The Colorado Jeppson Crew: Madrid, Spain

Again, sorry for all the pictures. This is kind of a family journal for us, so I have a hard time deciding what to put in and keep out. Considering I took over 400 pictures, that I only ended up including this many is pretty good...right?

We stayed at this real neat 3 bedroom apartment in Madrid. Honestly the family that runs it were wonderful, and bent over backwards to help us out. It was within walking distance to the Metro, which was even better! I think one of the things the kids liked the most was the door...mine was the washer it had in the kitchen...which we used multiple times!

Any door with a door knob in the center, we call a Hobbit door. The girls were excited we were finally staying somewhere with a Hobbit door.

It was a really nice place to relax and hang out. We went to the museum Sofia, to see the Picassos. All my pictures are on Matt's phone, so none to display. I laughed though, because the whole time going through the museum we would come to a Picasso, and I would tell the kids " here is one". Hannah would be adamant that it wasn't a REAL Picasso. Finally I asked her why, and she had been looking for a specific painting the whole time, thinking Picasso only painted one. It was cute, too bad that painting wasn't in Spain.

Churros Con Chocolate is a favorite breakfast in Madrid.

There are cafe's everywhere that serve them, so Naturally we needed to partake as well!

I think it was one of the best breakfast's we have ever had!

I love alley way book vendors.

Leave it to Jack to find a soccer shop!

Anya standing in the very center point of Spain.

All the street signs have names and a picture.

The picture was so that in medieval times the illiterate could tell which street was which too...

The oldest door still standing (and in use) in Spain.

Anyone home?

Madrid's Royal Cathedral.

the patron saint is Saint Ivin

It was so colorful inside.

St. Ivin's coffin. He was a humble man and died, but decades later they exhumed his coffin for some reason or other, and when opened they found that the body had not decayed at all. It was declared a miracle and he was sainted. The body is still on display today in one of the museum's in Toledo.

The Royal Palace

It must have been a coffe break...all the guards were standing around chatting and laughing. No uniform (definitely not Britain) so Matt had to settle for his picture to be taken with a group.

So, this was the saddest part of the day for me. I have a friend I have known since High school who lives in Madrid. We had been emailing back and forth trying to set up a place to meet, because she worked. I emailed her the night before and said, let's meet at the Bank de Espanya metro stop...then we can walk up to the Retiro Park. So we got there at the time, waited and waited. Finally I walked down to find a wi fi spot to see if my phone would work...and when I did, I noticed that my email had never gone through! So Sad! Technology totally failed me, that and not having outer-country phone service. So we had to leave, shortly after and drive back to Barcelona to return the car, and she lived a ways a way...we were never able to meet up. We made the best of it, hung out on this nice bench outside the Metro entrance for about an hour...rested and had a nice snack.