Thursday, August 18, 2011

Day 1? 2? Whatever it is...

We made it!  After a last goodbye to family and Ross, a layover in PHL, an overnight transatlantic flight, and a crazy sequence of metro transitions (all with 4 months of luggage of course) we made it to Madrid!

First contact was a little rough.  We were supposed to call our apartment office a half hour before we showed up to see if we could check-in earlier than the stated 13:00 or store our luggage until then.  Correspondence by email in English- not the case by phone.  I had 2 separate phone calls with the same guy who could neither speak nor understand English, the latter conversation a little more composed but still not effective (a parking phone?  what???)  But all was well as we made it to the apartment and were greeted, thankfully, with a woman who could speak English and informed us we could leave our luggage until 13:00 when we could check-in.  Happiness ensued (those bags are heavy!)

We milled around the streets until 13:00, which was sorta weird because pretty much nothing opens in Spain until 13:00.  It was probably ok that way though because some of us were SUPER jet-lagged.  We pretty much just sat at a table and watched the city unfold.

At 13:00 we checked into our apartment, which is beautiful.  Looks exactly like the pictures online and is in a pretty good spot.  We got ourselves situated and then chilled in the apartment for a bit.  After that we headed back out for a tour that ended up being in a completely different place than we thought.  Thus: wandering and ice cream.  Which was amazing.

A quick trip to the supermarket for meals to be cooked and back to the apartment to deal with our jet-lagged, super-tired selves.  It was really funny to be awake, because the day was just an endless cycle of people passing out in sleep.  Ben seemed to have a particular talent for it, in really whatever location. :)

Less of the day: know what eats are where and have a few pre-determined options.  Food= necessary.  And it can take a long time to figure out what 6 people want to eat...

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