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“Well, we could try to make it.”

SPAIN | Thursday, 20 March 2008 | Views [728] | Comments [1]

It just wouldn’t be a European vacation without a mad rush to meet a departing train. Or at least that’s what I’ve been led to believe, thanks to the Griswold’s and others like them – or their creators.

After more than a week in exceptionally large cities (both Madrid and the greater metropolitan area of Barcelona have a population of over 3 million), it feels great to get out into the country. But we almost missed our train.

The story started last night, and it was interesting enough to warrant a bit of background information to fully appreciate what happened this morning. Actually, it began the day before when we booked our tickets: all 20 trains leaving today from Madrid to Cordoba were sold out, with the exception of the 8:00 am departure. Not a problem in and of itself – a bit of an earlier arrival to cordoba than we would have liked, and we now have to squeeze El Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Picasso’s Guernica) into the end of our trip – but we were missing one essential device: the travel alarm clock. So we end up in a Bazaar in Lavapies, the neighborhood in Madrid that we were staying in, and haggle over the price of a 3 Euro alarm clock. Or at least I thought we were haggling. The price agreed upon, I reach to the side of the counter for a pack of batteries. 7 euros I am told. The ones next to them, 6.75. And the gal reaches for another brand and says, “(kim’s rough translation) These are only 1.50” Except we were the only ones aware of what the problem was. She had grabbed the AAA’s, we needed AA’s, and she was convinced that they were the same size. No, we told her, we need los grandes, no las pequenas. So the gal calls over the store manager, he corroborates her side of the story and then Kim gets nasty, like she does when she hasn’t had her morning coffee (and she’s not drinking coffee these days [just kidding, I love you, kim]) Needless to say, by the end of the transaction the gal and her store manager were well aware of the difference in battery size.

My last involvement in the saga was last night, right before leaving the bazaar, I wanted to check to make sure the clock AND alarm worked. Sure enough, they did.

And so this morning, enter Kim’s voice into my dream about our cousin Andy Marrone’s decision to leave BGI (he doesn’t go to school with me, and I never wear a skirt and sandals to school), asking me what time it is. 7:30, I reply. Seven-bleeping-thirty?, she says. Yup. What are we going to do? Well, we could try to make it.

Maybe there was a 2 second pause, maybe not. But by 7:40 we had packed up our belongings and were out the door. Found a taxi on the street and he rushed us to the station. Miraculously, we made it.

(Update: 2 hours later after we reach Cordoba and recreate the morning’s events for each other, Kim now tells me that the alarm did in fact go off, I turned it off, and we both fell back asleep. Likely story.)

Comments

1

Great story. I've stayed up way too long tonight reading and looking at everything. What great pictures! So glad you made the train and are finding good food and making wonderful memories. Love you. MOM

  Carol Colleran Mar 21, 2008 5:23 PM

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Kim and Dan the tourists.

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