Saturday, January 7, 2012

The Manzanares River

The other day I was talking to Ana, my sister, on the phone and I mentioned we had gone to see the river here in Madrid and her reply was "Madrid has a river!?" -haha. Indeed, it kind of came as a surprise to me too, because unlike other major cities whose central point is a river (the Hudson River, Charles River, Le Seine, TheTiber River), Madrid's River only covers one quadrant of the city (running from the West to the South of Madrid). It's called the Manzanares River (sounds like Manzana, Apples, but I'm not sure why it has that name) and it's a pretty narrow, unassuming river as far as rivers go. Nevertheless, some locals had told us it was worth checking out and so we made plans.

Valentina and Miguel mentioned that they knew of a chicken joint near the river where we could have lunch that day. As we walked down the street looking for the restaurant, I was imagining some small, hole-in-the-wall place, when we suddenly came upon this big rustic beautiful building called "Casa Mingo". It was awesome, really old and had the best chicken in town!


After a delicious chicken meal with homemade Cider we were ready to hit the river. Before we got there though, we went to visit this little church where the famous painter Goya is buried. To be exact, there are two identical churches: one being the original, which houses frescos painted by Goya, and the other a replica, becuase the first one was in delicate shape. Goya is buried in the replica, which is somewhat ironic being that he's buried in a church that has an imitation of his own artwork.

The plan was to rent bicycles, but we weren't really sure where to rent them. So, we just began to walk down the river. After the first 10 minutes we came upon this really cool "pine" park - very new and funky where the kids could play. In the picture below, Francisco is riding the wooden warthog like a Harley Davidson!

 


We kept walking and about a half kilometer up the path there was another park, even neater than the first. They had what may be described as an up-side down see-saw, where you sit on hanging sticks (below). Even the adults had a blast on that one!



Park number three along the path was pretty sophisticated. It had this fortress (below) that was rather tricky to climb up (knotted rope) so we ended up hauling all the kids up the long slide, and then enjoying the ride down. No matter what your age, there's always a kid inside ready to enjoy a good slide, right Fede?



I lost count of how many parks are along this 7km stretch of river, but it's more than seven. This was an ideal plan with the kids. The backdrop to the Manzanares River is the Royal Palace and the Cathedral of Almudena. Another Basilica (San Francisco el Grande) can also be seen. We were all impressed at how well designed portion of the river walk is, it is very exercise/kid/family friendly.

The Cathedral of Almudena

 As you can see, we did finally find the bike place and rented two of these quad-cycles: the two people in the back pedal, while the kids sit in the front. One adult steers and there's a brake in the middle. The pedaling is slow-going but super fun!

 

Antonio and Tomas were in one "car" while Eva, Alejandra and Francisco were in the other "car" and we took turns racing past the other car. The kids were in hog heaven :). Below we took a little break to enjoy these long swings that we came upon.





The Toledo Bridge can be seen above. This is as far as we got along the path before we had to turn around because we had to return the bikes to the rental place. Next time though, we are going to set aside a whole morning to spend at the river so that we can go the full 7 kms! That's it for now!

Monday, January 2, 2012

Three Wise Men

In view of the coming of the Three Wise Men (Jan 6th), here we have our Three Wise Guys you might say. Which brings me to my first point: in Spain, Christmas is not about presents, it's about the birth of Jesus....but Epiphany, now that's where the presents are at!!! All the little kids in Spain write letters to the Wise Men asking for toys and so you can imagine the excitement they feel knowing that on Friday they will receive heaps of gifts!!


One day we made an awesome Colombian "Frijoles" Dish that I just had to commemorate on the blog. It came out so tasty!



Another day we went walking to the Plaza Mayor to see the Christmas Outdoor Market. The kids loved the guy making the enormous balloons and he even obliged us with a special picture of the kids in the balloon!



Above are an assortment of pictures from this last week :) And below is the famous restaurant "El Botin" which is the world's oldest restaurant (you can see the Guiness Book of World Records Certificate from the window). It is located just off of one of the corners of the plaza mayor. The place has been open for business since 1725!!!





On Thursday night we actually got to go out (just the adults!!). You might say we pulled a fast one on all the five kids, because we put them all to bed nice and early (8:30pm) and then the babysitter came over at 9pm when they were fast asleep and we quickly slipped out! (of course, crossing our fingers that this would work, because if the kids woke up unexpectedly to find an unforeseen babysitter this could have been a big problema!). Luckily we had purposefully worn them out that day and they passed out like rocks.

I wish I could say that we were all full of energy and ready for a long night out on the town, but when you're managing 5 kids ages 5 and under, energy is a commodity that's rather spare! Still, we had a great time at some tapas bars (the tapas were AMAZING) and it was really fun to experience the Spanish nightlife, which as you all may know, is something that Spain is known for. I asked a Spaniard in our group specifically about that because it seemed to me that the streets were packed with people going out (sure didn't seem like a recession in Spain!) and he said that Spaniards would rather not spend on clothes, vacations and other stuff just so they have enough money to still go out :) haha..



So here in the picture above is Ana Maria and Pablo, Fede, me, Miguel, Valentina and Patricia. We ordered something very typical in Madrid which is called "Huevos Rotos" (Broken eggs), and it's basically a dish with homemade potato chips, fried eggs and ham on top! so bizarre but very yummy!!


We also had a great picnic at Retiro last week with our friends Scott and Leah (who you may remember from our Thanksgiving Celebration). Leah is just a month away from giving birth and we are super excited!! The weather continues to be delightful.


And finally, I just had to include this pic of us at the Planetarium, not because of its photographic quality but because Francisco looks so darn cute pre-haircut. Fede says that he looked like one of the Three Stooges with his mushroom hair (so true!!) and I just found it darling...of course he looks terrific with his buzz cut too.

Ok, next post is all about the Manzanares River Outing a.k.a. Madrid's best kept secret.

cheers to everyone,
The Martinez Family