Madrid {2015}

After Christmas we took a little family trip up to Madrid! Our branch set up a temple trip (Madrid is the closest temple for us here) so we made a little trip out of it. This is the farthest we've driven in Spain so far (it's 6 hours away) so we took the first day of our trip to drive, 2nd day was mainly the temple, 3rd day was checking out Madrid, and 4th day was driving back. So a pretty quick trip but it was nice! Andrew had a little hard time while we were there (he was being super clingy and whiney and kept peeing his pants...he does not like to be away from home!). So that was fun....he was so happy when we got home.

So on temple day, one of the other family had their teenagers with them so they watched our three kiddos and Mark and I got to to go the temple, which was so nice! It's a beautiful little temple and so gorgeous inside and peaceful and calm....I love going to the temple. It was a great morning. Afternoon we switched off with another family and watched one of their kids while they went and then after everyone was done at the temple we went out to eat :) Pretty chill day really.

The 3rd day we toured around Madrid a little bit! We spent the morning with one of the other families...rode around on the hop on/hop off bus, saw an Egyptian temple (it was a gift from Egypt to Madrid), walked around, saw the Palacio de Real Madrid..which was HUGE and beautiful! We didn't go inside cuz we didn't really want to do that with the kiddos and the line was loooong. After that we walked into the older part of town with all the shopping and restaurants and had some YUMMY churros con chocolate at a super older churrerria...founded in 1902 and they were so good! Evelyn had been begging for days and days to get churros (which I need to get a video of her saying churros...I love hearing her speak Spanish :) ) so she was super excited to finally get them. Andrew was pretty excited too :) :) :)

On the hop on/hop off bus

The Egyptian Temple

Palacio de Real

Churros!!!!

After that we walked around some more...I love walking around the older parts of towns here...they are so beautiful and the architecture is amazing. The only place we went into that day was the Almudena Cathedral, which was absolutely gorgeous! I loooved the ceilings in this cathedral...they were amazing. We got to see some big nativities here too. :)

A cool display at a bakery- this is all made out of chocolate and pastries!

The Almudena Cathedral

After that we grabbed some fresh potato chips (YUM), hopped on the metro and went back to the hotel and then went out to dinner around the corner at a delicious paella place...it was seriously sooooo good! I love paella. And this was probably in the top 3 of ones I've had here so far. :)

Last thing we did in Madrid was go bak to the temple to show the kids it lit up at night...they still had lights from Christmas and their nativity up so it was really cool to see and the kids loved it!

And then the last day was spent driving back...we went a different way home though and it was a super pretty/very green drive. It's always so pretty driving through Spain :) We are so lucky to be here and are enjoying our time so much!!!

That day we came back was New Years Eve so we did a "fake" new year countdown (thank you Netflix!) for the kids and did our first Spanish New Years....which their tradition is instead of kissing at midnight they eat 12 grapes for each ring at the New Year. Which I didn't really look up specifics so I thought it was eat as you counted down to the New Year but eh...whatever ;) it was funny to watch Evelyn and Mark do it :) :) :