Seville a Madrid a D.C.

Saturday, I had plans to go see a couple of the sights and check out the pool. Due to the extreme heat and tiredness from lack of sleep, I spend the morning and afternoon at the pool. For lunch, I found another Fresc Co. (same as Granada) to have lunch at. This Fresc Co had similar but different food options. I think they change a little bit everyday, but I’m not sure. Still super tired, I decided to try to siesta in the sun by the pool. It was so hot, I coulnd’t fall asleep or even stand to be out of the pool for more than 5 minutes. Though it was 97 degrees.. there is no humidity, so instead of Chicago temperatures where Saturday was 90 something degrees but feels like 110, it was 97 degrees but feels like 94. Still extremely hot.

For dinner we decided we would return to the restaurant from the previous night. This time, instead of sangria or Verano de Tinto, Jen and Tony ordered red wine! It was fantastic. Since my attempts to find wine cellars or shops in Spain, we asked if we could buy wine from the restaurant. Just our luck, they did happen to sell wine! In fact, I accomplished one of my tasks for Europe—wine tasting. It wasn’t exactly in a vineyard (so I guess I will just have to go back), but they poured me several tastings of wines.

I bought 4 bottles to bring back! (Hopefully they aren’t cracked in luggage as we speak!) They actually only had one bottle of the red wine from dinner left, and Kaitlyn and I each wanted two bottles. The owner told us he thought he had some at his house, so he said to give him 10 minutes and he will go check. He literally drove off on his Vespa to his house for the bottles of wine. While we waited, they gave us a complimentary bottle of champagne. (We were regulars after all—considering that was the second night in a row we ate there, and Jen & Tony’s third time in 2 days!) The owner came back with a case of the wine in hand, and then gave me one of the bottles for free. (I guess the curse of the gypsy is no match for the power of the blonde =).

Tired and exhausted, I stumbled over to the Seville Cathedral which is the 3rd largest Cathedral in the world. (Only smaller than St. Peter's Basillica in Rome and St. Paul's in London.)

These random drunk idiots decided they just HAD to come talk to me. I am just trying to take pictures of this place, and these boys would not leave me alone. I swear you would have thought I was a celebrity the way they were acting. Only one of the 3 boys spoke English and it was hardly understandable, and what I could understand was just vulgar. Then they kept coming over one by one, wanting to take a picture with me. They said they were 21, but they couldn’t have been a day over 18. When I finally escaped them (though they were really just harmless drunk adolescents) I randomly found Jen and family on their horse carriage ride.

In conclusion: Seville is awesome. There are a lot of cute tapas, enough site seeing but not an overwhelming amount (like Rome), and hot. No beach though, that’s a downside.

Saturday we began our last road trip to Madrid. Our final destination. It was about a 5 hour drive from Seville. We stayed at the hotel airport in Madrid so we wouldn’t have difficulties with our flight the next day (which worked out great.) The kids swam, and I packed up my belongings for the final time, and hoping to secure my bottles of wine so they don’t crack. We tried to let the heat die down before exploring the city, but it was no use. It was hot. In the whiney words of Frankie, “There’s no shade anywhere!” There was lots to see, but we were all very exhausted so we saw what we could, a few major plazas, some popular streets for restaurants and bars, and so on. For future reference, this would be a very fun place to go bar hopping. There are a lot of cute taverns all in a row.

A quick stop in Madrid was a little taste of home for me. Madrid was very Chicago esk minus the fact that they have streets where vehicles are not allowed.

By the end of the night, I think we would all agree we were ready to go HOME.

Here are some of the other things we saw:

The super market-- very similar to the one in Barcelona and Valencia

A super cute bookstore

Plaza de Mayor

View from near our restaurant for dinner

And JenJen's Restaurant in Madrid

And now that I’m on the plane. I really, really, really just want to be home. Especially because I’m sitting next to this crazy, nauratic girl. I say girl but she is at least 20 something years old. She is literally throwing a temper tantrum because the movies/tv’s in our section of the plane are not working.

Anyway, by the time you get to read this… I will already be home. So, hi Friends. I missed you =)

Xo Kel