While I am still at home, hydrating and kicking off whatever virus I have acquired, I figured I would keep up the energy on the blogs!
I left off on the December journey after Clare, Lev, and I went to Segovia. But I wanted to backtrack a little and talk about the whole trip. Lev and Clare arrived after an overnight flight and sped through customs before meeting me in the arrivals area. We discovered the Uber pickup area at the Madrid airport (I was impressed by the organization; they were too tired to really care).
We had a shower and rest at my apartment before heading out to meet Paula for coffee and a walk through the city. We stopped by the Christmas tree at Sol before heading into our first Zara stop of the trip (of many). Clare tried on some awesome dresses and got a few shirts and sweaters. The next day, we made a stop at the Prado and then had a nice walk through Retiro. We finished the excursion with a rooftop lunch at the same restaurant I went to with Manny when he visited in the summer.
The next day, we had a tour of the Royal Palace. It was my first time inside, after many walks around the exterior, and it was well worth the visit. Continuing our royal trajectory, we headed to Segovia the next day on the fast train and explored the Castle there. We found ourselves in the middle of a major Christmas celebration at the restaurant and town square, which was super loud, but quite funny to see. We stopped by the aqueduct before hopping in a taxi back out to the train station. Now, we were debating a grocery store stop to cook dinner or an order on Uber Eats for Christmas Eve. Since it had been a long travel day, we opted for Uber Eats, which seemed like a great plan. That is, until the restaurant we ordered from ended up being closed, which we found out an hour after we ordered and the delivery driver finally cancelled the order. Now it was about 8pm on Christmas Eve, and the grocery stores were all closed. Clare and I set out to find food. We struck out at the 24/7 grocery store in my neighborhood (as it turns out, it is not 24/7/365). But we were in luck with a great pizza restaurant that was open! We loaded up on slices of various pizza and brought our bounty back to Lev.
On Christmas Day, we had a later wake-up and went for a run around Retiro (Lev and I did two laps, and Clare crushed one and then found us all coffee). That afternoon, we took a ride out to Estadio Metropolitano, where the other major Madrid soccer team, Atlético Madrid, plays. They built a giant skating rink around the perimeter of the field, about 20 feet up from the surface. It was, according to the signs, the largest rink by skating area in Europe! We had a great time skating around before heading back to meet our counselor friend from camp, Manu, at my apartment for dinner. That night, Clare and I headed out to meet two of my collegague’s two college-aged kids to go out to a club! We had a very fun night and came back home late (early!) and slept in.
The next morning, we had brunch at a great restaurant near my house called Run, Run, Run (they do in fact have a running club!). We had a nice walk and museum visit in the afternoon before heading out to our night bus tour of the Christmas lights around Madrid. They claimed there were millions of lights (maybe 8 million? I forget). Lev asked for an official count. I’m not sure if we saw 8 million, but there were a lot, and from the roof of the double-decker bus, we could even touch a few dangling ones as we passed through the city. They played classic Spanish Christmas music and the group of little kids behind us sang their hearts out, we pretended to know the words.
Thus concluded the Madrid portion of our sibling trip, and we reflected that while it was a blast to travel with the three of us, we really needed Manny. We missed him a lot, and while we understood that he needed to be training up to crush his opponents on the wrestling mat, we wish he could have joined our adventure.
Stay tuned for Part 2!
Abe Tolkoff 