walk).
Jason wowed me with his art history knowledge and we saw some famous works of art. The main entrance is under construction so we had to use this side entrance.


Madrid's largest post office is on one corner of the plaza de Cibeles. It's known as the "Palacio de las comunicaciones" (communications palace, duh?) but is lovingly nick named The Wedding Cake.



Even the streets are beautiful. We fell in love with the old world feel. Look closely here and you'll see the Museo del Jamon on the left....and this is what it looks like inside. The people of Spain LOVE ham. They eat it cured, sausaged, ham sandwiched...LOVE it.

Plaza Mayor is the main square in Madrid built in 1619 by Felipe III, which is why a statue of him stands in the middle. Much Spanish history was lived in this center: bullfights, fires, royal pageantry (like inaugurating kings), and the public punishments imposed by the Inquisition.
By the way, the sky was this picturesque for entire time in Madrid.It took Jason a little while to warm up to Spanish cuisine. To cushion the fall into the world of tapas, we had ice cream for lunch every day (balanced out with miles of walking) and this was the one MickyD's stop (we were in desperate need of a fountain soda). Ah the joy that comes from a familiar hamburger.
We toured the Royal Palace, the official residence of His Majesty The King of Spain, who makes use of it for official ceremonies but doesn't actually reside there. Although his earlier constituents, Charles III did, and we saw the room he ate breakfast in, the room he ate lunch in, and of course his dinner suite. All much larger than his office..how exactly did they run that empire?


A fountain on the side of palace and the most gorgeous lamp post I've ever seen.








Jason mastered the public transportation so we took a subway out North of the city to check out the Madrid temple. There was a MTC on site, although we didn't see any missionaries...or other people around for that matter. Nothing beats the peaceful feeling that accompanies temple grounds.

Just in case you haven't heard, soccer is kind of a big deal in Spain. Make that the biggest deal ever. Think rich history, hundreds of awards and titles, and high revenue. On our very busy day (notice the same clothes in all the pictures? all the activity afforded our ice cream lunches) we did a self-guided tour of the Real Madrid stadium. We went through various seating levels (120,000 seats), the field, saw where the spot where Tomkat and Posh sit when they come to cheer on Mr.Beckham, and a museum which helped me begin to understand the level of pride associated with this team.






And that was Madrid. We took the AVE (super fast, comfy train) to Seville...and those pictures are coming soon.