Do you remember where this is?  This question is for our children.  We had a lot of great memories here!

Does this table setting bring back memories of breakfast?

What about this lobby?  Does the words "white trash" come to mind?

Yes, Dad and I went to the Palace Hotel and ate lunch!  We went to the Prado Museum and since the Palace Hotel is just across the street we went and had lunch there.  It was so much fun and so many memories came back from when our family stayed there 11 years ago.  It still looks the same and we felt like all of our kids would suddenly appear and have lunch with us!  Hopefully we look a little better than we did 11 years ago (Katie suggested in her email that we wear old jeans and pajama tops to relive our experiences!).  The food and service are still as good as we remember!  

This is the Prado Museum.  Wow, we had so much fun spending the afternoon there!  We managed to see all of the rooms of paintings and sculptures!  Yes it took a few hours and we even managed to slip in a 5 minute nap on one of the benches to give us more energy to continue on!  We loved every minute of it!  They even had a special exhibition of Van Dyke and Rico.  Wow, they were absolutely amazing.  The collection of Van Dyke was probably the best I have ever seen of his work!  We were introduced to Rico, who was a landscape painter and painted a lot in Spain and inVenice.  His paintings were so good they looked like photographs!

The picture that is sideways (sorry, I am still learning how to put pictures in this blog) is Saint Jerome's Cathedral.  It is right behind the Prado.  Wow, it was so beautiful!!  We didn't have a chance to go in it because we had to get back to the MTC for the devotional but I thought you would enjoy seeing it.  The picture below it is just the street next to the Prado.  I love this part of Madrid, I think that it is the most beautiful part of the city!  We loved walking around in the streets on our way back to the metro.  I know that it looks like all we do it sight see, and yes that is partly true, but our little vacation will end on monday morning, February 5th, because we fly to Las Palmas, Gran Canaria where we will be serving our mission working with the Young Single Adults in the center there.  We are so excited!!  We have had one day of training here in the MTC with the couple that is in charge of all the CES missionaries.  We have also been to the Madrid Temple twice.  Once with the Madrid Mission missionaries and once with the whole MTC missionaries.  We will also attend another session tomorrow, saturday with the MTC missionaries.  The Madrid Temple is the most beautiful Temple that I have ever been to!  It is full of marble, gold, and the most beautiful rugs and fabrics!!  Yes, we are going to really try to and twist Katie's arm to consider getting married in the Madrid Temple so everyone can see it!!  Being with the young Elders and Sisters in the Temple has been such a wonderful experience.  Yesterday, four Elders and one Sister took out their own endowments.   This was usually the second time for many of the Elders and Sisters also, so we felt really needed in helping all enjoy the Temple.  The Temple President's wife took all of us for a tour of the Temple after our session and shared a few stories about the building of the Temple.  It was an amazing time!  Wednesday afternoon we had to file our residential papers at the immigration office in our barrio here in Madrid.  We were told that it would take about 3 hours, but we were lucky and only took 1/2 an hour.  We then taught the Russian and Italian MTC missionaries how to play kick ball.  We had bought a soft playground type ball and we invited them to play with us during their exercise time.  There is one American Sister here going to Russia (she knows russian because she lived in Russia for eight years when she was young.  Her Dad is an international lawyer.) and she was able to translate and explain to the Russians how to play.  Another missionary who speaks both english and italian translated for the italians.  It was so much fun!!  They all caught on pretty fast and wow, can the Italians play kick ball!!  They are so good at soccer so it was an easy fix.  The Russians really enjoyed it too.  The Sisters were very competitive and loved getting the Elders out!  We had so much fun and they want to play again on saturday afternoon again!  One Russian Elder said that we need to teach him how to be a "true American" and not just a "fake American".  They all love to ask about the United States and our culture.  They all have watched a lot of American movies and they love to speak english with us.  We will miss all of them because we have grown pretty close to them this past week.