We departed, we took a 10 hour flight to Amsterdam. We survived.
As far as long flights go, it wasn’t too bad. I was sandwiched between Gia and Romeo, and Lucia took my seat next to John (he paid for extra leg room for “the grown ups” but really mostly for him). The littles wanted me with them though of course (in the small leg room row), because they use me as a human pillow.
The kicker is that my missing menstration (lost due to menopausal inclination or mother in law stress—unknown which one) decided that this morning was THE perfect time to show up. So I spent most of the day feeling like I was giving birth, and running back and forth to the bathroom far more than I wanted to. I blame it on the full moon.
We arrived in Amsterdam middle of the night our time, and two cups of coffee later, we were comfortably sitting in some priority lounge (courtesy of John who flies almost as much as George Clooney in that movie I can’t remember the title of.). They had great food and amazing bathrooms (seriously, the doors were heavy and went to the floor which I love—total privacy and they were so clean.) You can always tell how advanced or civilized a culture is by their bathrooms. Japan….the best bathrooms, amazing. Amsterdam, awesome. The U.S.A., VERY hit and miss. If I were Japanese visiting an airport in the US, I would be a little scared of the bathrooms.
We then spent 30 minutes engaged in an Ava drama. Her one job was to get to the Marseille airport and take a short flight from Marseille to Madrid. I face timed her yesterday on the way to the airport and was very emphatic about the directions of what she needed to do, and how important it was NOT to miss her flight (because we’d be in the air or about to get in the air and couldn’t help her fix a missed flight). Ava brushed off my concerns of course, and said, “mom, I’ve only ever missed ONE flight, don’t worry.” That didn’t give me a boost of confidence. Neither did any part of the next 10 minutes of that conversation that began, “mom, I have something important to discuss with you.” She then proceeded to explain how she believed we should stop traveling all together, and save up all our money and go into space. Space travel should be our next “travel”. Okay -Dokay, we’ll make that happen. Ava has a way of making even the most outlandish thing sound, perhaps, totally doable. Like when she called me the other day and announced she was going to one of the most elite prep boarding schools on the east coast. Really? She was convinced it was possible, even though I explained that a 4.0 GPA was the minimum necessary and even then it was tough. “Oh no mom, I’m getting in.” To the untrained or unknowing, you might really be convinced. She didn’t believe me and then someone else brought her down to earth and she later called me and announced that in fact she wasn’t going, and it was on to the next thing.
It was touch and go, but ultimately she got on the flight with minutes to spare, but not before we stressed out and pro-actively investigated buying another ticket.
Romeo drew poop emoji’s and I concluded that there is a lot of alcohol consumption here. I’m not joking when I say that I looked around the lounge and there were more wine glasses and beer glasses than people sitting there. Even at 1:30 p.m. everyone was two glasses in. Everyone was drinking, and everyone was on their phone. I was tempted to have a glass of wine but that's jet-lag rule number 8, don't drink any alcohol, it makes you even more dehydrated.
We finally arrived in Madrid at 7:45 p.m. and we found Ava, had a lovely reunion. Nice to see her and everyone together, finally have the whole family back together and it felt good. Loud, but good. By the time we made it to our apartment it was 9:00 p.m. We took a cab, and will pick up our rental car after our stay here in Madrid since we are located smack in the center of things and we figured it would be easier not to have a car. The neighborhood we are staying in is Malasana, and it looks to be full of action, and shopping, and cool restaurants. Our apartment is lovely, but small (those Airbnb pictures have a way of making even the smallest space look SO big....I don't think we double checked the actual square footage and that is important). We are steps from the action though, and after getting the lowdown about the place we went to dinner. We sat down at about 10:00 p.m., and the place was packed. We figured we'd go "Spanish burger" style, and the kids got their meat on (Ava & Gia had ribs, Lucia Chicken and Romeo a hamburger). My charbroiled goat cheese salad was lovely. It was a slow dinner, European style, and we didn't leave until about 11:15 p.m., re-entering on a street filled with people and movement.
Everyone was incredibly tired though having skipped basically a night of sleep, and so made our way back, I put the little kids to bed, threw on my eye mask and I was out. The good part about having it be a "late night city" is that it kept us up and doing stuff, vs. rolling into a sleepy town that was quite at 8 p.m. (I'm thinking back on Germany), and that will hopefully help with the jet lag. Tomorrow will be full, can't wait to explore!
Signed, ME {lv}
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