DAY ONE 15 OCTOBER 2019

Parador Alcala

Cervantes the author

All flights were good and went smoothly. I crashed after dinner and slept for quite a while, had a hard time waking up, probably because I had slept poorly the night before!   Being awakened an hour before landing and fed breakfast is quite bizarre I have decided. In effect you are going to bed at 8pm and then offered breakfast at 1am! I seldom sleep that heavily on a plane and quite frankly, I was not ready to be disturbed. Paul did not rest much which is quite unusual for him. The man could sleep on the side of a plank and wake up refreshed!

Sculptured Gardens at Parador Alcala

Storks in downtown Alcala de Henares

We landed at 7.50 am local time. The sun was still struggling to arise, as was I, but by the time we walked about 2 miles(!) to passport control and baggage pickup, the sky was blue and, though it was a bit cool, it was a gorgeous morning. We picked up a VW Golf station wagon at Hertz and after figuring out the quirks of a different car we headed out to brave Madrid rush hour! Yikes! We aimed for Alcala de Henares even though it was far too early to check in at the Parador. We usually buy a few essentials like water, tissues, etc to keep in the car so that killed a little time,  then we headed back  to Torrejon to drive around a little. Driving in a Spanish city can be quite harrowing because they do insist that you give right of way to pedestrians on crossings! In fact, peatones seldom look to either side before stepping out onto the road, they assume cars will stop! I cannot imagine the number of accidents that would cause in the US! We got a text from Maite that they would not be able to meet us tonight as Juan Miguel has two urgent heart surgeries on two little boys. He will not be finished until 9 or 10 pm. I hope both surgeries are successful. We are so in awe of the wonderful work he does!️ We will see them Sunday in Elizondo. We lived in Torrejon for 3 years but it bears no resemblance to the small town we knew. Nothing looks familiar, so we lost ourselves in the 

streets that we used to know so well. Then we ended up in the industrial area which has quite exploded in the last few years. We headed back to Alcala to see if we could check in early and Hallelujah! Our room was ready. Time for a restorative nap. Now, I am not a daytime napper and today is no different, the phones beeped and whistled because we were too lazy to get up and mute them so here I am .....blogging! We will head out for a bite to eat in a little while, because that is what we do here in Spain, eat! For our mid day lunch we walked into town and started with tapas in Bar Indalo:  Broken eggss for Jane and croquettes for Pablo. Which held us just fine until we had bar snackes at the Parador approaching 8:00PM. A club sandwich and Paul had a pepito steak for his nighttime nosh.