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Published: December 28th 2015
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Nicky, Susan and HectorSunday – Day 1
Our next trip begins. Susan and I are heading to Spain to visit Nicky and Tim. I’m leaving from the beach and meeting Susan in Raleigh for our flights. Shelly is heading to Brazil and leaving out of Raleigh also. She is taking her surf ski so she has to take the truck. I head out and am on the road when Shelly calls. The truck lost its brakes about 7 miles from the coast. She got it back home and got a cab to the ILM airport where she had rented an SUV (1 way) to get to Raleigh with her ski. She found it for $98 online. Well she got to the airport and they said they had no cars – online lies sometimes, they said. She went to the next counter and the next – “no cars”. Finally one lady said, we have a truck, but it will cost you $260, one way. Shelly says “but I can take a cab for that”. The lady says “ok a 10% discount”, shelly repeats, I can take a cab for that. The lady finally gives her the truck for around $120. Shelly makes it to
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Hector, Nicky and Hector's mom Raleigh. That’s nice for me as I was going to have to meet Shelly at SAS, drop off my car, take her to the airport, bring the truck back to SAS, meet Susan, drop off the truck at SAS, then head to the airport. Now it was just meet Susan. Well, my new badge seems to not have been activated so I couldn’t get into SAS. I call the guard gate and they do let me in but,… I need to get it activated before I return.
Susan and I make it to the airport. While we are trying to park, I get a msg from my Delta app. Our flight is delayed 1.5 hours. Oh, no, I was supposed to be getting my Global Entry interview in NYC at the airport between flights. It would now be “VERY” tight. Once we check in, I call and decide to cancel it. I’ll have to reschedule it to some other trip. Our flight is delayed more but even with this delay we have 1 hour between flights and we arrive in the same terminal that we are leaving from.
Our flight to NY finally took off. I got upgraded,
Susan’s seat was right behind mine. The flight attendant came around with special snacks for First class. I said “no chocolate” oh, I have something special, I’ll bring it right back. Oh it was good. She came back by with more and gave me 3. I said, can I give one to my sister. She took the whole thing back and let her choose. Our flight to Madrid was bumpy, Susan’s seat was messed up, the guys behind us talked loudly, one of them played a game on the back of my seat for a while … and the flight was only 6 hours, so to say the least, we both got very little sleep.
We arrive in Madrid and try to follow Nicky’s directions on getting to the train station where to meet them. I read the directions as taking the metro and it left from Terminal 4 like her instructions said so we made it over to terminal 4 on the bus. There we saw the metro, but no C7 route. Huh… So to information, the lady say take the p1 to the train station so we buy the ticket (p1 to the train station). We got
thru the metro gates, but there are no signs to the p1 only the p8…. Huh??? We come back out, but there is only one Metro entrance. That’s when I see the light rail station across the way and I guess that is what Nicky had intended for us but now we were going to metro it… The “real” information area is outside of the metro area so I go out (susan stays with the suitcases) and ask. That information lady had a metro map and said, no, take the P8 to the p10 and it will get you there, see. Your ticket is fine. She then let me back into the metro area and we boarded the p8. We then switched to the p10 and arrived at the train station. Right as we got off, we saw the café where we were to meet Nicky and Tim. Susan and I got a cola light and waited.
Nicky and Tim arrived about an hour later. They said it was a good thing we took the metro as we would have never found the café if we hadn’t. They had been searching for a while and saw Susan up in
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more lights the main station looking for a bathroom and she directed them there. So I guess things happen for a reason. We sit and talk until close to noon when we catch our train to Valladolid. I lose my scarf at the train station. Sigh. At least I have another one packed but, I really liked that scarf… The train ride was nice and smooth and I took a very short nap on it. Nicky had bought all the tickets. It was cheaper to buy round trip tickets so she bought a round trip from Madrid to Segovia and a round trip from Segovia to Valladolid. The trains are the same and she got the same exact seats on both trains. So. We take the train to Segovia and stay on it for our train to Valladolid. On Tuesday, we take the 3
rd leg to Segovia and on Thursday the last part back to Madrid. She said it was much cheaper this way than buying a 3 leg’d ticket…
Hector met us at the airport and took us to the hotel where we checked in. It’s a nice hotel in the center of town. He then took us out in
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town square the city and we walked to a Pincha bar and had some pinchas and wine for lunch. We tried to pay but he said we had to take that up with his mother. She met us at the 2
nd place. At the second location they ordered us this one item but wouldn’t tell Susan and me what it was. We tasted it and it wasn’t bad. Well it turns out to be a rice dish cooked with pig’s blood. Well another item we can say we ate… All the wines we had were from their vineyards and all were very good.
After eating we went and sat outdoors and had coffee and tea and just talked. Hector’s mom was leaving at 6 to catch a train to Madrid to fly out to NY. She talked with us for a while but she knows very little English and Susan and I know very little Spanish so the conversation was in Spanish for a while and English for a while. Nicky and Tim and Hector could understand both sides. Susan and I then started to fade. I think they all noticed and suggested we got back to the hotel and nap
for a bit. We said our goodbyes and Hector took us all back to the hotel. Susan and I crashed and slept about 30 minutes and laid in bed about 30 minutes. Then we just chilled. We Whats app’d Nicky and Tim around 6 and said for them to txt Hector that he could come back any time after dropping off his mom. He said he would come around 6:30. He picked us up and drove us around the city, then parked and we walked around the city at night to see the lights and the sites. I went to put on my gloves ( I had brought 2 pair of leather ones). Seems I grabbed to left hand gloves and left the right hand ones back at the hotel. Nicky loved that I had brought 2 pair though as she had forgotten hers, so she knew she could have gloves for the rest of the trip. But I didn’t have a whole pair for tonight. Susan and I felt like new people after that nap. Valladolid, last year, was voted the most illuminated city and we could see why. Each road had specialty lights and the town squares were
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one of the churches lite up. It was beautiful. He then showed us the king’s cathedral that they never finished, town square and many other features of the town.
Next we headed to Hector’s home and met his dad. We tried one of their Rose wines and his dad put out some chips and nuts. We talked, again in Spanish for a while and English for a while. It was so nice meeting his family. A little later his brother came too. His brother speaks “excellent” English and is also learning Chinese. He works for the vineyards and travels to the US often to sell the wines there. They fixed us a nice dinner and we talked and talked and tasted to more wines, again excellent. Around 11, Susan and I started fading again. We said our goodbyes and Hector drove us back to the hotel. I crashed, Susan showered and then crashed too. Our shower though only has one temperature, HOT. IT sure makes for an interesting shower. We were also very sad to hear that the Panthers lost. Patrick had been texting Susan (she has an international plan) and kept us up with the game.
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Pam Cooke
non-member comment
So good to see everyone!
It's so good to see all of you with Hector and his family. Valladolid looks gorgeous and colorful at night. I wish you all a great time!!!