Because Christmas is...

Well, Christmas is about a lot of things, but this post is about family. My sister requested a blog post about our Christmas 6 years ago. Let the tale begin:

Picture it: Madrid 2006. 

We'd been in Spain for a couple days already and we were ready to see some sites. Unfortunately, it was Christmas and everything was closed. We did a lot of walking and got to see a lot of the city, but only from the streets. 

I remember that the only thing that was open was Starbucks. I believe we ended up going to 5 different Starbucks that day. I was 100% amazed when this particular one spelled my name right. Most people spell it wrong, but some random barista at a Starbucks in Madrid spelled it right. I was blown away. 

This is from the first Starbucks we visited.

This is from 3 hours after the first Starbucks. It's right outside a different Starbucks and this is right before we called our parents... collect. "Happy Christmas!... you get to pay for this call!"

Again, since nothing was open, we toured the many lovely fountains and ponds that Madrid has to offer. It was cold that day and the fountains had a nice layer of ice over them. We were at a fountain/pool near the statues of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. For a break, we sat near the pool's edge and as a bored thing, I started breaking off chunks of ice and throwing the shards into the middle of the pool. When the chunks of ice hit the ice in the middle, they would break and it would be a lovely diamond display scattering across the pool. Pretty soon, others around the pool started doing it too. There is a video that goes with this story, but for some reason I can only get twelve seconds of it. I promise that I will post it here, though I am warning you, it makes me seem pretty dorky. I know, you're all surprised that I can be dorky at times. 

This is also the day we saw El Palacio Real... which was also closed. Here are a few highlights from the day. Enjoy!