Left home early Wednesday. Arrived in Madrid early Thursday. Managed to successfully use public buses to get to the Arganzuela neighborhood. Too early to check into our Airbnb, we trundled our luggage along the sidewalks until we found a little cafe/bakery where we picked up some pastries. We perched on a sidewalk bench, in a jet lagged fugue.

A highlight involved an elderly woman marching up and asking us to make room for her. Apparently she likes to sit on this bench in the morning. She proceeded to happily regale us with stories, despite our extremely limited understanding of Spanish. Apparently she’s 80 years old. Her family has lived in the apartment above the cafe for the past seven decades. She was casually racist when she learned that Maggie speaks Chinese, saying that she didn’t like Chinese people. Despite this sour note, I think we all felt lucky to get this unexpectedly intimate introduction to an unvarnished local.

We proceeded to our Airbnb. Small but well-decorated. We took a siesta for a few hours and then headed out on our first adventure to the Museo Reina Sofia, a wonderful art museum where we got to see Picasso’s Guernica.

Dined at a street cafe at 9:30 PM. As we had been told, nights run very late in Madrid!

Griffin, of course, is still with his host family. We’ll rendezvous with him on Saturday morning.