We started the morning by realizing that it was fast Sunday. Some of us decided to fast but others wanted breakfast so we stopped at our favorite Lidl - it is apparently closed on Sunday so everyone got to fast.
"Sunday didn’t afford any break in our tight schedule. Ok, some may say I overschedule our vacations, but no one sees more in the allotted time and we get our money’s worth😉. We were on the road just after 9:00 headed north towards Jerez de la Frontera. It took a couple of tries to find the church with the map, but we made it before the opening hymn. The Elders knew Elder Golightly and Eastman who were also serving in the Madrid South mission from Middleton. Singing in Spanish was adventurous but fun and testimony meeting gave plenty of chances to practice Spanish interpretation. At one point I thought “Natali is going to share her testimony” and as I looked down the row she stood to do so. One of the Elders was on his 2nd day in the mission so we could understand about every word he shared. In a couple of months that will be Andrew in Nicaragua! Afterwards we spoke to girl who had recently returned from the Milan mission. Her dad had gone back with her in October to visit one of her areas in Switzerland and met Emeline Walker who was serving in the area at the time, Gigante they said to describe her! Natali also met someone from Argentina and they had some mutual acquaintances."
"We stopped for lunch at a grocery store again only to find it closed on Sunday. We settled, at Andrew’s delight, for McDonalds. After checking in we walked to the old city center. This was our first truly warm day reaching the mid to upper 80’s so we sought out shade as we walked. By 3:00 we were at the marvelous Plaza de Espana where a scene from Star Wars had been filmed. The columns and fountains pleased the eye and cooled us off."
I tried to get Andrew to reenact the Star Wars scene. He as Anakin and me as R2D2, hence the sunglasses, but he wouldn't go for it and thought my weird squatting pose was weird so we tried for a normal pose instead.
"At 4:00 we entered the Royal Castle (Alcazar), a sprawling palace and garden. The kids weren’t too excited until they found some ducklings and peacocks in the garden. We had a stressful couple of minute when we realized Emily wasn’t with us but we found her quickly."
She told me later that she wasn't lost, she knew exactly where we were. So apparently it was just me who had lost Emmy 😉.
The kids would have stayed with the birds forever but Natali, Greg and I eventually herded them along. Mack had caught my cold at this point and was feeling pretty miserable.
Indoor swimming pool anyone? It looked a little shallow for laps 🤨
Andrew looking cool with Lily's sunglasses while they waited for me to come back from searching for Emmy (she was with them and they were all just waiting for me to come back and see that she was fine 😂)
"We walked around the enormous cathedral and then got gelato to keep us from melting. At 6:00 we parted ways leaving the girls to see a Flamenco dance while the boys went to see Real Betis vs Valencia on the final match day of the La Liga season."
We wandered around trying to get someone to feed us paella but it was apparently too early. Our feet were tired and it was hot so we headed to the Flamenco place.
We were the first ones there so I saved front row seats while the girls wandered and found the gift shop. They were excited and picked out souvenir fans.
The show was intense and beautiful and by the end we were hungry to try our vegetable and chicken paella - both were yummy. Since Lily doesn't like rice we also ordered a tortilla de patatas. Yum.
Realizing it was our last meal in Spain I wanted to find Cheesecake because Nado had told us theirs was better than ours. I checked menus on line and finally found a place that gave us cheesecake to go.
Feet were so sore by now but we gave Emmy the phone and let her navigate home - a good distraction from the pain.
We took a pic in the hotel lobby before we headed up to our room to enjoy our crustless and quite good cheesecake. We were hoping to catch a swim in the hotel pool but it was closed so I told the girls sill stories till we were all tired enough to sleep.
Meanwhile..."Mack wasn’t feeling well at all and wanted to rest at the hotel before the game which didn’t start until 9:00. I sent he and Andrew ahead when I found a place to order Paella. 45 minutes later I had some takeout to share when I got back to the hotel. We took a cab to the stadium on the south side of town. Once again I was literally on the last row—the upside was we had a backrest at the edge of the stadium. The arena wasn’t near as nice as Old Trafford but the fans were passionate as the celebrated a long time player in his final match. Real Betis scored in literally the 1st minute sending the home fans into a frenzy. They didn’t threaten much after that and Valencia eventually equalized in the 71st minute. American international Yunus Musah subbed on for Valencia in the 78th minute but earned a straight red card in the 81stminute so we didn’t really get to see him play. There were more than 10 minutes of added time so we left in about the 98th minute to try to beat the worst of the traffic. We hoped to catch a taxi once we were a bit away from the stadium, but after a while I decided we might as well walk. Drinks and ice cream cones from McDonald’s persuaded the boys it was ok to walk the 40 minutes back. We were back to the hotel at about midnight."
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