Our Adventure Begins

After a long travel day, complete with flight delays due to severe weather in Dallas, we arrived in Spain at the perfect time of day, 11:00am. The weather was warm(ish) and we had the whole day ahead of us. We did our best to sleep on the plane and made a vow to stay up until at least 10:00pm.

Showering was the first order of business and thankfully our hotel has great water pressure and hot water. From there we went exploring and looking for food. There's no shortage of places to eat, a blessing and a curse. We settled on a restaurant in the Plaza Santa Ana called Cinco Jotas. We had an awesome two-course meal complete with a drink (wine of course) and coffee at the end. What is it about European coffee!?!? The cafe con leche was so delicious and just the kick we needed to get through the rest of the day.

From there it was more walking around the city. We found a artisan market selling lots of hats, jewelry, and other trinkets. When we turned around we realized we were a block away from the Plaza Mayor, one of the historic centers of the city. It is all decked out or the Christmas holiday and many Madrileños (Madrid locals) were out shopping at the various booths set up around the plaza. Strangely many of the vendors were selling the same exact items. One very popular set of items were figurines for a Nativity set. We saw these everywhere and they were massive. They had the usual cast of characters as well as houses, trees, hay bales, rock walls, anything you can think one might (or might not) need for a nativity.

It was only later that we realized that people in Madrid take their nativity VERY serious. In one of the Plaza windows a very intricate nativity has been set up for display. The houses had embers in the fireplace, the Wise Men were coming over the mountain to to see the baby, shepherds were taking to the angel, and so much more. Later as we were walking around the city we saw that many store fronts construct similar displays in their shop windows. Tis the season.

We ended our day in a very local way, eating tapas, drinking wine and finishing it off with Chocolate con Churros and finally heading to bed at 11:00pm. Perfect.