27 Mar

The inconceivable happened this morning. I overslept!! I swear, my alarm must not have gone off. The deal was that I would call them as I was getting ready to leave to make sure they were ready to go. Dad, in his infinite wisdom, decided to call me around 7:20 to make sure I was doing my part. If it wasn’t for his phone call, I’m pretty sure I would have not woken up ‘til much later…

Frantically, and ever so thankful I had packed nearly everything the night before, I got ready as fast as I could and practically ran to the train station. I got there several minutes early and had enough time to declare myself an idiot several times before boarding. I found Mom and Dad waiting and ready at Victoria, and I first apologized to them before heading over to the ticket office to buy two Zones 1-6 passes for them. As soon as I got them, we grabbed our things and headed for the Victoria Line. The Tube ride to Green Park and then to Heathrow went quite smoothly with me kicking myself for almost ruining this all the way. My alarm clock has worked nearly flawlessly the whole time I’ve been here and it picked one heck of day to screw up.

Once at Heathrow, we checked in smoothly except to find out that our flight was delayed. We moved up to an earlier one that she told us we had to hurry to catch. Ah, what a great start to the trip! We made it the plane with about five minutes to spare before the hatch was closed. The flight went very smoothly and within a few hours, we were in Paris! Oh, but not for long! We hurried to our gate as fast as we could but were stopped a couple of times by security checks. Anger was mounting in our fellow passengers, especially one Italian woman who was convinced that this ineptitude of the airport officials was going to cause her to miss her flight. One man attempted to bypass the line on the excuse that he too would miss his flight, but was turned away to the approval of people already in line who told him they were worried about their flights too. ‘Then we’ll stay in the same hotel!’ the cutter retorted as he headed to the back of the line. Welcome to Charles de Gaulle airport, ladies and gentlemen.

After all was said and done, we made to our gate with time to spare and since I hadn’t had any breakfast, my own fault completely, I took the time to grab a big and delicious muffin. I finished it just minutes before boarding. I may hate Charles de Gaulle, but Air France is a decent airline. Our flight to Madrid was uneventful and rather pleasant. We managed to pick up our bags quickly and smoothly and then immediately sought a taxi to get us into town. I’m not sure how many airports do this, but I thought it was neat how the taxis would shut off their engines and put their cars in neutral while waiting for customers. They would push their cars to the front of the line and only turn them on after their customer(s) got in the car. Fuel efficient and quiet: a perfect combination. Our driver quickly loaded our bags into the trunk and then we were on our way! Warm air blew in through the windows and brilliant sunshine lit the city on fire.

To mom and my alarm, our driver proceeded to show us on a map of his all the sights of the city. Not just at stoplights, mind you, even while driving! He was an excellent driver which was a very good thing for us…In no time at all, we reached our hotel and I liked our driver up until the point where he tried to cheat us out of a few Euros. We had agreed on a price before leaving and he at first did not give dad the proper change until dad demanded it of him. Our hotel was nice and we settled in a little and refreshed ourselves a bit before heading out for the famous Sophia Museum (which was the only one open that day).

In a pleasant welcome to the city, a big group of artists and theater people were demonstrating/celebrating in the square right in front of the museum. We watched them for a few minutes before heading into the museum. Like the Louvre in Paris (though not nearly of the same scale and grandeur), the Sophia Museum is a palace converted into an art museum. It’s a modern art museum and consequently I did not understand very much of it. Many of the exhibits were interesting yet virtually incomprehensible. Pablo Picasso’s most famous work, “La Guernica” is on display here. It covers most of a wall and is quite a work to behold. Pictures were allowed in this exhibit, something I found quite unusual, yet “La Guernica” was the only painting special enough to have its own retinue of guards plus at least five security cameras (those were the ones I could see in the room). We looked a few more exhibits after that before leaving the place in search of dinner.

Mom printed out a list of vegetarian places to eat at and so we struck out for one. On the way, we took a side street and found a sign pointing to an Indian restaurant. Curious, we checked out the place and decided to eat there. It had only been open for a couple of weeks. The staff was sort of helpful in telling us about the city, though the food wasn’t anything special. It was getting dark as we left and since we were tired and in a new city, we decided to head straight back to the hotel. The nice thing about Spain is that people here keep very late hours, so the streets are still bustling even near midnight with diners and coffee drinkers.

At the hotel, we all got some much needed rest. Cheers!