This morning we left way too early on the metro headed for the train station. If dad’s not an hour early, he’s late. We took the ave fast train around 9am to Segovia (only a 20 minute ride) and ate breakfast looking at the aqueducts.
Yep, here's where we ate breakfast...
Michael was amazed and kept inspecting and petting the aqueducts. Engineers, what can you do? The fam loved the small town Spanish feel of Segovia with the small cobblestone streets and really old buildings. There we saw the plaza mayor, cathedral and castle. The fam almost died climbing the 152 steps in the spiral staircase to the top of the tower and wanted to kill me for making them do it, even though they loved the view. Mom climbed the stairs one leg at a time so now only her right leg hurts, crazy woman. I think Michael’s favorite part was the secret door in the moat that we speculated was for a dwarf door or where they hid their dragon.
View from the top
By this time it was 3pm and we hadn’t eaten lunch so we opted for Ice cream instead. Since our train left around 4pm we grabbed 2 taxis back to the train station around 3:30. The taxi driver talked my ear off and I apparently translated for jen and mike with 2 word phrases. I was just hitting the highlights, haha.
Starving and exhausted, we hit up San Miguel Market for lunch- jen got soft bread we’ve seen in Spain because she now avoids ham at all cost and mom and dad got little sandwiches. From there we crashed for a Siesta.
In deciding where to eat dinner that night, Dad wanted to go to one restaurant and the concierge talked him out of it and instead recommended 2 other restaurants: one that doesn’t exist and another that was closed. So, we ate at the closest restaurant and had the best meal yet.
We ate dinner near the cuevas with some amazing tapas: mushrooms, fried eggs and vegetables, patatas bravas, croquetas, melon and jam, gazpacho, pork tenderloin and filet. Yum.
On the way back to the hotel, we looked in lots of souvenir shops and ended up by playing cards to give as a souvenir. Well, we decided to test them out like any good gift-giver would do and found that the suits were: cups, ham legs, swords, and coins instead of diamonds, hearts, clubs, and spades. So with this faulty card set that had numbers 1-12 for a total of 48 cards, we attempted to play Go Fish, until we realized none of us actually knew the rules. So instead we played an interesting game of rummy where Michael fondly named the people on the cards gender-confused Vikings because we couldn’t tell what sex they were from their interesting outfits. Me and Michael laughed so hard we cried, probably because we were so tired but also at the ridiculousness of the situation. Soon after, Michael fell asleep and me and Jen got to catch up on a little girl time before going to bed.
Tuesday-
This morning we went back to Café and Te for breakfast for a huge breakfast where everyone made me order for them on multiple occasions. After breakfast, we walked past the infamous gummy bear shop on our way to tour the palace. I think everyone enjoyed seeing the huge rooms, old silver pieces, Stradivarius instruments, and armor. To let our feet rest, we drank some Cokes in the park and watched some tiny Spanish kids play soccer, it was precious and man do they start early! In an effort to conserve any ounce of energy we had, we abandoned our attempt to see the cathedral and instead went out to the museo de sorolla and got to get off at Ruben Dario (fondly pronounced RRRRRuben Darrrrio by me and Courrrrrney). This was a beautiful museum in Joaquin Sorolla’s old house surrounded by Andalusian gardens designed after Sevilla and Granada. From there, our attempt at lunch turned into cokes and tapas. At our 2nd attcmpt at lunch, we confusedly attempted to order from a non-existent menu and then figured out we should have just listened to the waiter the first time around as we ordered from the correct menu. It turned out great though and we ate crepes with onions, bacon, cheese and raisins (interesting combination, I know, but it really was delicious), and ham and tomatoes.
From there we rode the metro to gran via and made a valiant effort at shopping on gran via but the rebajas have all the stores picked over. We did end up finding flower’s for Jen’s hair at Blanco so she can feel like a real Spaniard. From there, we went to find the infamous nuns. I buzzed the nuns a few times and no one answered the door. I was scared the fam was going to think the magical cookie making nuns were only in my imagination but eventually the squeaky nun woke up from her siesta and buzzed us in the huge door. You should have seen their faces when all that went down. Shock and awe. We weaved down the hallway to the lazy susan and ended up purchasing some almond flavored short bread cookies. They were delicious and I think the fam had fun on their first nun cookie experience.
After this we headed back for a Siesta.
At 8m we had reservations at Botin, the oldest restaurant in the world for dinner. This place has been up and running since the 1700’s. It was a neat old place and we climbed to the 3rd floor to eat dinner. We had the best gazpacho yet, ham and melon, roasted chicken, and desserts of flan, white chocolate cheese cake, and apple tart. On our stroll back home we stopped in a handmade jewelry shop and they gave us some icecream. Michael ate that on top of his other desserts and was wired. So as we bought some Spanish fans from the street vendors, he was getting pretty sassy in whipping them out and fanning himself. We were just having way too much fun. Later it was a group effort to help me re-pack my overflowing suitcase so we could head out to Sevilla in the morning. We even got to skype momma J and see Maggie for a second before heading to bed.
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