Hola from Madrid!

Thursday night our redeye flight was delayed an hour. Otherwise it went as smoothly as possible. I don´t know how people sleep entire flights – I dream of the day I can fly first class international (if that day ever comes that is!).

We landed Friday morning in Madrid and took a cab to our hotel. This is the nicest hotel we will be staying in during the trip – after this we will be on a budget all the way.

Luckily, even though it was 9 am, they let us check in early. We´ve had very bad luck with that so I was thrilled. We napped for about 4 hours and then got up and saw a LOT.

We saw several plazas:

The Royal Palace:

And some gorgeous parks:

The Palace was probably my favorite site so far. It blows my mind that royalty lives like that – surrounded by some of the most beautiful architecture and artwork from around the world.

We also took some breaks for food of course. We found a cafe where I got a spinach wrap with goat cheese for lunch. I actually got yelled at for taking a picture in the cafe, so there is no food pic! Check out the guy in the green on the right of the pic about to yell at me. So funny:

We walked at least 5 miles altogether. I kind of wish I had my Garmin because I love tracking things like this, but I didn´t want to risk losing it so it´s at home. I also have tons of beautiful pictures, but this internet connection is too slow to keep uploading.

We treated ourselves to a fancy dinner last night (after this we will be on a budget on food as well). It was amazing. We actually went to the restaurant at our hotel because it was one of the restaurants recommended in our guide book.

We split a delicious lobster salad as a starter.

And for my entree I had some sort of fish. So good.

And some kind of dessert that was really good. (Food words are hard to translate!)

After dinner (which started at 9:30 – and that´s on the early side for Spaniards!) we were more than ready to pass out.

This morning I hit the hotel gym for 30 minutes on the stationary bike + some lifting. It felt so good to have a sweat session.

Now we´re off to see some museums and spend some time in a gorgeous park across from the hotel. I forget what it´s called but it´s one of the biggest in Madrid and it´s so beautiful.

It really makes me wish I could run. But the good news is that after all that walking yesterday I had no shin pain! I read that if you can walk over an hour then your fracture has probably healed. WOOO!

Tomorrow we are heading to Seville, so I will probably post again from there. Have a great weekend!