Vacation Wrap Up

Monday, the day after the wedding, we had breakfast at Amy and David's place and hung around until it was time to hop on the train back to Madrid.  It was a nice low key day and we had our last traditional Spanish dinner back in the Plaza Mayor in Madrid.  Well, traditional in the sense that we sat in the plaza, but we had pizza for dinner.  We enjoyed the food in Spain, I got hooked on serrano ham and cheese, whether it was in a sandwich or just plain.  I especially liked the olive appetizer you got every time you ordered a beer (Michael wasn't so giddy about that part).  He did like the beer at nearly every meal part though, seriously in some cases it was cheaper than water or soda, so why not!

Our last adventure was a day trip to Toledo on Tuesday.  We were a bit vacationed out at this point, so maybe weren't able to enjoy it as much as if we'd been earlier in the trip, but it was a nice day.  It was a quick 30 minute train ride from Madrid and we visited our final cathedral for the trip and went on a nice tram ride around the outside of the city.  The tram went on the outside of the city center because the "roads" inside the city were more like alleyways.

Side note, with the exception of Madrid, all of the cities we visited had streets that were ridiculously small.  So in Sevilla, we learned that there were marble column type things that were put on the corners of a lot of buildings to protect the brick buildings from cars running into them.  The columns were all scratched up and were clearly needed.  In Granada, at one point our taxi had to pull in the driver's side mirror and squeezed by with maybe an inch between the car and the buildings on each side.  Amy had buses to take guests to the wedding site and the bus in front of us swiped a car parked on the side of the road.  Bus just kept on going.  I'm guessing it wasn't the 1st time he'd done something like that!  My Expedition was wider than 90% of the streets we went on.

Back to Toledo...visited an El Greco museum, that was supposed to be a recreation of his house and workshop there in Toledo.  Saw the cathedral and spent some time walking up and down the very hilly streets.   Here we are sitting at an overlook of the city with the cathedral bell tower right in the center of the pic between us and then the Alcazar on the far right.  The Alcazar being the castle or fort of the city.

We wrapped up our trip to Spain with the most amazing dinner - nachos and taquitos from the Hard Rock Cafe in Madrid.   As I mentioned, we enjoyed all of our meals in Spain, nothing too weird, but none of them had any spice.  Even the garlic shrimp were mild! Thanks for the jalapenos and salsa Hard Rock.

After a bit more plane drama in Philly, we made it home late Wed night.  Fortunately no missed flights, just delays.  Thursday morning we picked up the girls from Dad and Mary's and we were back in the real world.