Day 7 - Arriving in Madrid

We got up at the crack of dawn (5:55 a.m.) and we were on the road by 6:15. (It helps when you don't bring any luggage into the hotel!) It was amazingly dark -- dawn didn't being to break until well after 7. The kids slept in the back while Jordan drove us up to Madrid, with Margy navigating us to the posh neighborhood where the embassy is situated. We were parked and were through security by 11 a.m. and had completed our passport applications before 1 p.m. when the office closed. The nice embassy man told us to come back by 6 for our passports. Easy enough!

We found an upscale pizza place for lunch, where the waitress refused to reply to us in Spanish. We checked into our hotel, left the kids in the room, returned the car to the rental car place in the train station (the same station that was bombed a couple of years ago), picked up our passports, and got back to the hotel, where we had a big room with bunk beds for the kids.

We were to meet our high school friend Lauren and her new boyfriend Tim in Madrid and we'd gotten a message that they were going to try to stay in the same hotel, so we left messages both and the front desk (who seemed pretty clueless) and in the keyslot of their room. (Why didn't the hotel staff give them our message when they checked in? Who knows.) We even called John in Trumansburg to get Lauren's cell phone number, but he was en route to Dublin via Toronto, so no luck.

We walked around downtown Madrid -- our hotel was just a few blocks from the Prado art museum, the Puerto del Sol, and the Plaza Mayor, which was the most amazing plaza we'd ever seen. We had a good dinner at La Trucha, with lots of little plates (tapas-ish), and came back to a message Lauren and Tim that we'd see them in the morning at breakfast.



We were exhausted from the long day (especially Jordan, who had to stay awake during the drive). But it felt as though the theft was all taken care of, and we could go ahead and have a great time in Madrid.