28 Mayo 2026 by Stefanie Melo

What a long day (or days?) it has been. 

We departed with the Phoenix sunrise, spent 7 hours at the Philadelphia airport (spoiler: it is not always sunny and golly was it humid) and then had 75 minutes before takeoff on the plane waiting for the catering to arrive. We arrived in Madrid at 10:30 local time and checked into our aparthotels early.

Some noteworthy moments from the day(s?) 

We were lucky to have a plane not very full on the first flight, so that was nice to have three rows without any strangers. It’s funny to arrive 20 hours after departing and look at the excited faces of the first flight, compared to how we all feel right now. #exhausted.

Of course half the kids wanted Chickfila and the other wanted sushi. Fortunately, they were right next to each other. J ate more miso soup than I knew was humanly possible, interestingly: she actually ordered from chickfila. V wanted veggie rolls and decided she didn’t like them, so she had nuggets instead. Hernando came down with a stomach bug everyone else had last week or over the weekend….so he has basically been fasting.

Before we boarded our overnight to Madrid there were some comical confusions. The gate agent told me to store our booster seats in the  overhead compartment. The man disseminating information about US foreign travel guidelines said we had to ONLY have two items each, that boosters and cross body bags count as your two items. So I last-minute gate checked the boosters. Then he also said the passports had to be signed by the kids. For some reason that never occurred to me. Thankfully, I am the queen of pens and we were able to do that before our boarding group was called. Additionally, since we both had boarding passes in apple wallet, but the requirement was each child to present their own boarding pass and passport: the gate agent had to print boarding passes for Q,C and J. Veda already had one because she was seated 3 rows away from any of us and they kindly swapped her aisle seat with another person’s aisle seat. It’s weird, we paid $200 extra so the kids would be seated with us on that flight 3 of them were not— but American took care of it graciously. As we went through the biometric scans, only one passport was dropped in the process and thankfully Hernando found it before we were seated on the plane.

When I came down the walkway, I noticed the booster seat H was transporting wasn’t there. So I asked the flight attendant what I should do. He told me to go back and drop it by the door. I did, and then 5 people scooted in between me and thre of the kids. Best of luck to those people. After everyone was seated, the same flight attendant came up to me and playfully scolded me for leaving the booster at the gate check?! He did this while I was taking a visera scan, so I’ll be interested to see those results.

The flight was uneventful after takeoff, but due to the delay the meal process was expedited and fairly casual. I totally loved the food by the way. Three of the kids slept 3-5 hours on the flights. Some of them ordered doctor pepper with dinner. #oops. Hernando’s energy seemed to improve and though he didn’t feel well, he also didn’t get sick. Yay.

Arrival in the Madrid airport was a bit bumpy because we walked down the stairs to a bus, which is tricky with tiny people and rolling suitcases. Hernando did the stairs several times and the kids were pretty tired and stressed by the whole process of holding luggage, holding on to the bus handrails and then waiting to go through passport control.

Some of us changed at bag claim and I helped an elderly couple grab a big bag, with my wonky shoulder. 

We had some confusion over if it was best to take a big taxi or the metro, so after 45 minutes of taking in information and trying to understand the metrocard purchase process, we took two trains to our aparthotels. Weirdly, we got on the pink train, but inside the “pink line” all the information was for the red line. . . so I kept watching us processed through the correct stops to our location, while the stops listed inside the train were from another part of the city.

My brain completely turned off at checkin and Hernando took over that process. The kids decided our Aparthotel is haunted and there were several meltdowns over hunger, fatigue and not liking the space. We have two apartments with a tiny kitchenette, bathroom, washing machine and small dining table. There is a huge lemon tree outside my bedroom window, my apartment is bright with two exterior windows.

You’ll get a kick out of this. We decided to go to Milwaukee Butterburger, because we're sentimental like that. After we ordered, I noticed Q had been in the bathroom for too long. I managed to open the door and found him dead asleep on the floor. Z&C catnapped on the counter and pretty much everyone was asleep by 6pm

Around 10pm I walked to a convenience store and picked up some items for breakfast. This probably doesn't sound like a big deal to you, but I'm going to celebrate walking after dark, alone without my nervous system freaking out. I normally still feel anxious doing this ever since I was held up at gunpoint in 2011.

A beautiful building somewhere in Madrid

      Saying goodbye to Nana at Sky Harbor

So much space, Georgie had his own seat

     Before the long flight

     

      After the long flight

      Spicy Pollo 

      Chocolate Milkshake