Epic Spain Trip!

All rightie...Spain. I'll break this up but since it's my blog I'm going to be as long winded as I like. Just fair warning. :)

So first off, I had to get my boys to Arizona while Curtis, Brynna and I went to Spain. We chose Spain to be Brynna's "Senior Trip", but chose Spring Break because she wanted to be immersed in a Spanish language country prior to her AP exam. Just like Brynna to want to visit a country so she'd do good on a test right?

The boys were flying solo (well, together but without grownups) so I was nervous but I ended up getting them on a Thursday night flight and everything went swimmingly! And I am SO glad we did this in retrospect! I didn't really care that I had to pull them out of school and all that but kind of hate driving to DIA twice in a week. 

However, the day we left, Saturday March 23rd, we had a massive snowstorm.  I could hardly believe it, here it hadn't snowed all winter practically and it picks this weekend to start being really productive in the snow department? It actually started Friday night, and if you were watching the US vs. Costa Rica World Cup Qualifying match on the 22nd you would have seen the beginnings of it.  Oh look, I snatched a picture from the web for your enjoyment:

Totally not my picture, snatched from some random website. So no one yell at me, but seriously-they played in this crazy snow and it was just the beginning of the storm.  Go US though, we won 1-0, total home field advantage for us to play against Costa Rica, do they even have snow there? Anyway-I digress.

So the day of our flight we slid and white knuckled our way to the airport, which by the way the parking lot we normally park in "Pike's Peak" was totally full...normally when this happens they open the overflow lot for you know...people to be able to park. But they didn't. Because there was so much snow it was hard for their shuttle busses...um...thanks a lot! Now we had to park in the closer in parking which is double the price. Goodie! Grr. 

And once we got inside-our flight had already been canceled. And the lines were ginormous! HUGE! I can safely say, even though I am not a super frequent flier, this was the longest set of lines I've ever seen at DIA or any airport in my entire life. Sigh! So, we waited in line for about 2 hours, and while doing so I re-booked us on the phone. I will hand it to American Airlines for having an emergency phone staff to book flights, and they were very nice about it. We originally were scheduled to fly to Dallas, then change planes and fly to Madrid on the same day. In our case, we ended up flying to Dallas about 5 hours later than normally scheduled, staying overnight in Dallas and getting the next flight to Spain on Sunday instead. 

So we had dinner at DIA, tried to stay optimistic, and head into this new adventure happily. We actually had a ball chatting it up with people in line and the gal at the airline who was getting us to Dallas and adjusted on the plane to Spain, seriously...it PAYS to be nice to these people! She put us in the exit row on the way to Dallas, next to a really cute guy we talked to I might add, and then to Spain re-booked us up to Business Class! YAY!

At DIA having dinner and looking forward to our trip, despite the snow!

We made it to Dallas, found our hotel (after the taxi brought us to the wrong one-also kudos to Holiday Inn Express for taking our voucher even though it was the wrong hotel), spent the night, got up and headed to the airport on the shuttle provided by Holiday Inn Express.

View of Dallas...or Fort Worth, not sure. Either way the Holiday Inn Express was nice there.

Then we sat in the dining area of the Grand Hyatt which is attached to DFW just outside the security because we couldn't check in yet-too early! And it was NICE there. So I highly recommend the food at the Grand Hyatt Dallas Fort Worth airport! We plugged in, used wi-fi, ate food, relaxed and waited on comfy couches instead of hard airport seats!

Curtis at the Grand Hyatt waiting for our flight to Spain. No one kicked us out, in fact they brought us yummy food. Yay for sweet potato fries!

And then, there was the flight! Once we got checked in, luggage in, security all that...we wandered the DFW airport and finally boarded. In case you were wondering, the airline provided a blanket and pillow for every seat. Though the ones in first class were nicer than ours in business, and there is more room to wiggle around in business class than in coach. For future reference. ;)

We struggled to sleep-for one the plane took off at 6 pm and we were to land at about 9 am Spain time...but the flight was about 7 or 8 hours...so it felt like 1 am when we were about to land. And I don't sleep well in cars or planes etc, so I pretty much didn't sleep at all but was dozing by the time they woke us up and fed us breakfast...at 1 am! I wanted to barf!

Madrid Airport-baggage claim at about 9:30 am and no one was there. Kind of weird but I was just happy to be off the plane and very amused at the strange um...artwork? It looks like giant vacuum attachments or maybe razors...also the ceiling looks like Daleks. Just sayin.

We made it to Madrid, wound through customs which was a lot like being in a vacant Disneyland strange ride line or something. Very clean, very modern, very empty and bored agents stamped our passports and we were on our way down new clean, modern, empty corridors to a clean, modern and empty baggage claim area with modern, clean and empty (well-okay partially because the whole flight was with us) bathrooms.

We got our luggage, exchanged dollars for euros, found the metro area, figured out how to pay for the metro and got on an empty, relatively clean, and slightly not as modern metro train.

On our way to our hotel! Yay! Exhausted!

And then, somewhere between the airport and the hotel (we had to change trains a couple times and wander rather sketchy corridors with our luggage), someone picked Curtis' pocket and stole his wallet. He realized this on the last bit of the train and I was really hoping he wouldn't pass out because he looked kinda clammy and I did not want to imagine how to deal with that! Luckily he didn't and we dragged ourselves to the hotel.

Brynna journaling...or maybe she was doing homework. At least we were in our hotel room.

Curtis immediately began calling people. He called the cell phone people to get my phone to work in Spain. He called all the credit card companies to report his card was stolen. We found out that I had two cards that he didn't have-they had different numbers, so at least we had access to money.

Calling people! Actually kudos to American Express and Bellco for issuing cards jointly but with different numbers. And kudos to Chase, Capital One and Discover for being super nice customer service people.

So, Curtis got this wild hair that he was going to go back to the metro and see if he could find the wallet. He thought maybe he set it down, or maybe someone could have turned it in.  Usually I'm the optimist, and he's the realist *cough* pessimist *cough* but in this case I just wanted to take a nap and was bummed about the whole thing.

So I went to the bathroom and busted up laughing.

Totally forgot they have bidets in Europe. It looked so funny to me and seriously...um, they should probably have instructions. No idea what to do with that thing.

On a more serious note, I did pray about the wallet. I sort of felt like I knew it was possible, didn't know if I had really that much faith in God or in other people that we'd find it-or if it really was something that mattered that much- but I just wanted things to work out. People have their wallets stolen all the time, I just wanted our vacation to be okay, and be able to have fun and get home and all that.  Even though Curtis suggested we go out and look at the Prado, I just laid on the bed and fell asleep while he went off looking for it. (Note: I did give him my Euros so he wouldn't be stranded!)

After napping (which, you should note, I almost never do but after um...I dunno 22-23 hours awake I was kind of wiped out), Curtis showed back up again all grins. First thing he said was, "I didn't find the wallet but you're not going to believe who I found" and he held out his phone.

Curtis and Bennett (Elder Tanner to you) at the Metro in Madrid.

He was retracing his steps, checking garbage cans because that's what the cops said to do. I guess thieves steal wallets, snatch the cash, dump the cards and move on. He hurried up to an elevator and it was almost full and they motioned him inside. He walked in and looked up directly into the face of my cousin! Bennett is serving in the Madrid, Spain Mission but we knew he was assigned to a location quite a ways North and there would be no way for us to cross paths. 

Here we were a day late (and a dollar or euro short at any rate), in a city of 5 million people, and he was in Madrid for one day to fill out residency information for his status as a missionary and of all the people he could bump into on the elevator in the metro, it was Curtis! So they figured out the relationship and the elders were smart enough to snap the picture on Curtis' phone.  It cheered him up SO much I can't even tell you. (and he's not a glum guy), and it cheered me up too even though I didn't actually get to see him. It was like a little nod from heaven-sending one of his servants to say "Hey, we got your back, it's okay, have a fun time!" or something! Super amazing way to start our trip!