Espana

My mother, brother, sister, and I took off to Spain for a week. It was kind of a last minute deal. My mom kept seeing these deals on travelzoo, and decided that we should just go for it since Seth was already in Europe (traveling around on his money saved up from the ranch).

So just go with it, we did...

We flew overnight to Madrid Spain. This in itself was a miracle considering that I had the wrong passport! I had my premarriage passport that had holes punched in it. This was the first of many mistakes that I tried to blame on other people. We somehow made it out of the US and arrived early the next morning.

We took a cab to the hotel, and I gave the driver USD as a tip. It was all I had and he was not thrilled. We were a bit concerned about seeing Seth, but luckily he arrived just as expected: dirty, smelly, low on sleep, no money left, shoes lost, new shoes found on beach in Greece, and in desparate need of a change of clothes and a haircut.

We took off from here to grab a good cup of coffee and our first walk around the city. It was raining pretty bad, so we had everything to ourselves. We walked through Plaza Mayor, Mercado de San Miguel, modern convent (closed, so we couldn't get any treats), Royal Palace, and Cathedral of Almudena. That night we hit the cave bars (Cava de San Miguel mesones), and as if we didn't party hard enough, Seth, Mags, and I decided to continue to La Capital which was ENTIRELY too expensive and crowded. However we did make an incredible memory running home from La Capital in the rain past the trannies at 5am.

The next day we hit up the art spots - Reina Sofia and Prado. We also went to the Parque del Buen Retiro, but unfortunately the weather left us a bit bored.

The following day we took a bus to Toledo, which was a nice detour, and returned for an attempt at a tapas crawl. I do not know why but I got really weirded out in this neighborhood we were in, and I was rude to my brother about it. Eeeeeek.

The next morning we attempted a little shopping before our flight to Barcelona. This is where I royally screw up... I made us miss our plane. I kind of took control of the itinerary and had us arrive one hour late to our flight. It was a horrible feeling, trust me. We ended up taking the train (they wouldn't rebook us????), and things started to work out from here.

We spent our first day in Barcelona doing all things Gaudi... and the second day we did La Ramblas where we met some awesome Irish students in a bar and proceeded to play Zooomie Zooomie.