Time to Take Off - Houston - Washington DC - Madrid - Barcelona

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Travel day is finally here! So excited, but already tired. As usual, I stayed up pretty much the whole night packing. I am quite proud of my packing job. Everything seems pretty mobile and ready to move from hotel to hotel. We bungeed the car seat for Suri to the back of Hector's suitcase so as to not have to roll something extra. Lluvia and Audrey's car seats are flattened and in Hector's suitcase. We use the bumble bums inflatable car seats. As planned, we did not check any of our luggage. Instead, we are carrying it all on the plane. On the first flight Suri rode in our laps and pretty much slept the entire time. In DC, United flew into the exact terminal we needed to be in making for a very smooth connection. The flight from DC to Madrid was pretty empty since we are flying on a Thursday and Suri even got a complementary seat.

Landing in Madrid, we hit the first snafu. Because we put our stroller in a protective bag, the baggage handlers unloaded it with the regular luggage so we had to go and retrieve it from the carousel. This meant Suri had to be carried or walk. The airport is pretty run down in my opinion and I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. After getting the stroller, Hector was like ok let's go and I kindly reminded him that we didn't have a plan. The plan was to play it by ear. My vote was to head straight to Barcelona via train. We found the Renfe office in the other terminal. You have to take the T-4 bus to the terminal and then near the platforms to the subway is train office. The first train with available seating for us was the 3:30 pm. It was like 10 am, so we had a break. The train actually leaves from Madrid Chamartin, so we needed to take the Cercanias to that station. They told us that the trip was free, but only leaving at 11:30. We didn't want to wait that long, so we paid for the subway ticket (Cercanias) and headed straight there. Once there, we checked our luggage in a locker and exited the station. By this point Suri was passed out. Audrey and Lluvi were trying hard to keep their eyes open. We walked up a hill to the book fair located right outside the train station and then we walked to the large parque del retiro. We had lunch (pizza) and waited a bit.

While eating Lluvi noticed and asked why all the people had "those fire-sticks in their mouths". It sort of caught me off guard and I explained it wasn't good for them. She just couldn't understand it.

Finally on the train, it was very nice as we had gotten seats with a table. Lluvi loved it, but Audrey was asleep before we even boarded the train and slept the entire ride. I was exhausted as well and Hector and I took turns sleeping. Thinking about it, it was sort of scary because there are stops and the cabins are free to allow people to move as they please. It is definitely not the most secure form of transportation. It was very smooth and clean though.

Arriving in Barcelona, we rented a car telling them our plan to drive around the country. The man at Avis told us it was better to pay the "drop off wherever you want" fee and we opted out of the driving more than 4000 km fee. We don't plan on surpassing that many kilometers. I found an inexpensive Holiday Inn Express in Sant Cugat del Valles, which is a suburb north west of Barcelona to stay in and made the reservation. I like Holiday Inn Express because you pretty much know what to expect and they give free breakfast. Since we had slept on the train, we arrived and headed straight to the beach to look around and have dinner. We ate at a beach bar restaurant and the girls were confused by the lack of children's menu. They liked the beach and we put our feet in the Mediterranean. It was cold as it was already getting late. It was also pretty rocky at this particular spot...not one I would recommend for an actual beach trip. I am not a fan of rocky sand.

Making it to the hotel was pretty straight forward and we all slept great.

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