Madrid Day 2

Madrid is so beautiful! I could stay here for weeks and still not see everything worth seeing. Saturday, we went to the Puerta del Sol, which basically means Door of the Sun. It's one of the main plazas in Madrid and it leads into Old Town. There, you can see quite a few interesting characters. Literally. We saw Chewbacca from Star Wars, a mariachi band, a matador, and Winnie the Pooh who apparently tried to hit on me. It was not my most thrilling moment. I also found a bookstore there and got two Spanish books--one about Spanish grammar and one about Spanish verbs. I know that probably doesn't sound too awesome, but you have to remember that I am a grammar freak.

We walked down Calle Mayor, which is just off of Puerta del Sol and has a multitude of souvenir shops. And yes, we did fall victim to a few of them. We also accidentally found La Plaza Mayor. That was pretty cool. It's a giant plaza that's surrounded by a wall on all four sides with massive arches to enter it. We had ice cream just outside it where pigeons were constantly flying dangerously too low over us. I don't like pigeons. For dinner, we ate at the Plaza Mayor. We had white wine, sangria, patatas bravas, and of course, paella. Everything was so good. My aunt speaks a little bit of Czech, so she constantly wants to speak it here. Last night at dinner, the waiter, who was very friendly, had brought her something and she accidentally said thank you but in Czech, not Spanish. What's interesting about this is that in Czech "thank you" is pronounced like "ah-no", which sounds an awful like "ano" in Spanish. "Ano" without the little wave accent over the n means "anus". I don't think the waiter noticed, but you can understand why I laughed. After I explained what happened, my mom and aunt laughed uncontrollably. I really can't take them anywhere.