My Dad Arrives in Spain!

On Thursday, April 25th or "Grandpa Don Day", my Dad arrived in Madrid!

That morning Paul didn't go into work so we all could go to the airport to get my Dad.  We took the metro down to the airport and had assumed that Dad's flight would come in at Terminal 4...but it actually landed in Terminal 1.  We didn't have a way to communicate with him--we had talked prior with him saying that we would meet near the metro entrance at the end of Terminal 4. Poor Dad.  He didn't know what terminal he had arrived in and so he was looking around to find out where he was so he would then know where to go.  After awhile and trying to talk to people and someone selling him a phone card AND THEN telling him there was a FREE bus that connected terminals, he made his way to Terminal 4 and to the metro entrance.  We saw him and then gave him some money to get a metro pass.  It was a bit confusing and he didn't really understand the kiosks very well and had to keep coming over to ask us what to do.  We didn't want to exit the metro area into the airport because it would cost us 3 euros to exit and to enter again.  And we just didn't want to spend that.  So finally Dad got it figured out and we were on the metro again.

We only went a couple of stops and got off.  We went to the car rental place to pick up the car we would take all over Spain and lower France.  Glenn had fun playing in the green lights under the counter.  The people like him and thought he was so "guapo" and they gave him several green balloons and some green candy.  He thought that was great!  I love how kids can find entertainment anywhere and also how kids can break barriers.  

After getting the car, we took Paul to work which was just around the corner.  Then Dad and I had to figure out the way back to the hotel.  We had a GPS--but it was slow and I hadn't used a Tom-Tom before so I wasn't exactly sure how it worked.  Anyway, I consider it a miracle that we actually made it back to the hotel with relatively few wrong turns.  There were a few landmarks that I could recognize which helped me know where to go.  When we got to the hotel I realized that I didn't know where we could park.  All the street parking had different colored lines and different meters and all sorts of squiggly lines...Since Paul and I didn't have a car we didn't really may much attention to those details.  So we got a parking spot at the hotel for 18 euros a day.  Woah. :S  But at least we had a spot...a small and tight spot, but we did have a spot. :D

After some lunch and relaxing for a bit we took Dad out to the Madrid Rio Park.  We had been there before but not along the full length of it.  We took Dad to some places that we had been to before and also found new, fun spots.

We played on all the different play areas..Glenn loved climbing all over the ropes and logs.  Grandpa got in on the fun too!

 Then we saw these interesting images on the buildings near the park...

 ...and this cool spiral bridge!

Then we played on the slides!

They were a lot of fun.  Climbing up was kind of scary because of how steep they were.  And like most other slides in Spain, the bottom wasn't very smooth--as in the landing.  It kind of just dropped.  But that didn't stop Glenn from going down time after time!

We continued our walk through the park and came across a cool ship playground.

While here Grandpa realized how tired he was--he hadn't slept much on the flights over here and it was getting kind of late in the afternoon.  We looked at the map and found the closest metro stop was just through one end of the park grounds.  So we ventured that way only to find a dead end.  We did see these cool old buildings that were used as markets a long time ago.  We did wind our way through them to get out of the park and to the metro.  By the end we were all really tired of playing and walking!

We had a traditional Spanish dinner--by that I mean we ate after 9pm. :D  We also had that egg and rice meal which I have come to find out is called Cuban Rice.  We had a good day in Madrid and were looking forward to many more full days of sight-seeing to come!