We were lucky to have my parents come out for the last half of winter break.
The most important event of the week was when Jacob, my dad, Natalie, Hazel and I went to the temple for Hazel’s first time! It was a special experience. We had been to a castle at Segovia the day before, so we took a minute to discuss with the girls how it felt going to the Segovia castle compared to going to the temple. The temple always wins! You can’t experience the same peace of the temple anywhere else. After we were finished and getting ready to leave, my dad had the girls take a minute to take a mental picture of the baptismal font area as a special memory, and then a temple worker told us some fun facts about the Madrid temple. Afterwards we finished the experience with churros and chocolate at a cafe nearby.
For the rest of the week we spent much of the time hanging out at home and playing nintendo sports, which the kids had gotten for Christmas, but we also did get out and have some adventures.
For one thing, we can’t have grandparents in town without going out for ice cream and treats, so we definitely did that a couple times.
On one day Hazel, my dad and I went on a fun bike ride exploring the area. Actually we only had two BiciMad apps, on mine and Jacob’s phones, so Hazel and my dad took electric bikes and I took an electric scooter. My scooter ran out of battery in a random spot and we had to walk it to a designated parking area, then I had to use a different app to find another scooter because the previous one didn’t show any nearby. While I was out looking for a scooter my phone ran out of power, and my phone is the one with the scooter apps…luckily I still had Jacob’s phone, so by calling my mom’s phone so I could talk to Jacob and get his phone password for downloading apps, I was able to download a scooter app on his phone and get another scooter. It was a funny and unexpected twenty minutes or so of not being able to go anywhere.
I’m sure we would’ve been able to get home on some other form of transport if that hadn’t worked out, but the bike/scooter was definitely more enjoyable. The air wasn’t too hot or cold, just a little chilly, which feels great for speeding around town, and the afternoon was waning and by the time we got home the sun was setting, making for lovely scenery. I thought I took pictures but I guess not, so you’ll just have to imagine.
The other most important day was our 15-year wedding anniversary! My parents stayed with the kids and Jacob and I got to go out. It’s crazy to think it’s been 15 years! But crazy in a good way. I would choose Jacob again in a heartbeat.
I had had some sort of cough or cold or sickness most of December and the worst of it was the week after Christmas, so I was still in recovery by the time our anniversary came around and we mostly took it easy with low-key activities.
I had booked a hotel at Eurostars Madrid Tower, one of the city’s four skyscrapers, so we dropped off our luggage then went around town. Jacob had recently downloaded the Zity carsharing app, so we drove everywhere for those couple of days, and it was sooo nice to be just us driving around instead of being on the metro or even in a taxi or uber. We had a nice walk around Madrid Rio park, found a place nearby for a quiet lunch (I love going to lunch and dinners at American times, if the places are open, because no one else is there), and enjoyed a flamenco show with tapas.
I’ll be honest I have not been too impressed with the food in Spain so far overall, and the tapas at the flamenco place were on par with any other cuisine we’ve tried. We’ve been told how great croquetas are and how we have to try them, and that night we were served a couple, but for me croquetas have been the grossest thing I’ve tried to date. Maybe we just haven’t had a good one. Here’s a post explaining more about them. The paella was decent, though, paella being a traditional Spanish seafood rice dish.
We had a pretty chill New Years Eve. The day before, Jacob, my dad and I had made a trip to Costco (our first and only trip so far) to see if we could get some party food, particularly a veggie tray because we hadn’t seen any in the local stores and we thought the American store would definitely have some, but no such luck. We did bring home some ham and cheese, as well as some grapes and croissant sandwiches. We just did our own vegetables.
In the evening we just watched some fireworks from around the world on youtube. I was still tired from being sick so I slept a couple hours then woke up at midnight for the countdown and the eating of the grapes–one grape for each of the twelve strikes of the clock. We briefly flipped the channel to Madrid’s New Years Eve party at Sol, which included some fireworks.
On New Years, we went to Sol plaza for a bit, where my mom got the record for longest time in the tiny souvenir shop, and we also went to the giant nativity display and the “Forest of Wishes,” a room full of Christmas trees where people are invited to write a wish on a little card and put it on the tree…I think it’s a wish directed to the Three Kings, because in the next room they had Kings sitting for kids to sit on their lap and tell them their wish, much like kids go to sit on Santa’s lap at the mall. The putting wishes on trees is a tradition we saw in many places–Panaria the cafe, the kids’ schools. I’m guessing it’s a tradition common throughout the city, if not all of Spain.
That same day we also went with the church youth and families to sing Christmas songs at a care facility for people with disabilities, which was nice.
A couple days later we took a day trip to Segovia, which we’ll write a separate post about.
The night before Three Kings Day, we watched some of the giant city parade on TV, interspersed with watching Ant Man and also having the sister missionaries over for a visit. Three Kings Day might be one of the biggest celebrations of the year in Madrid. The parade is based on the three wise men’s visit to baby Jesus–they have three kings on floats at the end of the parade, and in the final plaza the kings make a declaration about good wishes for the upcoming year for everyone. Children write letters to the three kings asking for presents in the same way that we’re used to kids writing to Santa, and in the parade they have someone dressed up as a mail carrier walking along the route who sings a little song about collecting letters from the children and bringing them to the wise men. He also gives gifts to some children along the way. The parade is really all about fun for children and celebrating the innocence of childhood, and kids bring pillowcases or bags so they can catch candy that is thrown along the way. In addition to the big city parade, several of the disticts/neighborhoods around the city have their own parades as well in the days leading up to Three Kings Day. We didn’t go to any of them, though.
On actual Three Kings Day we had some roscon cake, which comes with a crown and also a king figurine hidden in it–whoever finds the king wears the crown. We also gave a couple gifts on Three Kings Day (great way to give last-minute gifts that didn’t arrive in time for Christmas 😉
