Madrid Day 2 and coming home - Apr 11 - 12

Friday was our temple day. I went first for an endowment session and left the kids with Rachel at the hotel so I could find the fastest way to and from the temple. It was beautiful inside, with a real homage to the architecture of the area in the celestial room's ceiling. Though I got there just ten minutes too late for the 8:00 session, I did catch the 9:00. When it ended at 11:00, I raced back to the hotel and we all jumped in the car because I found out there would be no 1:00 session for Rachel to attend, so she would have to be there no later than 11:40 in order to make the noon session. We made it just in time, and I dropped her right at the foot of the stairs leading onto the temple grounds, then went to park the car while she went inside. I found out afterward from her that she got inside only to discover she didn't have any way to pay to rent the temple clothes, and she couldn't find me when she came back outside because I had to park more than a block away. Fortunately, the temple shares its grounds with the Madrid Missionary Training Center, so a pair of kind sister missionaries loaned Rachel 5 euros so she could rent the temple clothing.
Meanwhile, Miss A had fallen asleep, so Big E and I made and shared lunch at the car to let her sleep. When she woke up, we all walked to the temple and played on its grounds and ate more lunch and snacks until Rachel came. Big E spent most of his time looking at fountains, running races with himself, and doing stretches he learned in PE at school. Miss A played with the fountains and climbed on all the benches and flower boxes she could find. I took advantage of the free wifi of the visitors' center to plan the rest of our day. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to me to plan our route to the airport in the morning, but more on that later.

After Rachel came out, we got pictures together, then returned to the hotel to change.

We went back downtown and had a great time at the Royal Palace, where I told them stories about Princess Isabella that were half made-up and half based on the plaques explaining each room. They wouldn't let us take photos inside there either, so look it up online. However, I did sneak one photo of Amelia bumping down the stairs on her bum, because she insisted on going down three whole flights of stairs this way. All the people who passed us smiled at her and said "Princess" in various languages.

Then we splurged a little bit on dinner. Rachel got garlic prawns and I got mixed paella. Big E got some potato and ham croquettes that he didn't like, and Miss A chowed on bread. Both of them finished before we got our food, so they got pretty annoyed at how long we were taking, and that put a damper on our ability to enjoy dinner. On the metro, Big E announced that he really needed to pee again, which we'd forgotten to ask before we left the restaurant. We still had 5 stops to go, but with only 2 left, it looked like an accident was imminent. I proposed that we get off the train and stick one of Amelia's diapers on him long enough to avert catastrophe, so that's what we did. At first he didn't like the idea and was worried he'd actually be wetting his pants, but I convinced him to just go for it. As he did, he kind of smiled and laughed at how silly it was, so I was glad he was taking it well.

Once at the hotel, we packed everything so we could leave for the airport by 3:30. We woke ourselves up at 2:45 to shower and get ready, then put the kids in the car at 3:30. On the way to the airport, we had to make a last-second decision to go one way to terminal 4 or the other way to the airport. Since we hadn't had wifi access, we didn't check in, and so we had no way of knowing which terminal to go to. I took the terminal 4 route and it ended up taking us through a 2 km long tunnel way off to the north. But we got to the airport and returned our rental keys, so we thought we were fine. Little did we know that terminal 4 isn't even connected to the rest of the airport! We took 20 minutes just trying to find a way inside, then they told us to wait another 20 minutes for the bus back to terminal 1 which was labeled "Departures". Both of the other terminals were labeled "Arrivals". So we went to terminal 1 and wandered along the circumference of the terminal finding no Alitalia desks. Finally we asked someone at a different airline, and they told us Alitalia was at terminal 2! So we walked for another 15 minutes to find a line about a mile long at the Alitalia desk. Things didn't look good for getting to the gate without running. Then when we got to the front, we were informed that they had to put us on standby because the flight was overbooked. We stood at that desk for a full hour until past our boarding time, but they finally found us seats on the flight, and the agent personally escorted us through security all the way to the gate. We traded seats with someone else so we could at least have three of our four seats together, and Miss A slept on my lap all the way to Rome. In Rome, we had no trouble with our connection, so we made it to Abu Dhabi with just under an hour until our flight was scheduled to leave for Doha. We rushed through the airport and got three boarding passes at the transfer desk printed because for some reason Alitalia's Spain desk could only print Miss A's. Finally we reached the gate and discovered that the flight schedule had been changed to leave a full hour later, putting us in Doha at 10 instead of 9. The flight to Doha went fine, and we managed to finagle our way through the e-gate despite the fact that the guard said our kids couldn't come through (everyone at the Ministry of the Interior desk that sold us the e-gate service had assured us that they could, so we didn't back down--but that's the way it is here: it all depends on who's working on the day you finally go to obtain the specific service you need). Then our luggage came in a pretty timely fashion except our stroller, which got lost somewhere and is begin delivered directly to our house tonight. That's one nice thing that we wouldn't have gotten
from most airports in the US!
Now we are home, and Big E made it through his first day back at school without any major meltdowns despite having gone to bed at 11:30 the night before and woken up this morning at 5:30. And Miss A unexpectedly got to see and play with her best friend, Ellie, at the store when Rachel took her shopping today, so her whole week of missing Ellie ended happily.

We had a great time! Hopefully this satisfies our wanderlust until December, because we're stuck here until then!

Travelling to Madrid, and Madrid Day 1 - Apr 10

We cooked our breakfast, packed, cleaned the apartment, and left Granada by 10:00. We had considered driving up into the Sierra Nevadas to let the kids play in the snow given their obsession with "Frozen", but it would add an hour to our trip, and we already knew we would be cutting it close. So we drove all the way through to Madrid just stopping once for diesel and bathrooms and once just long enough to put Rachel in the back seat with the kids so she could hold the iPad while they watched the-movie-that-must-not-be-named AGAIN. (Sorry, it's now 13 April and those songs are still running through my head every waking moment of the day, so my memories of it are not as pleasant as the experience was at the time). The kids did fine and managed to get some sleep along the way. Our hotel was a Holiday Inn Express located near the airport, so we had no trouble finding it or getting checked in.
We did, however, have some trouble getting to the metro station the receptionist had tried to direct us to, so we were starting to stress about the time by the time we made it to Madrid to activate our tourist Madrid Card and get to the Prado. The metro stop took us to Gran Via, then I took us the wrong direction to Plaza del Sol because I thought that was Plaza Mayor. So we ended up backtracking a bit and taking a different route to get to Plaza Mayor where we got our cards, then walked all the way to the Prado. We stopped for dinner at 5:40 so no one would die of starvation or complaining, and Rachel went ahead to get some alone time in the museum without the kids around 6:00. I helped them finish dinner and we played on a grassy hill across from the ticket office for about an hour.

Then I took them in and told them lots of Bible stories and Greek myths while we wandered aimlessly through the museum. I may have also added some Ana stories in there for good measure. We met Rachel again at the entrance at 8:00, played some more, then made our way to the hotel.

We got lost again on the way, so we arrived there grumpy and tired, and the kids didn't want to sleep, but we made it to bed eventually.

Granada day 2 - Apr 8

Steve writing:
Today we left our apartment around 10:00 to go to the Science Park. We drove, but given how difficult it is to get into and out of the under-reconstruction store we're parking in, we decided we weren't going to drive again here if we can help it. No point in scratching the car somewhere else!
The science park was fun, but we probably left too late in the day for it without packing anything more than just some fish-shaped salty crackers for the kids and no lunch for us. So even though we didn't see all the park had to offer, we left around 12:30 having seen most of the stuff the kids would enjoy. That's where I first spotted the purple wisteria vines/trees that I became enamored of and pointed out every time we passed them for the rest of the trip!

At home by 1:00, we had our normal at-home lunch of PB+J sandwiches with apples, carrots, yogurt, and milk. Then we started a load of laundry (hooray for an apartment with a washing machine!) and headed out for a walking tour of Al Bayazin. We walked up a river at the base of the slope beneath the Alhambra, then up a looooooong steep hill that curved up away from the Alhambra onto the hill next to it. This led to the San Nicolas church that was not nearly as impressive as the view of Alhambra from the plaza in front of it. There we enjoyed listening to some buskers sing and play flamenco music while we snacked on cheese and crackers. This time I'd brought along some chocolatey snacks to give to the kids every time we paused our walk either to find directions or rest, and they were much less irritated / irritating as a result. We saw lots of beautiful houses and flowers and churches and alleys on our walk, and got all the exercise we need for about a week.

On the way home we purchased some Piononos, a dessert I was introduced to by our guide the last time I was here. Imagine cinnamon rolls soaked to sogginess in light syrup, then put flan on top. That's kind of like a Pionono. We ate them after our at-home dinner of spaghetti with peas and some sauce called tomatas fritas, that tasted a bit like marinara sauce but was much creamier (we couldn't find spaghetti sauce at El Corte Ingles when we went shopping our first night here). Just before we started eating, our host showed up to fix the internet, and (of course) it worked without him doing anything after I'd tried 50 times to do the exact same steps I followed when I started to show him the problem. Oh, well. At least we could use the internet finally. Then after dinner, we ate the Piononos, and I did the dishes while Rachel journaled about what we did the day before. We rested a bit, then headed out once again for a small but excellent Flamenco show. The kids did a great job (helped along by another box of those chocolate snacks), so we got to enjoy the show the whole time without feeling self-conscious about their behavior. Elliott spent the first song and a half either hiding in a corner behind my backpack or burying his face in my shirt, terrified for some reason. But when the female dancer came out, he began to watch and get interested as the show got louder and faster-paced. Amelia spent the female dancer's entire performance absolutely transfixed. Rachel had told her a lady was going to come out in a pretty dress and dance, and I don't think Amelia blinked through the entire performance! I figured the kids would fall asleep because the show didn't even start until after their bedtime, but they both watched and even started twiddling their fingers and clapping along during the male dancer's performance and the encores. The guy's feet were like machine guns! It was pretty great.

Then we came home, put the kids to bed, went to bed ourselves so we could have all our energy for the Alhambra the next day! And just before we fell asleep, Rachel said, "Hey Steve! Put your hand here!" And I felt baby girl #2 kick for the first time. A great way to end the day. Maybe she was inspired by the flamenco show. :)