i mean, look at this morning wake up view. how could we not be a little sad to leave?
or we could call it "the awesome day of our first high speed train ride" because it was!
but i think we will call it "welcome to madrid!" because.....we went to madrid! it was so exciting to arrive in such a cosmopolitan polished gorgeous capitol city, and in a big beautiful train station, right there in the heart of the city. and of course madrid is home to our friend laura and her family, and they were at the train station to pick us up at the exact right time.
good bye barcelona...
on the train, james worked on his travel log. when i asked him what he'd like to include and how he'd like to use it, he said "oh it's just notes for gloria. i told her i'd give her a detailed account when we get home." i just love the things that transpire between first graders.
hello madrid!
and hello laura!
laura, her mom coco and coco's long term partner fernando picked us up in fernando's suburban, and if you're thinking "is it typical to have a huge american truck from 1995 in a big metropolitan city in spain?" then you're thinking on the right track, and the answer is no it is not typical, but fernando is not typical, so there you have it. having access to a kind and generous man with a big house and a big car that fit all of us and who was willing to drive us around everywhere we went for 3 days in a row in the middle of a work week? now, that's not typical either, and that's fernando. we instantly fell in love with him and this entire family.
we dropped our bags at fernando's house in madrid, had a little lunch, and then got back downtown to find the double decker tour bus to show us around the city center. fernando dropped us at the cool city park on the hill overlooking the city, complete with an egyptian temple.
beautiful overlook, with the royal palace in the background.
and then of course, these three were right back to their usual arrangement: laura in the middle, and both happily clutching her hands. i could fill a whole photo album with these photos.
we hopped on the tourist double decker bus to see the sights of the city
and we hopped off when we wanted to poke around in the old city center.
look at this cute family....so much hand holding. it warms the heart to be in the care of such loving people.
we wandered through the beautiful san miguel market in the old town, were fernando kept buying everyone treats, and pretended he didn't understand our refusals because he doesn't speak english.
we found the plaza mayor after hopping off the bus at the huge central plaza del sol (interestingly, plaza del sol is kilometer zero for all of the madrid roadway system, so truly the heart of the city)
our tour drove us around such ornate and historically rich grandeur in the buildings and roadways.
and we drove past our arrival train station!
on the bus, we managed to get ourselves some top deck front row seats!
eventually we hopped back off for a walk along the beautiful gran via (which, in their spanish, sounds just like GRANBYah and i could not figure out what they were calling this road, but anyway...)
we all had some cold juice at laura's favorite downtown rooftop spot in the middle of this hot hot afternoon,
and ramona and i managed to squeeze in a velvet rope photo shoot. we fancy.
holy smokes, what a day. back at fernando's, we had a snuggle with gus (pronounced "goose" which never failed to tickle the kids' fancy)
and a rousing game of jenga before an early dinner at home at 930 pm. SPAIN!
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