Kids are kids no matter where you go
Such a beautiful city! Not ay all what I expected since a travel book I read said that the architecture there was not worth seeing! There were some magnificent buildings and the old town had a charm of it's own just like all European cities do. I started my trip here, teaching classes at Bambola Casa Creativa my first weekend. The store was wonderful and the girls were much fun. Sylvia was my translator and she did a great job.
I stayed at Sandra's ( the owner of the shop, home about 15 miles north of Madrid. It was a small town with crazy streets and I was afraid of getting lost but I did venture out every day to explore. My stomach did not do well my first week so I set out to buy bottled water and for some reason I craved orange juice which I bought daily. I lived on Bimbo (yep, they had it there too!) bread and juice for a week while my stomach settled in to my new surroundings. I did have a most delicious paella on my first Sunday. It looked like it should be on a magazine cover, it was so beautiful. I could not bring myself to eat the oysters or mussels however. I hope I didn't hurt Sandra's feelings, but I did eat the crawfish. I did draw the line at sucking the head out of the shell though!
Halloween was in the air here with Sandra's kids carving pumpkins. I was told that they didn't start celebrating this holiday until about 5 years ago. I suppose it's because of social networking perhaps.
I went on to Tarragona to teach and onto Barcelona for 3 days, ending back in Madrid for 2 days before flying home. It clearly was not enough time to do everything we wanted to do but we got in a small taste of the city. It was crowded everywhere we went since it was a holiday weekend there. Onto the second part of the trip later in the week.
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