Spain Road Trip: Days 20, 21, 22 (Madrid, Lleida, Vaison)

     This re-cap of the last three days of the epic Spain road trip of 2012 is brought to you from Vaison la Romaine, France.  That means we arrived back safely, which was the first priority when we left on our trip three weeks ago.  (Grandma, you can stop worrying now.)  Here's the overview:

     Thursday (we were still in Madrid) was the quarterfinals of the Madrid open.  We had 5 tickets to two night matches (for the nuclear family, plus Averil's cousin, Dana Rothrock, who is living in Madrid).  In the morning, before tennis, we took a long walk through the city to the Museum of the Americas.  Then we walked back to the apartment, with a much needed stop for lunch.  It was in the mid-high 80s and Ivy was trying to set the world record for longest tongue hang-out.  We saw a lot of Madrid on foot that day.

     That night, it was time to see the quarterfinals of the Madrid Open!  Dana came over to the apartment and we took the subway to the Caja Magica on the other side of the city:

Interior

Exterior

When you get tickets to a tennis tournament, you don't know beforehand who you'll see.  We hoped we'd see someone good . . . maybe even famous.

     We had to settle for watching Roger Federer in the first match of the night.  Have you ever heard of him?  According to Wikipedia, "[m]any experts of tennis, former tennis players and his own tennis peers believe Federer is the greatest player in the history of the game."  He has won more major tournaments than anyone in history.  And he's currently ranked number 3 in the world.  So he's pretty good.  And it was fun to watch him make mincemeat of his opponent (Gasquet).  Here are pictures we took of Roger Federer:

     In the second match we had to settle for watching Novak Djokovic.  Have you ever heard of him?  He is from Serbia.  He is currently the No. 1 ranked player in the world.  And he dispatched his opponent too (Wawrinka), though not as easily as Roger Federer beat his.  Here are some pictures of Djokovic:

     It was fun to go to the Madrid open and see the famous players!  We got back to the apartment just before midnight.

     On Friday it was time to leave Madrid.  It is nearly 700 miles between Madrid and Vaison.  That's a long way.  We picked what appeared to be a logical halfway point to spend the night -- a small city in Spain called Lleida.  So we drove and drove, and saw many bulls on the way (and the Greenwich Meridian):

     It took us 6 hours to get to Lleida.  We had reserved a hotel in the city center.  As we made our way into the city, we found that all of the streets were blocked off and police were directing traffic away from the middle of town.  Hundreds of people were walking into town on foot.  It was a grand festival of some sort.  And it would have been great to stay and be part of it, but we simply could not get anywhere near our hotel, with our car, luggage, dog, etc.  So the adults held a meeting and decided we'd need to proceed to the next city and find a hotel on the fly.

     Just north of Lleida we stopped for much needed food at an auto-stop.  We had a lot of mediocre meals in Spain, but this one was truly terrible.  Ed noticed that Asha was not eating her meatballs.  When he asked her why not, she replied that "they had hair on them."  Sure enough, Ed looked and saw that they had fuzzy mold on the outside.  So Ed took the plate of meatballs up to the cashier (along with the yogurt Averil had ordered that was both warm and expired).  The following conversation then ensued, in Spanish:

     Ed:  "Hello Senora.  This meat is not good.  There is a problem.  [Showing meatballs]."

     Cashier:  "What problem?"

     Ed:  "You can see."

   Cashier:  [Looks at meatballs.  Cuts meatballs open.  Smells inside of meatballs.  Shrugs shoulders.]  "There is no problem."

     Ed:  "Yes.  Problem.  Problem with meat.  There are hairs on them.  Many little hairs."

     Cashier:  [Smells meatballs.  Shrugs shoulders.]

     Ed:  "No. On Exterior.  ON EXTERIOR OF MEAT.  MANY LITTLE HAIRS ON EXTERIOR OF MEAT!  NOT GOOD!  AND YOGURT.  TODAY IS 11th, NOT 1Oth.  SIMPLY GIVE MONEY FOR MEAT AND YOGURT!"

By now other customers were looking over.  So the Senora refunded the money.  But everyone was kind of grossed out.

     We found a hotel by the side of the road.  And it was fine except for the noise and the room that smelled really bad (we asked for and got another).  But it was near a giant field of wheat, so Ed and Ivy and Ford got a good long walk through the wheat field.  That was fun.

     Saturday we drove the rest of the way.  That was a long day.  It was 7 hours of driving.  It was windy and hot and our car was covered in bugs and the inside was covered in crumbs.  It smelled like a dog.  The car was making noises.  We had to yell at the kids to "Be Quiet!"  All the symptoms of the end of a 21-day road trip through Spain were apparent.  So we knew we must be near the end.

     And then we were home!  We kissed the font yard:

It was the prettiest place we had seen for 21 days.

     Final statistics:  3,653 kilometers (2,269 miles).  No deaths, injuries, thefts, Spanish scams, lost items, food or water poisoning, lost dogs, or mechanical breakdowns.  Nothing bad happened.  It was a great trip.  Highlights include bicycling in Barcelona, fishing on the Ebro, being in Madrid with Spanish people, watching professional tennis, and finding a juicy bone in the bushes.  You match the highlight to the participant.