Madrid, Spain

It’s pretty incredible to live overseas, especially in Europe where within 2-3 hours a budget flight can whisk you off to incredible places—Italy, Spain, Greece, London—the possibilities are truly endless. Every year, Christian and I sort through all of our pictures for the year and make a big yearbook of all our photos. It’s a great way to look back on them later on and keeps us thinking ‘wow I can’t believe we were there!’ Our first weekend trip of the year in 2011 was to Madrid, Spain. Actually it was a fancy birthday present for ME! I spent my birthday week in California helping my twin sis search for bridesmaids dresses for her seriously gorgeous wedding but spent my actual birthday in Orlando, Florida, with parents and my twin sister (we visited the Harry Potter theme park and LOVED it! Me, Twinnie and my mom are the ultimate Harry Potter fans!). Christian sat this trip out and stayed behind in Holland, however he had a birthday surprise up his sleeve: he ordered a Madrid city guide from Amazon, had it delivered to my parent’s house in Cali complete with a note that said ‘I know you love tapas…so we’re going tapas bar hopping in Madrid! Happy Birthday!’ I’m so lucky to have a guy like this…two years previous he bought me tickets to Prague…he’s aaaaahmazing. Madrid is beautiful…dotted with palaces, tapas bars and an incredible indoor food market--Mercado de San Miguel. The market was definitely the highlight of the weekend with plenty of barrels of local wines and delicatessens serving freshly prepared tapas and bocadillos. We only had 36 hours in Madrid, but we put on our walking shoes (well boots for me! This is Europe afterall :)) and let our stomachs do the wandering…