The Adventure Begins

Well the adventure begins. We left BUD for AMS only to connect to another flight to MAD. Travel is alphabet soup. Flying KLM, we had to go farther north in order to arrive on Spanish terrain. What makes these types of flights more manageable are the Diners Club lounges along the way. Budapest has a lovely lounge, which has been made lovelier after the remodeling of the airport. After 1 hour and 40 minutes, and arriving in AMS we were treated to the DC lounge there for another 2 hours before moving on to the next leg, which would be 2 hours and 5 minutes of air travel. KLM does have comfortable seating, I do have to admit. There was plenty of legroom, making it unnecessary to accept their offer of reserving seats with extra legroom at additional cost. As airlines go these days, the ‘meals’ were poorly constructed sandwiches with little to no nutritional value and best skipped over entirely. A lesson I applied to the second part our journey.

Madrid’s airport is huge. After taking seven moving sidewalk rides, we arrived at three escalators to take us to baggage claim. From there it was well marked to reach the metro. Buying a pass is easy as there is an office that looks more like a tourism agency than a ticket counter. Our all inclusive transportation passes for 3 days inclusive of the inner city, was 19 Euros each. We were given better instructions for a less tedious trip to our hotel than what we had originally thought. One metro ride to the end and then a train one stop; voila, we were there. However in order to get to the metro, it took 3 long steep escalators and then some walking. The metros are half way down to China or whatever is directly across the earth from Spain.

As we were emerging from the metro, mobs of people were pushing their way in. For moment’s it was uncertain whether we should risk leaving the metro for fear that this crowd was escaping some natural disaster or Godzilla was outside waiting for his next meal. As unfathomable as it seemed, outside the metro was even worse. The crowd was so thick with people, my first impression was that they were giving away tickets to see Lady Gaga accompanied by Pope Ben as a sideline performance. This is a crowd the Million Man March would have admired. 

Fortunately, our hotel was only a stone’s throw away from the metro exit. Our room is clean and plain, which is fine, because the location is excellent. Right down the street are the Christmas Markets, which are a major disappointment. Booth after booth after booth are loaded to the stable rafters with objects for a crèche. There are hundreds of versions of Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus. The three wise men come in more wardrobe choices than Barbie. There are more animal choices than any zoo in the world. Just naming them all would have given Jesus a vocabulary to be admired by a college admissions board. There are different stables from poor down and out to luxury condo style. Why let tradition dictate how you can out do your neighbors? The best part is the moving figures. You can get Joseph hammering wood, women washing clothes, a man shoeing a horse, and Mary changing diapers amongst other things. 

We tried finding a restaurant for dinner, but they were all as mobbed as the streets were. It seems the entire population was out and about tonight. The few places we found that were hungry for dinner guests were those that were charging 20-30 Euros for an entree, something I refuse to pay in any city. We finally found a lesser crowded, lesser expensive place. The food was filling, not very tasty, but also didn't break the bank either.   

Related articles

• In praise of KLM (lorenzomcmahon.wordpress.com)
• KLM To Allow Passengers To Choose Seatmates Via Facebook Profiles (allfacebook.com)

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Today being Sunday gave us the perfect excuse to be slugs; most things are closed anyway. You would never know it was Sunday by the traffic passing by the hotel.

Ron needed his church fix and with the Holy Ghost Cathedral just a long block away, we went to mass. There are six masses each Sunday. Our good intentions to make it to the 9am mass did not pan out, but we were there at 10:30 for the start of the next mass. When we arrived, the crowds were tremendous. You would have thought they were giving away free televisions the way the people were gathered. Perhaps the Pope was coming and we didn't hear the news. If he was, we still had time to get away from there. Droves of people left the earlier mass and we sat in the back of the church for the next service. Remembering this is a cathedral, it is larger than a parish church. It was filled almost immediately, but then groups of people were catapulted in at different times like they were thrown in by a wave at high tide. The mass was in Swahili, really adding to the interest for me. We were the only white people amongst hundreds of darker faces. I could not help but notice how every person I eyed had their Sunday best on and the women had their hair done perfectly. The last times I had even been near a church in the States, I still have memories of people's casual and lack of concern about their appearance. Hmm, kind of like we were dressed today.

What set this service apart was the African spirit shown with music provided by drummers. People were really getting into the singing of upbeat songs, not the maudlin ones I remember. Hand waving and clapping was happening with such joviality, I kept forgetting I was in a Catholic Church and not an Evangelical. We were sitting on the aisle with me at the aisle. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a projectile coming through the air from the other side. When it landed on the aisle floor, I could see it was a white biscuit. My first thought was that someone was making a racist commentary on our being there, but then the question of "white cracker" seemed like a culturally based racial slur that would not have migrated over here. With slow motion movement I turned my head in the direction of the near assault keeping a poker face so I did not show emotion. When I had a full sighting of the potential offender, I was sure it was he due to his mile wide smile and the other white biscuit in his other hand. For a 2 year old, the kid has quite a pitching arm.

The rest of the day was spent around the room. Something has given us the "I need to be really close to the bathroom" bug. My guess is it is the flax seed oil we take for Malaria, but up until now it has not caused this drama. 

For dinner, we went to a local restaurant down the street from the hotel. It was typical Swahili food and the first time I had boneless chicken in any dish. Chicken stew with roasted potatoes on the side, was excellent, but the stew barely covered the bottom of the bowl. The roasted potatoes were plentiful. I don't know what they did to them, but they were like eggs with a hard shell on the outside, but the inside was white, moist, and so delicious I did not miss any butter or ketchup with it. This was also one of the few places where the food was steaming hot.

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