Spain

Alex was our tour director. He is standing on the 0 degree mark of Madrid. We used it as our meeting place.

We ate churros and chocolate at a nice little sit down place. The chocolate was really thick--some people actually drank it, but it was more like a syrup than hot chocolate. Delicious just the same!
Kelly and I in front of the royal palace of Madrid. The tour was really cool but (what turned out to be a big trend) we were unable to take pictures inside. They had recently changed the rule. It used to be that you could take pictures without a flash, but so many people were "accidently" using flash that they stopped allowing cameras altogether. Too bad--there were tons of unique rooms, seats, architecture, chandeliers, and even clocks!
We also went through the Prado Museum. There was a special Goya exhibit and we also saw Renoir, Valasquez, Raphael and more. It was neat that we saw Las Meninas by Valasquez here because later at a Picasso museum, we saw probably 50 paintings he had done as a study of just that one painting.
I liked the wax people in the balcony of this restaurant.
Kelly and I outside the old city of Toledo (Spain, not Ohio).

This is the entrace to the Cathedral of Toledo.
River view from Toledo. Supposedly the saying, "Holy Toledo!" comes from this city.
We toured a gold inlaying shop where they made swords along with jewelry et cetera where all of the designs had gold thread put into the metal to create designs. Notice this guy actually uses a compass in his job (and I thought it was one of those things I taught in geometry that no one would ever use again!).
On our free day we went through the Reina Sophia (sp?) art museum and saw tons of Picasso and Dali paintings and drawings. However, we couldn't take pictures inside, just in the courtyard area.
This old train station was designed by Eiffel (yes of Paris fame). After they built the new station, they converted the inside into a botanical garden.

When driving from Madrid to Barcelon, we stopped at a little city and had lunch. The city square had many different types of architecture, from ancient to modern.

Our first walking tour in Barcelona included the house and grounds built by El Greco (the Greek--his name was too hard for people in Spain to remember, so they simply called him the Greek). His designs were really cool. First was this courtyard with seating all around it.
This is a view from the seating area of the guest house and another building.

This walkway was used in America's Next Top Model for some wedding dress scenes (some of the girls on our trip got really into the picture taking here).

This is a view of the ceiling underneath the seating area--there was a really good group of people playing stringed instruments in here and it sounded amazing. The accoustics are said to be really good.
The top is the seating area and the center has some fountains, including a big lizard one.
Barcelona is building a church designed by El Greco that is supposed to be done in 2040. This is the start of the front of the building.

A view of the more modern back side of the church.
A poster of what it is supposed to look like when finished.
We went up to the olympic center and this is the view of the city from up there.

One mode of transportation in Barcelona was the bicycle carrier. You could almost walk as fast as it could go through crowds. :)

We ate lunch at a fresh market. I chose fruit.

I also picked up some dried fruit to snack on (notice there is a huge variety--dried kiwi, papaya, strawberries--it was SOOO good).

We didn't go with the fresh tongue or brain but it was available!

Barcelona's beach area was fixed up before the olympics. this lobster signified that there was plenty of good food available in this area.
This picture of Nate, Kelly, me, Tammy, and Dan was taken before our ferry (mini cruise ship) took us from Spain to Italy.

I thought it might be easier for me to do a posting for each country. At least that way

I'll actually get stuff posted. So, we were in Spain for the first 7 days. This was all new to me and I really enjoyed it.