Our Week in Spain (part 1)
March 9, 2002
Yesterday we flew from Amsterdam to Madrid, arriving in the afternoon. We easily procured a rolling cart for luggage, they are free here. Before long our luggage appeared on the round-about, a sure sign of a good-luck trip. Within minutes we also found the car rental place, and were issued a small blue Peugot without trouble.
For the record, the trip thus far has been more-or-less without incident. Nothing has gone wrong, and we are fortunate travelers. The run of uninterrupted good luck ended at this point.
First, incredibly and without precedent, I had forgotten to print all of the relevant documents. Yes, I had my conference registration, and the electronic car rental confirmation, but I did not have either the airline itinerary (which might be okay, as actual tickets were issued), nor the hotel information: neither reservation nor confirmations nor driving directions. In fact, I did not even know the full name of the hotel, or address, or phone number: just a recollection of the spelling being something like Parqueser, or some such.
With this lack of information, mea maxima culpa, we entered the Keystone Kops portion of our trip.
First, the car rental people did not recognize my attempt at pronunciation, and the nice ladies at the information booth could not help either. I went through the hotel section of the phone book, and for reasons still not clear, the hotel was not listed. The nice ladies called someone, asking for hotels starting with "P", and called names to me that I knew were not right.
There are internet kiosks in the Madrid airport, and I knew I could get the information on the internet. But the first station I found was locked up. Someone nicely pointed me to another one, and I was able to plug a Euro and get a few minutes. I went right to www.acm.org, and followed the conferences link, which took me to the SAC-2002 page. So far so good. But the link from that page to the accommodations page was broken. All I was able to do was learn that the conference and hotels were all in a suburb called Leganes. I went back to the information desk, and with that informatioin they were able to call someone, and soon recited the name I was waiting for "Parque Sur". They got an address and phone number, and I was connected with the desk.
The first bit of bad news was that we weren't booked for today, but for tomorrow! She wanted to know where I was staying that night. I said "Parque Sur" and it turned out there was room. Then she started giving me directions in heavily accented English, and it went like this:
She: take the M forteeng
Me: M-14?
She: forteeng.
Me: one-four, or four-oh?
After a couple of those she insisted I put the nice tourist lady back on the phone. Which I gladly did.
They jabbered quickly and hilariously, and soon I was handed a list of instructions.
Armed with this list, I went to find Rita, who had been patiently guarding the luggage all this time. We puzzled over the instructions, and with the maps we had, couldn't even find the airport for a starting point. I went back to the car rental place, and the efficient pair we'd dealt with at first had been replaced by a dithering older woman who began by scratching off items from the list and writing different roads on the list.
I balked at this, pointing out these were issued by the hotel itself. She was at a loss, but finally pointed out the airport on one map, and I was able to piece the directions together after that despite her.
We find the car, a nice little blue Peugot, and begin to tentatively negotiate the narrow Spanish parking lot aisles and then the narrow Spanish roads, until we are finally out on the Spanish freeway, confronted with baffling highway signs. Every sign is filled with letter and number sequences, designed I gathered, to tell you road you were on and every road you could possibly take in the next several miles.
We barreled gamely down the freeway, sticking to the middle lane, as cars whizzed by on right and left, honking and swerving in front and behind. Our problems were complicated by it being a gray and overcast day, so we were never clear where the sun was, or what direction we were going. Also by the fact that Madrid is ringed by concentric circles of "M" roads - M-20, M-30, M-40, each outside the other like rings on a dart board.
So, yes, we were on M-40, but were we going clockwise towards our goal, or counter-clockwise towards the 21st century version of Iberian highway hell? We were kept in suspense for a lengthy period, until Rita was able to correlate a road with a sign, and we began to think we might be on the right road, going the right way, after all.
We arrive at Parque Sur after one final adventure, where it's clear we want to take exit A8/A9 but the signs are placed such that, and the exits from the freeway are such that, we end up pulling off the highway, only to find we're in some factory driveway, then pulling back on, only to take the next exit, which is a way to turn around and go under the freeway and back the way you came. Four times! Four times, I pulled off, believing I was exiting to Parque Sur, only to find I needed to get back out and try again.
On the fourth try we sailed into Parque Sur, triumphant, only to find ourselves in the middle of what looks like the Mall of Spain, with two trillion Spaniards creeping through the parking lot looking for a parking space. After several circuits, we do what the Spanish do, and double parked in a spot, half blocking a lane, and went in to get our room arranged.
The room is not what we expect and I complain. We get an upgrade, but still not what we were shown on the web. It doesn't take much complaining, which is good, because I'm really too tired to make a battle of it.
We get settled in and set out to explore this wondrous thing we know as Parque Sur: half Mall of American, half DisneyLand. We eat, and retire to the room, and watch a pay-cable movie: A Knights Tale. A fun movie.
Finally we settle in to sleep, at about 11 PM local time, after roughly 36 hours on the road. We sleep a long time.
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