Madrid, Spain

We checked out of the Seville apartment and took a cab to the train station to get ready for our two and a half hour ride to Madrid. We were hoping that the train wouldn’t be full so that Tyson could have his own seat. He’s able to nap if he can sit in his car seat. We’ve gotten lucky with the last few trains, but unfortunately this time it was a full train. Shucks! Marshall and I ended up taking turns walking around the train or sitting on the floor under the seats so that Tyson could sit in his car seat to nap. He only napped about 15 minutes and then woke up wailing. I’m pretty sure he’s teething again. Oh well, the ride didn’t seem that long and we made it to Madrid on time and safe ‘n sound.

When we got to the Madrid train station we thought that the hotel was walking distance, but when we put in the address it said it was an hour walk away. What the heck? So we called the apartment reception to ask how to get there and he said the hotel was actually walking distance from a metro station. We walked through the train station and found the connecting Metro station then took two trains to get to where we needed to be. Lots of fun when you’re carrying 50 lbs on your back in almost 100 degree weather and pushing a teething toddler in a stroller, lol.

We finally arrived to the apartment and got all settled in and then hit the streets for some grub. Across the street was a bar serving lunch (kids can go into bars in most of Europe), so we got a light lunch and then went to the supermarket down the street to pick up the essentials for the next few days. We took it easy back at the hotel and started to draw Tyson a bath. He absolutely loves baths (what toddler doesn’t?) and it’s a huge perk if our room has one. I was in the living room showing Tyson pictures of dogs on my iPhone which is a go-to distraction when we need a few more minutes to get something done. He started getting curious if his bath was ready, so he ran into the bathroom to find Dada. Next thing I heard was a ‘kerplunk’ and Marshall say ‘Oh no’! Tyson decided to take my phone in the bathroom with him and test the water by throwing it in the tub. I about had a heart attack because I thought Tyson got hurt somehow. When I found out it was my phone it was a bittersweet moment thinking of how crappy that would be to lose our one and only working phone with data/phone service on it for this trip. Luckily, Marshall quickly grabbed my phone out of the tub and dried it off. Thank god it still works and doesn’t seem like it’s having any issues. Phew, dodged that bullet!

The next morning we decided to just get lost wandering the city. It’s a lot of fun to take random turns and just go where it looks cool. It’s super easy to get back to where we want to go since we can simply navigate with my phone when we’re ready to go somewhere specific. This day, we started at a café where they are known for their churros and chocolate. These are pretty similar to churros that you get in the states, but like 100x’s more delicious. The chocolate is basically hot chocolate syrup that you dip the churros in and is a very popular snack in Spain. That reminds me of a funny story: The last time we were in Spain was a few years ago for a 16 hour stop in Barcelona before we boarded a Mediterranean cruise. We had rented a little yellow go cart thing that they let you drive wherever you want on the streets, so we decided to just check out all the hot spots in Barcelona. We had heard of churros and chocolate before and were told we had to stop and try it for a morning snack. It being our first time in Spain and having never ordered it before, we had no idea what to look for and thought it was churros with hot chocolate (like the hot chocolate you drink at Christmas). We stopped at a random café and asked for it and they said they didn’t have any churros. We were bummed, but thought the chocolate drink sounded good, so we just asked for that. They looked at us like we were crazy and had a long conversation with each other before shrugging their shoulders and saying they’d bring it to our table. A few minutes later, they plopped down a coffee cup full of hot chocolate syrup and gave us another weird look then backed away from our table slowly. Shelly and I looked at each other and thought these Spaniards were nuts for drinking chocolate syrup for a snack. We thought to ourselves ‘When in Rome, do what the Romans do’ so we proceeded to take turns drinking the entire cup of chocolate syrup, paid the awestruck waiter and putted away on our little yellow go cart. [Insert Fat/Stupid/American/Tourist Joke Here]

We then headed to Mayor Plaza where we saw all kinds of crazy characters. There didn’t seem to be much of a theme…a sailor was walking around with no head, a gold knight was standing in line for the bathroom, a matador on his cell phone, and Kermit the frog was sitting on a bench drinking a bottle through his neck. I guess it’s the hangout for the street performers who got kicked out of all other tourist spots in Madrid. It was interesting, but we didn’t want to ruin Tyson’s childhood so we strolled out of there pretty quick. There was a really old market that was beautifully decorated inside and seemed to be hustling and bustling with both tourists and locals alike. We enjoyed walking around inside and wish we had one exactly like it where we live so we could go every day. Very cool atmosphere and everything in there was fancy food that you’d see at a five start restaurant.

We started heading toward a botanical garden and about a half hour later realized it was a lot farther away than we thought. I guess we’re used to these small old towns that you can get from one end to the other in no time. This is Madrid, it’s big and we learned a valuable lesson. When we finally got to the garden/park area I started to feel dizzy and dehydrated so we stopped on a bench for a while. I was drinking lots of water and focusing on not letting my mind freak out or pass out for that matter. When I told Marshall I wasn’t getting any better he hailed a cab and we were on our way back to our air conditioned hotel room within 30 seconds. He and Tyson were doing just fine the entire time. I think I just need to remember to stay hydrated before I feel thirsty. Definitely something I’ll remember as we will be in warmer climates for the rest of the trip.

After a few hours of relaxing at the apartment I felt much better so we went to a nice café close by where we could sit and people watch. On the way back we took a different way and came across a huge playground. Tyson made his awesome excited laugh and we let him out to play for a while. This time there were lots of other kids for him to play with. He always gets super excited when he sees a playground. When he says “Slide!” (more like ‘Slyyyy’), we know we’re in for a good time.

We continued walking and decided to go into a store to get some water. Before we walked in I spotted a lady right in front of the store helping her son pee on a tree along the sidewalk. He was probably 2 years old, so not SOOO weird (as if he were 20), but still pretty strange. She even jingled his dingaling for him when he was done! This is in public. On a major street. 5 feet from the entrance to a supermarket. That sufficiently weirded us out and we were tired, so we went back to the hotel room and made some ravioli and went to bed.

Today was our last day in Europe before we head to our next stop! We all slept in this morning which was awesome. Once we finally got out of the apartment it was almost lunch time so we took Tyson to the park to play and then stopped for lunch on the way back. After his nap we wanted to explore Madrid a little more so we started walking toward the old town. We checked out a big palace and saw lots of other traditional Spanish style buildings. We also hit up a souvenir shop to pick up a Christmas ornament. We buy an ornament in every country we go to so that every Christmas we can reminisce about all the places we’ve been to together.

The day before we get on a flight is always laundry day so that we don’t have to pack up dirty, stinky clothes to take to the next place. There is a washing machine in our apartment (not a dryer) so we tried to start the laundry while I was getting ready this morning. We couldn’t figure it out, so we called in the owner to help. He couldn’t figure it out, so he called in the cleaning lady. She couldn’t figure it out, so we gave up and considered it broken. The owner gave us a key to a room another guest had just left so we could use it before they cleaned the room for the next guest. Once the clothes were clean, we laid everything out so now we have clothes hung up all around our room and outside on the patio getting dry. Hopefully we don’t have to pack anything wet in our packs tomorrow morning or we’ll be carrying around extra weight and probably leaving an interesting smell trail through the airport.

Quick funny story (Well, not haha funny, more like…’you’ve got to be kidding me’ kind of funny): For whatever reason, we’ve been trying to get Tyson and our sleep schedule to be as late as possible to prepare ourselves for the time change as we start moving toward SE Asia. We’ve enjoyed it because the culture here definitely leans toward waking up later and staying up later (eating dinner at 9pm, etc). We realized today that we were actually working in the opposite direction. We should have been going to bed EARLIER this entire time to prepare for the time zone changes as we head east. Blame that one on vacation brain, but this is going to make for an interesting week that’s for sure.

Tomorrow is going to be crazy. We will be taking two separate four hour flights with an hour layover in between. We will be arriving at our next destination at 2am local time.

Next stop: Dubai, United Arab Emirates