Our Long Sejour en France

 Today we flew to Tangiers, Morocco as a side trip to our time in Spain. We'll continue to Barcelona after a few days here. But this is about our time in Madrid! Honestly, the best thing about Madrid was our awesome apartment. It was sunny, spacious, clean, comfortable - and best of all - odor-free. I live in dread of the musty AirBnb. My nose seems to detect mustiness far more acutely than the average human being.  Chris and I both have involved morning routines, so we didn't stir from the apartment until around noon - just after breakfast! We seem to do this when we travel: we end up having late meals and late nights. We followed our pattern in Madrid, but I'm 20 years older than when we did this in Paris in 2000. I'm not sure I can keep up with this schedule!  Wednesday we set off for the renowned Prado Museum of 17th century Spanish art: Goya looms large, but also Velasquez, El Greco. We spent a couple of hours there. Imagine lots of Renaissance religious art and po...

 We're here. We're in Madrid. What a crazy day Monday, April 15 was. We met in the morning with our architect and contractor for the renovation of our apartment in Chicago. While we were talking, my phone buzzed with a notification that our flight from Chicago to Toronto was delayed. I tried to get an earlier flight over the phone, but we needed to get to the airport and make the change there. Shout out to Nancy Atsumi for her excellent driving that got us to O'Hare. As it was, it was too late to get onto the earlier flight. The agent assured us we would have enough time for our connection to Madrid and we went to the gate. There, I learned that the flight was delayed even longer. Chris went to the airline desk and started investigating alternatives. After a lot of work and frustration, we ended up flying from O'Hare to Munich, Germany - my birthplace. So I've seen the inside of the airport in Munich! We connected there to a flight to Madrid.  We're in a very ni...