Off to Spain!

When I was twelve, I went on vacation with my littlest sister, dad, and mom. My other two siblings stayed home with my grandparents. My littlest sister was about two, so she doesn't remember anything. For me, this was by far the best vacation I've ever been on! The reason why we went on this trip was because my dad had a business trip. We thought it'd be fun to go with him. Luckily, thanks to my dad, we all knew how to speak Spanish.
The plane was probably the worst part because the person in back of me was a five year old boy. All throughout the plane ride there, he kicked my seat. It was really annoying. I wasn't able to go to sleep at all in the 11 hour plane ride. When I got there, it was totally worth it!
I remember getting off the airplane thinking it was a certain time, then it wasn't. Spain is six hours ahead of the US, this took a while to get used to. In the airport the first thing we noticed is that everyone talked super fast. At times, this made it hard to understand. They pronounce some words differently which didn't help either. After we had gone through all of the security gates, we were looking for my dad's friend. I thought this was going to be impossible to find him, considering that we had never seen him before. We had gone down the escalator, then I spotted some guy jumping up and down with a huge poster with our names on it. I would have never thought of doing this, but it was a good way to get our attention. It was safe to assume that it was him. My dad's friend was Javier and his wife was Paloma.
After we introduced ourselves, he drove us to his house. They had a huge house and invited us to stay. From the window of his house, you could see where the princess lived. Although we never got to see her, I still thought it was really cool! It was only about 300 feet from the house we stayed.
The first day, I woke up at 1pm! Half the day was already gone! It took me about three days to actually get used to the time difference. Every day, everyone went to work. This left my mom, my sister, and I to just wander. We got lost a lot, but that's what made it interesting. Every day my mom would bring me to this desert and icy shop. I'd always get a lemon slush. Unfortunately, they don't make it anywhere around here.
The second day, we went to a famous art gallery called Museo del Prado. The Prado is one of the largest art collections int he world. It is best known for its diverse assortment of works by Velasquez, Goya, and El Greco. As a kid, I found this the most boring thing. I didn't understand why my mother put me through this torture. I remember seeing the painting of the naked lady. I wondered how that was artwork, and why they put it up in public. I was scarred for life at that point. The only thing that got me through it was that my mom said we could go to the amusement park after. I'd do just about anything to go to amusement parks. I have loved roller coasters ever since i was little. The amusement parks there I now know aren't as good as Six Flags, but as a kid it didn't even make a difference.
The next day we went with everyone on a bus tour. This took us all around Madrid. It showed us all of the top ten sights to see. The sights we saw were the Royal Palace, Puerta del Sol, Plaza Mayor, Templo de Debod, Madrid Cathedral, Plaza de la Villa, Puerta de Alcala, Gran Via, Plaza de Cibeles, and Plaza de Oriente. In the night some of these things looked even prettier because of all the lights.
What I found very different from here and there are the types of food. Here, there is a ton of junk food and fast food places. There, there's none that I saw. On almost every other street, there were a ton of stands that made food and sold it on the side of the road. I unfortunately am a very picky eater and chose to eat none of it. My mother and sister seemed to enjoy it though. Just about every single night, we'd eat at a different restaurant. At most restaurants I would just eat pasta. I am not the type of person that likes to try a lot of new foods. I like to eat the common, every day foods and that's about it. When we decided to eat at home Javier and Paloma would make similar things like in the restaurant. I chose to make pasta every night they made it. My dad usually made me try to eat their food, which I knew I wasn't going to like. This majority of the time this ended with me always  saying "Ew, I told you I wouldn't like it."My dad would then say, "If you don't try things you'll never get used to new things." At this point it honestly didn't matter to me, I was only twelve. All the foods he learned how to cook down there he still cooks every once in awhile. Since he has been having me eat a little every time, I guess I could say it has grown on me a little.
The next day my mom, sister, and I went on and underground railroad. I thought it was the weirdest thing because i have never seen one underground before. We took it to one of the streets by the center of town. We walked to one of Spain's historical parks and spent the day there. It was a very calm and soothing place. It was a peaceful urban park centered around a beautiful lake. The name of the park is Parque del Retiro.
The next day we drove to Toledo to see one of Spain's finest Gothic cathedrals. The cathedral that was had seen was Catedral Primada Santa Maria de Toledo. Right by the cathedral, was a church. The church was called Iglesia de Santo Tome. We went inside the church to see El Greco's most important painting, the Burial of Count Orgaz. After that, we went to Javier's mother's house. I thought Javier's house was huge, then I saw his mother's house. She has a different room for each one of her kids and grand kids just for when they visit. There had to be at least twenty rooms and ten or so bathrooms. It was ridiculous! They owned part of a farm so they also had a ton of land and animals. For dinner they offered to give me rabbit, goat, pig and a lot of other things. I wondered why they were giving me so many choices and why they were all the animals I saw on their farm. Right as I walked through the door, to go to the bathroom, then everything made sense. There was a picture of people who were holding up dead animals and a gun right next to it. That is when I realized they were hunters and they killed their animals they owned.
The last day we went to Segovia and we saw the aqueducts. I found this very interesting because I learned that there was a system of aqueducts and underground canals which once brought water from the mountains fifteen km away. The aqueduct was about 2950 feet long. The section where the arches are divided in two levels is about 900 feet. This was built by the Romans around 50a.d. and was designed to make water flow uphill. This surprisingly was just built by stacking large stones.
One of the things I personally would have enjoyed doing was seeing a bullfight. Madrid, where we stayed, was one of the dual epicenters of bullfighting in Spain. This seems really fun to watch and I would have loved to see it. It's basically a dance with death, one wrong move and the Matador could be dead. Javier also had a beach house in Casa del Sol that i never got to see. It would have been nice because I heard the beaches are really nice there. I also never got to go to the spot in Barcelona where they had the Olympics.
Since the day we left, my dad has been telling me that we are going to go back but we have yet to do so. Since then, Javier and Paloma now have two kids. Javier and Paloma asked if they could fly me there to teach their kids English. This would be really fun because I would get to do that and I would probably get to do the things I didn't get to do the first time. I get to fly out there this summer for a whole month if my grades are good. This has been my motivation this whole year and I hope I can keep them up so I can go!

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