Getting to Madrid

To Madrid, Spain -- Day 1

Our four-hour flight from Boston to San Miguel (one of the Portuguese Azores) left us all a bit groggy.   Dex was cold and tired as we made our way along the tarmac to the small terminal.  

I didn’t even know we had a mid-Atlantic stop until we checked in the night before.  Dex was further annoyed by my denial of the phone.  I have been saying for months that when we start traveling, battery power will be at a premium, so indiscriminate game playing will not be an option (except for Meg – no fear you Words With Friends addicts).  At least that’s the story, and I’m sticking to it…for now.  In reality, we have an extra 20 A-hr storage battery and, once on the bikes, my new fancy schmancy generator hub should keep us supplied with all the electrons we need.

Suffice it to say, Wednesday was a very long day.  From San Miguel we had a 1hr 45min flight to Lisbon where waiting in lines was the main activity for the first four hours.  

For some reason, we were unable to get the boarding passes for that leg of the journey the night before, so we knew we would have to find a ticket counter and talk to someone at the Lisbon airport, which, by the way, is a really nice airport, unless you have to spend 9 hours there.  The original plan was to the get the boarding passes, then hop on the subway (or whatever Lisbon has) to get downtown, get some lunch, hang out, and return for our 19:15 flight (I’ve already switched my watch to military time).  

However, after six lines and almost four hours trying to get SATA and TAP to (in the words of Donald Trump) "figure out what in the hell is going on," we decided to cut our losses and just eat there.  The kids were stir crazy, and I was totally preoccupied trying to straighten out some things in our Schwab account before the MacBook battery died.  So, in short, everyone was grumpy.  Eventually, I got a coffee (in a small ceramic cup, or course), the kids had a muffin and doughnut, and we played a game of Farkle (fun game with six dice, especially good when traveling light (please ignore our 300lbs of luggage).

Two hours after our scheduled departure, we were finally on our twin prop, turbojet and on our way.  

I finally relented and let Dex have the phone.  I promptly fell asleep so actually have no idea when the 15-minute game timer went off. 

Long story short, we didn't make it to our very run down, but conveniently located, Pension Lemus until 2 a.m. after much lugging of our four large suitcases and 2 large duffles up and down many an elevator, staircase, and escalator. Through one station, we were aided by an adorable Spanish couple who guided us through the maze of tunnels and gave us a chance to practice our miming and rudimentary Spanish.  The occasional cleaning crew worker also took pity on Kylie while she attempted to manhandle her suitcase up or down a flight of stairs.  The only imperative was, under no circumstances, stand downstream of the suitcase.     

When we finally found the pension, tucked down a back alley, the woman we woke up was not particularly pleased and charged us an extra 20 euros.  

We made it and were all just glad to finally have a place to lie down. Bienvenido a Espana.