And in a way it was. It was definitely the kind of trip I hope to only take once in a lifetime. EVERYTHING that could go wrong did. Our Eurail Pass train ticket didn't cover the night train from Madrid to Nice, France that was the first leg of our journey. Then, when we get to France, the entire country is on strike. Oh France...what a love-hate relationship I have with that country....
So, we spend the trip hopping on trains with no tickets like hobos, hoping we didn't get caught (fortunately, we never did...probably because the ticket punchers were on strike...)because we didn't know when the next train was going to be running. Of course, this means that when Sara was supposed to catch a train back to Madrid for her flight home, there was no train running. She and Bess ended up getting tickets on a private tiny plane to Madrid. I opted out of the tiny chartered plane ride because I watched La Bamba in the 6th grade, and know what happens to small planes like that. The plan is for Bess and I to meet in Barcelona for the next leg of our trip after she sends Sara off at the Madrid airport. Of course, I end up on the wrong end of a disconnecting train and wind up stranded in a tiny village in Switzerland. True story. It was a mess. It's a long story that involves me hitch-hiking and a bus driver who I think may have been an angel, BUT the long and short of it is that I end up in Barcelona where I come up the escalator and just happen to find across Bess walking by. And that was just week one.
The rest of the trip has it's own random memories-meeting a circus trapeze artist in a cab in Barcelona, getting my belly button pierced by a guy who didn't speak English, eating peanut butter sandwiches for 2 days straight because we were so low on funds...and ice cream cones from McDonald's in Madrid.
In Madrid, ice cream cones at McDonald's were only $.50 and as I mentioned earlier, by the end of our trip, we were low on $. So, our many of our meals consisted of a PB sandwich and an ice cream cone from Micky D's. More often than not, just the ice cream cone ;) I seriously have never had so much ice cream from McDonald's in my life, before that trip or since.
So, when McDonald's here in Columbia started it's $.49 ice cream cone special this summer, it brought back memories of my wandering the streets of Madrid, taking what Bess and I liked to call the "subway tour" of the city (where we would get on the subway, find a stop on the map that had an interesting name, get off, walk around until we found another subway entrance and start all over again...)and vanilla cones.
Tonight, Austin and I were on our way to Macy's and as we passed McDonald's, I had a craving for an ice cream cone. On our way home, we went through the drive thru only to be told by the girl on the other end of the menu that the ice cream machine was out of order. I think Austin scared the poor girl with his outburst of "OH MY GOD!?!" because there was a long pause until Austin said "Okay, well, thanks..." and the girl stammered back a hesitant, "sorry for the inconvenience"....
Fortunately, my finance isn't so easily dissuaded. As we pull out of McDonald's parking lot, he says to me "It's okay, honey. How about some Andy's. I've got that gift card, I'll take you out there for some ice cream."
[An aside...Austin said I'm not allowed to write about how I think he is my hero for his constant thoughtfulness and for always going out of his way to make me happy (even if it's something as small as an across town ice cream run), so I won't. But this is typically where I would interject something mushy and sentimental like that...]
So, I satisfied my ice cream craving with a strawberry sundae...I mean, it's no $.49 vanilla cone, but I guess it'll do :)
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