Visitantes

Over the past month, we've had a lot of visitors, and it's been so much fun! Matt and I have loved seeing our family and friends and getting to show them where we live. It's really helped this last part of the year go by fast. Here is a summary of the last month.

First, the whole Robertson family came to visit!

In Madrid in front of the Royal Palace

We went to Madrid for two days, got to see a Real Madrid futbol game, Salamanca for one day, ate at Cuatro Postes (the Hotel here in Avila where Matt eats all his meals with the team and where Matt and I lived for the first 3 weeks we were here), walked on top of the wall in Avila, went to Matt's basketball game, and just enjoyed hanging out together. 

Here are a few pictures from their trip:

at the Real Madrid game

The Cathedral across from the Royal Palace in Madrid

A Cathedral and statue in Salamanca

Brothers at the train station

On top of the wall in Avila with the Cathedral in the background

The next week, my mom came for a visit. On the day she flew into Madrid, there was an organized general strike in all of Spain - crazy! The trains weren't running because of the strike, so we had to wait until 4 pm to catch a bus back to Avila. We saw some of Madrid with her suitcase in tote, got some tapas, and crashed that night. We went back to Madrid for 2 days later in her visit, got to do the tour of the inside of the Royal Palace (my favorite thing!), went to Salamanca for a day, ate at Cuatro Postes, walked on top of the wall and went in the Cathedrals in Avila. 

Tapas in Madrid near Plaza Mayor 

Plaza Mayor

Hot chocolate and pastries in Avila

On top of the Wall in Avila looking down at a Cathedral

On top of the wall in Avila, different Cathedral in background

A city building that used to be a palace in Madrid

In front of the Royal Palace in Madrid

The Royal Gardens

Eating lunch with some of my English teacher friends, Carol, Diana, and Sylvia

My mom was here doing Santa Semana, or Holy Week, leading up to Easter. In Avila there are processions every day with a band and people carrying floats with statues representing different things about the Holy Week. We got to see several of these, and they were pretty cool to watch. It was strange though because the costumes everyone in the parade wears are basically the same hats that were worn by the Ku Klux Klan, which is freaky, but they have no relation to each other. Here, these hats and robes are worn in all different colors and are associated with the Holy Week celebrations. 

A week after my mom left, our friends Heidi and Ian came to visit for a couple days. They came to Madrid for a few days, then Avila to see us, then went to Barcelona for the rest of the week. We were so excited to see them! I can't believe you guys made it to Spain to see us. Unfortunately the weather was awful, rainy and windy and cold, I hope it was better in Barcelona! This is the only picture I have from their visit, I guess we took all the pictures with their camera.

Heidi and me at a coffee shop

Thanks so much to everyone who made a trip to come visit! Matt and I have missed family and friends a lot this year, so it was great to see all of you! Who wants to come visit next year? Who knows what country or city we will be in - start saving now! :)

Madrid

This past Sunday, Matt and I got our first chance to travel in Europe and we went to Madrid. It was so much fun! Every one always says that traveling around Europe is so easy with cheaper flights to nearby countries and the train/subway/bus systems, and I guess we didn’t believe that until now. We thought it was a really big deal to look up a train from Avila to Madrid and back, get our tickets, ride the train, and then find our way around Madrid. It was so easy! 

                                          On the Train to Madrid

The train ride was about 1 ½ hours with only one stop, and it was a really nice train, so smooth it didn’t even feel like we were moving. I was really proud of myself because I actually did some research on some Madrid tourism websites to find out what we should see. I found out about a huge well known flea market with over 400 vendors that takes place only on Sunday mornings, and I found out that the most famous Spanish Museum, the Museo Del Prado, has free admission only from 5-8 pm on Sunday nights. A lot of tourist spots were free only during certain hours and on certain days.

So once we got to the train station, we found an information booth where the lady gave us a great map of Madrid, and I was able to ask her to point out all the places I had looked up. We only had one day, so we decided to only do a couple things. There is a subway stop at the train station, so we bought 10 passes for the day and got on. It was so easy to get around on the subway (with a good map)! First we started at the El Rastro Flea Market – it was really neat. They closed off a lot of streets and there were so many vendors and people everywhere! There was everything from jewelry to antiques to clothes to watches and tourist paraphernalia and it was so crowded! We went in this one booth that had some old-timey army gear, like gas masks and cool hats and camouflage clothes, but when we walked in we felt kind of creeped out by some of the stuff and by the guys working there, and we think it may have had something to do with Nazis….not sure. We left that booth pretty quickly. (sorry about the photo captions, I can't get them centered...)

                                         At the El Rastro Flea Market              
  

                         One of the vendors told us to wear our back packs on our front or else things would get stolen, luckily we made it out of the huge crowds with everything!

After a couple hours at the market, we left to meet Nick for lunch – one of Matt’s teammates from Rollins who is playing basketball for Los Rozas, in Madrid. We met him and ate lunch at an Italian place called Ginos. It was so good! It was my first time to eat Italian food since being in Spain and it was delicious (even though the menu was in Spanish, and I wasn’t really sure what I ordered). It was really good to see Nick, too, and to talk in English with someone!

After lunch we headed toward the Prado Museum, which took us into the historical and tourist area of Madrid. All the buildings were beautiful! We stopped at this one building that was the prettiest (I think I read it was a renovated palace), and went inside. It turns out this is where the City Council’s Nativity Scene was displayed (I had read about this online). It is about 10-12 different scenes that narrate the story of Jesus’ birth, from the shepherds to the typical nativity scene. The line was really long, so we just saw what we could by not waiting in line, it looked really neat. I think the building is the City Council building. It was old, all white outside, with beautiful ceilings inside, and 6 stories tall. We tried to go to the platform at the top where you could overlook the city, but after waiting in line we discovered we had to have a number/ticket, so we gave up. 

                                                          The City Council building

                                The beautiful ceilings inside the City Council building

                                          Part of the famous Nativity Scene display

                                          The building at night

After that, we headed to the Museo Del Prado. I was really excited about this because I’m not a huge art fanatic, but its not every day you get to visit a famous museum, so I was really happy it was free, it made it worthwhile without the pressure to stay for hours. My favorite paintings were the huge oil paintings – a single painting covered an entire wall floor to ceiling, and they were in beautiful frames. We saw a lot of paintings depicting Jesus and John the Baptist, and in another area there was a lot of Spanish art, mostly having to do with battles. Another area had a lot of sculptures, and there were lots of portraits, mostly of Spanish royalty. Past that, I can’t tell you much except that the paintings were pretty. The neatest thing was that there was an original Picasso painting on display! It belongs to a Russian museum and it was the first time it had ever been shown in Spain. It was called "Girl on a Ball". I thought it was pretty cool we got to see an original Picasso in person. There was a whole room dedicated to this one painting. Matt was a trooper and let me look at everything, and I think he maybe enjoyed it some too. We only saw a small portion of the Museum, it was so big and there were a lot of people there.

                                                            The Picasso Painting we saw

After the Museum we went to Starbucks, where the girl who took my order spoke English. It was wonderful (the coffee and the English). Matt and I thought Madrid was a lot more American friendly than Avila. We heard a lot of English, there are more types of food (more American restaurants – we walked past a Domino’s and I’ve heard there’s a KFC – and also Italian, Chinese, all kinds of food). We think it would be really fun to live in Madrid, but we are glad to be in Avila this year, I think it is forcing us to learn Spanish and the culture and have no American comforts!

                                          Starbucks in Madrid

After Starbucks we headed back to the train station and went home. We actually had a ticket for a later train and didn’t have time to change it, so we just played dumb when the conductor came by, and spoke in English to each other and acted confused like we didn’t know. It worked fine, and I’m glad we came home an hour earlier because we were so tired!! It was a really fun day though, and we definitely want to go back again soon.

As a side note, I started reading the Hunger Games (book 1) on the train on the way back to Avila, and it was so good I finished it in a day or two! I’m trying to delay buying the second book on my Nook so I can get some other things done. I know once I buy it I will only want to read! Maybe I’ll buy it Saturday before we fly home for Christmas Sunday as my treat to read on the plane.

Catching Up (Part 1)

I was so excited about having a blog and a place to write about Spain, and I have only updated one time since I've been in Spain! Oops. And it's not like I can use being too busy as an excuse.

I wanted to back track and tell you all about my first few days over here. Let's start with the plane ride. First, I always get excited about traveling. I love flying, I love road trips, etc. I just don't mind sitting somewhere and reading a book and some magazines and hanging out with friends or family. To begin with, it is hard to pack for 9 months, and I was trying to only check 2 bags, and both had to be under 50 lbs, so I put everything heavy into my rolling carry-on bag. Great idea, right? Until I had to lift it above my head on the plane to get it to fit into a storage bin. Luckily they put my bag under the plane on the flight from Birmingham to Miami, but on the Miami to Madrid flight I had to deal with it myself. And no one helped me! I guess I'm too used to having Matt around who lifts anything heavy for me. I had to wait for a lot of people to go past me (I didn't want to hold up the line), so everyone in my area is already seated, and I was walking around trying to find a place my bag would fit, and trying to pick it up on my own (I'm pretty sure it was well over 50 lbs). Everyone was just staring at me! Finally one lady suggested I get a flight attendant to help, which I did, and the two of us managed to find a place to put the bag and lifted it into the overhead bin. So I felt pretty awkward (also, it seemed that everyone on the flight was from Spain and spoke Spanish, so in case I didn't stand out enough with the suitcase incident, I am the only one with blonde hair and I don't speak any Spanish). The guy next to me was from Barcelona, and spoke a little English, enough to say hi but that was about it. The plane was 2 seats, 3 seats in the middle, then 2 seats on the other side, and I was in the 2 seats with the guy from Barcelona.

Right after we take off and the seat belt lights go off, the man sitting beside me but across the aisle (in the 3 seats) gets up out of his seat -- and falls down - face to the ground - in the aisle! I noticed him when he got on the plane because he was a really large man, and was acting a little strange, kind of jumpy, but once he sat down he fell asleep immediately - chin to his chest snoring asleep. So he falls down, and on the way down grabs the lady's arm behind him and pulls the arm of her sweater down with him, but it was really weird, he just continued to lie on the ground with his hand in the air still holding the lady's sweater. So all the men around me jump up and gather around him, and the flight attendants come running and everyone is freaking out (of course we are all thinking terrorists). Well in my opinion I think he probably had too much to drink, or the other possibility is maybe he was sick? I am not sure. But the flight attendants got the other 2 people sitting next to him to move, gave him some water and crackers, and he stretched out across all 3 seats and slept the rest of the flight....with his feet across the aisle almost on me and snoring and coughing very loud the whole night. Other than that my flight was really smooth! Haha, quite an incident.

I thought the Madrid airport looked like Ikea - very fresh and modern with clear walls and very clean. Luckily most of the signs were also in English. Customs was a joke! I will be curious to see what customs is like coming back to the US. The lady looked at my passport picture, looked at me, stamped my passport and gave it back to me. She hardly had time to look at my name or where I was from or anything! She didn't ask me any questions or even speak to me. After getting my passport back, I went to get my bags and there were these little carts you could use if you had lots of bags or heavy bags - so I got one. And I couldn't make it go. Everyone around me was using them and mine wouldn't roll! So I tried a few different carts and realized it was me, not my cart, looked at the picture and watched someone else and finally got the brake to let up. That was my first experience feeling like a tourist. I got my bags and waited for a few minutes, just when I was starting to feel nervous about not finding FJ, he showed up. (Matt's practice got changed and he couldn't come to the airport, so FJ, one of his agents, was going to pick me up). We got to the car and drove to Avila, FJ speaks great English and was really nice, so that was great. When we got to Avila we ate breakfast at an "American Restaurant" called Malibu BBQ. I thought it was funny because under the Malibu BBQ sign was the logo of a surfer, but then all over the restaurant there were New York signs, which has nothing to do with Malibu. It made me wonder how many "foreign" restaurants we have in America where we get the country wrong. Anyway, so even though it was an American restaurant, I had Spanish food, because I didn't know what to order so I just got what FJ got, which was churros (kind of like a funnel cake without the sugar - fried bread/flour) dipped in hot milk. But I got chocolate in my milk so it tasted more like hot chocolate. Not too adventurous for my first taste of Spanish food. FJ kept laughing at me though, saying that most Americans get a ham sandwich or something their first meal, and here I was eating churros (I didn't really get why this was funny...).

So then he drove me to the gym and I got to see the rest of Matt's practice! I was really excited to see him so soon, I thought I would have to wait until he was finished with practice. I had this romantic picture in my head of seeing him for the first time in five weeks at the airport, and I would run toward him, and he would pick me up, and I would cry prettily...haha so my first time to see him he was in the middle of practice and smiled at me but couldn't come say hi. Then he ran up in the stands after practice but was really sweaty so we just kind of hugged. haha, so not picturesque but I was so happy to see him! Luckily he had the rest of the day off so we got to see each other a lot and he got to show me around the city.

I think this has been long enough, I'll add a catching up part 2 later. :)