July 27, 2010 – Segovia to Madrid

The Alcazar

Supposedly Disney based his castle on this... note the similarities

Just Trevor's size!

The staircase to the tower

Out the window of our apartment in Madrid

Bubbleman, one of many street performers

Why have tapas when you can have a hot dog?!

This morning we woke up and packed, ate some oranges, and strolled Segovia searching for a Panaderia for breakfast. We found a loaf of bread and some muffins. Then we walked over to the Castle Alcazar. We bought some tickets and went in. The castle had a super deep moat! We saw knights in shining armor and their horses, their weaponry and the castles windows had great views of Segovia! After touring around in there we climbed the steep spiral staircase up to the top of the tower. It had a great view of the whole city! After making our way back down we walked to the parking garage and started our drive to Madrid. 

I love how every time it’s my turn to blog, it has been a driving day. The drive only took about an hour, except we got lost (isn’t that a first?!). We eventually found our way to the city and it was so crowded! It was similar to Chicago traffic I think, except Chicago doesn’t have round abouts! We parked in a garage and wandered, looking for a grocery store. We found one and it was nothing like I’d seen before. To actually shop for groceries you had to go up an elevator because all the checkout lines were the exits. Once you’d gotten everything you needed upstairs you walked down and then it was normal. We got our groceries we went to our apartment where we were supposed to meet our rental agent at 4, it was only 3:30 so some of us went to the car to get our luggage and some of us guarded our groceries. After 2 trips to the car we had all of our luggage and it was all sitting outside of the apartment, it looked as if we were moving in for a about a week! Our rental agent, Gabriel showed up and brought us to our apartment. Once we got situated, we just hung out there for a while watching tv and on the computer. 

We strolled around for about a block and found Mercado San Miguel. It was a giant super market, but not where you go to buy your groceries, you can just wander and find stands that sell food that interests you and sit and eat it! It seems as if the only things we have been eating on this trip are ham, cheese, bread, and fanta limon. We bought fanta limon, jamon y queso empanadas, chips, and when my dad gave Trevor and I 10 euros to buy food for ourselves, we bought hot dogs. After eating there, we walked to the Meson de la Champi, “The Mushroom Place.” There we ate stuffed mushrooms and ham and potato croquets. After paying the bill we walked past the Plaza Mayor and the Plaza del Sol on our way back to the apartment. There we saw some street performers, we saw a shiny colorful “goat”, a man blowing HUGE bubbles. After wandering a couple more blocks we were back at the apartment and went to bed.

Katie