Spanish Adventure - The Grand Finale

Day 7 – Wednesday, March 19
Today we would be leaving to head back down to Madrid. It was a 4 hour drive, and we wanted to do it all in the daylight…we figured that there would be less of a chance of getting lost in the daylight. We figured we’d leave about 1pm.

Before we left, we wanted to go to the open air market in town. They Market is open each week on Wed. and Sat. That is where everyone mostly does their grocery shopping…and clothes shopping and shopping for just about anything they’d need. It is so interesting to go and see all the booths of fruits and veggies, cheese, flowers, clothes, jewelry, leather goods….SO MUCH STUFF. They sell meat in a building in the center of the market. We went in last time we were there, and it smelled so awful it would make you gag!! When it was suggested that we go in there again this time…I told Lennie under my breath that I’d just meet them at the other end….OUTSIDE. I did not want to go in. Lennie said Just come on! So I did. WOW, they have changed it since we were last there. All the counters have refrigerated cases!! It doesn’t smell at all…YAY! It is always interesting to see the different meats they sell…see the pictures for more detail.

After the market, we were just going to walk around and say goodbye to a couple of people. Celia (the woman who cooked us dinner on Sunday) was working at one of her 3 jobs, so we walked over there to say goodbye. Then we walked to the Bar (little café) her family owns to see her daughter Sandra (who we hadn’t seen yet) and say hello and goodbye. They gave us gifts and some for the kids….they are so sweet to us! It was 1pm now, and we knew we needed to get going, but there was much whispering among them all, so we kind of thought something was up. When we went back to the house, they had planned a BIG lunch of Pallella….a very traditional Spanish dish which we had not eaten yet. It is one of Lennie’s favorites, and is a big deal to make, so how could we say no?! We stayed for lunch, and then finally got on the road about 4pm.

We made our way toward Madrid…we knew that wasn’t going to be hard. But we weren’t quite sure about locating our hotel….which we would now be doing in the dark! I kept telling Lennie to pretend we were on “The Amazing Race” (we love that show!). We got close to Madrid and made a wrong exit on one of the many freeways (seriously they are like a SPIDERWEB…SO hard to drive on!! And that is where the easy part ended. We got lost – then we got back on track – then we got lost – then we bought a real map – then we got back on track - then we got lost – then we got lost some more. After asking for directions several times and calling the hotel a couple of times, we FINALLY pulled in to our hotel about 11:30pm. We were both very frustrated and READY to be DONE driving.

We checked in, and they told us that the parking garage was underneath the hotel and we could park there. OK…fine. Except this was not your normal parking garage…at least not any I have ever known. This thing was so SMALL. Small aisles, small spaces…just TINY!! It was nearly impossible to navigate in our mid-sized rental car!! It took about 30 minutes to get into a space (which we backed into so it would be easier to get out of). We decided then and there that we were NOT taking the car out again until we were heading to the airport to drop it off!!

When we got up to our hotel room, we were so tired and frazzled and not ready for any more stress or frustration…..and we couldn’t turn the lights on! WHAT? Now it seems funny and insignificant, but we had no light in our room…and we were like are you KIDDING ME!? We were flipping switches and turning knobs…we could not figure it out. So here is me…calling the front desk after midnight to find out how we turn on our lights! Apparently, to save energy, when you come into the room, there is a slot in the wall where you slide your room key, and the lights will not work unless your key is in the slot. Sheesh!! It was definitely time for bed! Tomorrow was another day…right?!

Day 8 – Thursday, March 20
Today we had planned a day trip from Madrid to a town called Toledo. They are famous for making steel there, and there is also a huge castle and cathedral and river and many other beautiful buildings and interesting history there. We had missed going there last time, and wanted to be sure to hit it this time. Our original plan had been to drive there, but after our experience with driving in Madrid yesterday, we decided we’d better let someone ELSE do the driving. We asked at the front desk of the hotel and they said that we could take a train. It was about a 30 minute train ride…but we needed to take the Metro (or Subway) to the train station. There was a metro stop about ¼ mile from the hotel, so we started walking there.

Today was a holiday in Madrid….it was Holy Week (the week before Easter)…so there were not too many people out and about and many shops were closed. It was a nice little walk. We hopped on the Metro after getting instructions from a nice ticket agent about where we should go. It was only 1 Euro to ride the Metro as far as you wanted, so we were definitely thinking that we’d made a good choice to do this instead of driving (gas is about $7.50 a gallon!!) We made all our transitions smoothly and got to the train station about noon. There was a 12:20 train that we were hoping to get on, but it was sold out, so we took the next one at 1:50pm. The only return train that wasn’t sold out was at 5:30, so we’d have just about 3 hours in Toledo. We’d be rushed, but that’s ok.

When we got to Toledo, we could see the castle up on a hill (a REALLY big steep hill – obviously one of it’s protections back in the day) and we decided to walk to it since we were not sure which bus to take. PHEW!! That was a steep hike! I tried to capture it in photos, but you just cannot see how steep it really is. We got to the top, and headed for the castle …only to find out it is CLOSED for 18 months for restoration! POUT! Why couldn’t they have told us that at the BOTTOM of the hill?? We did a little shopping (most of our shopping) here. The shops were a bit touristy, but still FABULOUS (afterall…we ARE tourists!) The next thing we know, it is time to get back to the train station…due to our limited time, we hadn’t even made it to the cathedral. We took a picture of it from a ways away and started back to the station.

Our train back was nice. Then we hit the Metro to get back to the hotel. This time riding the Metro was a totally different experience! In the morning, it had been all laid back and fine. In the evening there were TONS and TONS and TONS of people wanting to get on. We watched the cars come and go a few times and people were CRAZY craming themselves into the cars. Sometimes the doors couldn’t even shut around them. They were packing in there like sardines! We finally decided we needed to make a go of it and the next train that came by we crammed on just like everyone else. Talk about close company, there was hardly room to breathe. It was this way for a few stops, then people started getting off, and it was nicer.

As we were walking back to our hotel, we decided to just stop at a little market to pick up something to take back to the hotel for dinner….a bar of bread, some sliced dried ham, and some cheese would do just fine. Lennie gave me the bags he’d been carrying…I waited outside while he went in to buy the food. He was at the checkout – which was right by the door – and he hollered out to me….”Christi, do you have my wallet?!” WHAT? I didn’t have his wallet…why was he asking me this? I started looking through our bags thinking maybe he dropped it into one of them at one of the stores in Toledo. NOPE! It didn’t take us long to realize that we’d been ROBBED!! Pick-pocketed by gypsies on the metro…and in hindsight, we knew exactly who they were. There was a group of 4 or 5 guys in their early 20’s behind Lennie on the Metro, and they were shoving each other into him….that is all it took for these professional thieves to lift his wallet right out of the front pocket of his jeans. ARGH!! All our cash, credit cards, his drivers licence, social security card, debit card….just a LOT of stuff!! We hurried back to the hotel, and told the front desk who called the police for us. Lennie made a report over the phone, and then I called and cancelled all our cards. Lennie had to sign the police report, so we needed to go to the police station….the lady at the desk was like “do you want me to call you a taxi”…yeah, and we’ll pay for that HOW?! So she gave us very vague directions to the police station and sent us walking. Thank goodness Lennie speaks the language and was able to ask people or we’d NEVER have found it.

On our way back to the hotel, Lennie checked his pockets, and found he had 4.21 Euros in change. We decided to try to find something to eat (it was 10pm, and we had only eaten once that day at noon)…so we found a little shop, but really we couldn’t afford anything but a soda, so we each bought a soda for 1 Euro. That left us with 2.21. We went back to the hotel and drank our soda’s, and ate a slim jim that we had brought with us from home.

We decided that we were glad for a few things, even amidst our frustration….they did not take the keys to our rental car, they did not take our passports, and they did not hurt us…So, even though we were still TICKED that it happened, it could all be dealt with.

Before we went to sleep that night, we repacked ALL our bags to even out the weight so there would be NO trouble at the airport, we wanted to get there and GET HOME!

Day 9 – Friday, March 21
We got up at 5:45, and we were ready to go! We decided to go to the garage and get the car out first since we didn’t know how long that would take…thankfully it was lickety split! Then we went to the front desk to turn in our key. The guy at the desk said “OK, you’re all set, I just need your payment”….UM, NO, I paid for the room two months ago online when I reserved it. I showed him my receipt…there..see…now let us go. NOPE! He said that the hotel did NOT have a payment from us and we could not leave until we paid the bill. He did not care about my receipt from Orbitz.com. We told him he was out of luck because we had been robbed and had no money and no credit cards, he needed to look at the receipt. He was insistant!! Finally I had to call Dad and get his credit card number to pay for our room…that we had already paid for!!! UGH!

We got directions to the airport and headed out. Except Madrid had one final chance to get us lost, and it worked!! There were two different signs directing people to the airport in totally different directions….we chose one of them, hoping we were getting closer to flying home! As we drove, Lennie said, “I think this is a toll road” (we’d been on several over the past week)…UH-OH….we have no money. All the toll’s that we had paid to this point had been over $8! Sure enough, here comes a toll booth….we drove up…the toll was 1.40!! WOOHOO, we had enough change to get through.

We got to the airport, HURRAY!! Returned our rental car, and headed inside the terminal…and yep, it was the wrong terminal. We were at the wrong end of the airport, so we caught a free shuttle and got to where we needed to be in plenty of time. Shannon let us know that the flight was very open (like 100 seats open) so we should get on no problem.  We checked in and went to wait by the gate. They do things kink of differently in the Madrid airport, but that is a whole ‘nother story. When they finally started calling standby names, we were sort of bummed that we didn’t have the money to upgrade to first class for the return trip since the trip out here had been so nice…but whatever! We were going home! They called us, and gave us our boarding passes and we went to sit and wait some more. Lennie looked at the boarding pass and said “LOOK!” they had seated us in first class! Just as I was about to take the tickets back up to the counter, the gate agent came over to us…she asked for our upgrades…I told her what had happened with our money and cards, etc. and that we’d be fine sitting in coach. She left with our passes for a minute. When she came back, she said Have a nice flight and gave us seats in first class anyhow!!!! YAY!!! We were so relieved!

The flight home was great! We relaxed and watched movies and had snacks….ahhhhh! We got into Philly to the bad news that the two flights that night to Phoenix were OVERBOOKED big time. We hung out and waited to see if a miracle would happen, but it didn’t. Shannon invited us back up to Boston for the night. There was a flight from Boston to Phx early the next morning that looked like we could get on it. So that is what we did. Shannon got us from the airport about midnight (we’d been up for 29 or 30 hours at this point) and we went to sleep at her place. We got up at 4:45…Shannon made us breakfast and we headed off to the airport….AGAIN! The flight home was very full, but we did make it on. We weren’t sitting together, but we were coming HOME!!! Nancy picked us up from the airport and we were so happy to see her and our kids and our dog and the desert and HOME!!!!

Of course, we will go to Spain again, but NEVER, EVER, EVER will we stay in Madrid!
In fact next time, his Spanish friends said they'd like to come HERE for a visit!