Sunday, 21 September

This was a leisure day. We got up and took Aunt Jen to tour Madrid. Sunday is the only day for the flea market, so we started there. Wow – it was crazy!! Aunt Jen bought me a beautiful brown leather purse.

We then walked to the Plaza Mayor, the Cathedral, the Palace, and the Gardens. By then, we were pooped. We took the metro to the train station, so we could buy our train tickets to Barcelona. We wanted to take the Sunday night train. We had already booked the hostel. Well, the train was full for Sunday, so we got tickets for Monday night. We then went home and rescheduled everything successfully.

Monday, 22 September

Jen and I got the girls off to school, and then headed to Madrid to do the rest of it. We went to Puerta Del Sol and then walked down to Banco Espana. This is such a marvelous walk, because you get to see all of the beautiful architecture of Madrid. We headed to the Hard Rock Café. It wasn’t open yet, so we toured the Columbus Center across the street, until the Hard Rock opened. We then walked Retiro Park. The race started in the Park – but I didn’t look at it for scenic value. Jen and I walked around and found the center lake with the amazing fountains. Retiro Park used to be a palace. It was destroyed, but the agriculture and gardens are still there. This is when it started to drizzle aggressively. As we got to the gardens, we could see colors – but couldn’t make out the individual flowers due to torrential rain. We walked as fast as we could (I was wearing loafers, so running wasn’t an option) through the flooding waters. By now, our brown paper bag from Hard Rock was turning into machee and leaving brown blotches all over my jacket. I was nice enough to have Jen use the umbrella, while I had my rain/wind breaker jacket. My jacket was soaked through, my tan pants were totally wet and looked like I wasn’t wearing any, Jen was also soaked from the chest down – due to horizontal rain. We finally made it to the metro and laughed once we got under cover. Everyone looked a tad bit drier than we did – but did they have as much fun?

We got home in time to have Brent drive us to go get the girls from school. He had Chicken Little. We headed down our normal main street, but we had to stop. There was a river flowing from the construction site, down our street like a wash. The barricades from the construction were floating down the “river” as well. Brent debated driving through it and I freaked. He successfully turned around, Aunt Jen took pictures, and we got the girls. By the time we had picked up the girls, the rain had stopped, the river had stopped, and our street was a disaster – but still single lane drivable.

We made sure after school, that we called Papa to wish him a Happy Birthday. And then Jen and I left for the train station as everyone was getting ready for dinner. We made it to the station with an hour to spare – so I was able to give her the tortuga/turtle tour. We bought some snacks and migrated to the gates. We were abruptly stopped when the guard said that our train didn’t leave from the main stations, but from another station. We tried to ask her questions, but she was so concerned that we spoke English (she didn’t even try to listen to my broken Spanish), and she was so concerned with the people trickling in after us, that we waited forever for her to tell us that we had to go to the subway to go to the other train stop. We got on the subway going in the correct direction and then panicked that we might not have enough time. We did end up at the correct station, on the correct train with 10 minutes to spare.

The train. As I keep taking trains, they keep getting worse. We had seats for the 8 hour night train ride to Barcelona, but sleeper car for the ride back. The train was about 30 years old and basically sucked. We stopped every hour or so to pick up more travelers, or to pull over so a freight train could pass by. We did nap a little – but resting was questionable. We did manage to save two people when we arrived in Barcelona. One lady left her purse on the train, Jen and I gave it to the conductor and then raced in the station to find her and let her know – in our broken Spanish. Then when we were in the bathroom refreshing, a lady was locked in the stall and couldn’t get out. I understood her and kicked the door open to rescue her. A great start to our adventure.