Back in Granada, Spain.

Thirty hours of flying connecting and flying some more and we are once again in Spain.  It’s raining in Madrid of course and we bypassed the taxi stand preferring to catch the free hotel van. 

Why is it always raining when we arrive in Spain?

We had charged our Spanish cell phone battery prior to leaving Montevideo and had visited our carrier’s website to add a little money to our account.  Inexplicably our phone did not have a charge by the time we reached Madrid and we couldn’t call the hotel to find out what time to expect the van.  After a 40 minute wait with cars and buses splashing water on us and on our luggage we returned to the taxi stand to acquire transportation to our hotel.  The taxi driver could not find the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza  Madrid Airport and 30 euros later we staggered into the lobby of our hotel.  At this point all we wanted was a shower and to collapse into bed.

Too tired to sleep after showering we moved to the hotel’s cafeteria where we had a couple drinks and a warmed up pizza.  After watching an entire futbol game we finally retired to bed where we slept like rocks.  We had good intentions of rising around 5 in the morning and catching a workout in the hotel gym but were so tired that we slept until 7.

At 7 we quickly rose and checked our email on the hotel WIFI finding a disturbing message that the apartment we had so carefully and frustratingly arranged would not be available and the landlords intended to put us into a different apartment in a completely different part of the city.  This, of course, was absolutely unacceptable  because to us location is everything, but since it was early in the morning we could not do anything about it prior to boarding our bus to Granada. 

We caught a taxi to the bus station in time to board our “Supra” bus to Granada.  The Supra costs a little more but provides snacks, drinks and free WIFI which we fully intended to use.  There were only 7 people on the bus and the seats were very comfortable but, as was becoming normal for us, the WIFI was not strong enough to use email.  This became more of a problem because while we had recharged our phone, the minutes we had purchased had not been downloaded to our phone (or however that works).  Ultimately we determined that we had to have the phone turned on, while we were in Spain, to get our purchased minutes credited to our phone.  Oy!

So now, in spite of all our planning, we were arriving in Granada, in the pouring rain, needing to catch a taxi but without a destination.  We couldn’t even call our friends to ensure that they would be home! 

Not to worry; our friends were home when we called them from a pay phone at the bus station in Granada and they had already worked out a better plan with our landlord.  We were to be put in a different apartment in the same building as the one we had rented, the catch was that we would have to move in about 3 weeks to the actual apartment we had expected to be in from the beginning.  Fine, we could deal with that.  

We parked our luggage in our friend’s apartment and walked to Plaza Larga and surprised our very dear friends at Puerta de las Pesas.  The surprise was everything we had worked so hard to create, we were so happy to be back!  Later that afternoon we met our landlord  and got settled   We found ourselves feeling like we were at home in Granada.

It was Allie's birthday and she had managed to keep our surprise arrival from our daughter and had engineered a meeting by inviting, well insisting, that Kellie come up to Plaza Larga for a drink to celebrate with her after work.  We waited out of sight with our Spanish friends inside Puerta de las Pesas and they watched for Kellie to come by, she had to pass us to get to the bar where she was to meet Allie.  When she passed by Fernando called out to have her come in for a moment and when she did he opened the door and there we were!

It was a very touching moment for us because as soon as she saw us the tears started welling up in here eyes.  We will never be able to adequately express how much it meant to us to share time with our daughter and her friend Brittani in this new place that had begun to feel so much like home to us.  We only wished that our older daughter Jasel could have been there as well.

Kellie is not nearly as good at keeping secrets as Allie had been so as soon as she saw Brittani the next day we got a welcome back text and then were able to catch up with her too.  What a fabulous welcome back to Spain experience.

Thank you Allie and Andrew for helping us make the arrangements and for keeping secret our return to Granada!