The Madrid airport is huge - according to Wikipedia, it's the second largest in Europe, behind De Gaulle Airport in Paris. After getting off the plane, we had a looooong walk, and a shuttle ride, to get to baggage claim, and then another long walk to get through immigration and customs, and finally meet up with Salvi and her husband, Juan Carlos.
Salvi and Juan Carlos are an interesting couple. Salvi - short for Salvadora - is a physical therapist, and owns her own clinic. She only employs blind or visually impaired therapists, because, she told us, if she hires sighted therapists, they start acting like they know more than she does, even though she's the boss!
Juan Carlos works in the clinic - from what I saw, he appears to function as an office manager - and he's also in training to be ordained as a priest in the Anglican church.
Salvi speaks English, but Juan Carlos' English is about the same level as my Spanish. As we drove from the airport to their house, Juan Carlos pointed out various points of interest along the way, like this statue of Christopher Columbus, with the flag of Spain in the background:
Salvi and Juan Carlos live in an apartment in the same building as her clinic, right in the middle of Madrid. Here's a map showing the location of the clinic and the airport. Yes, that whole area outlined in red is the airport - like I said, it's big:
This is their building:
Her clinic is on the ground floor:
...and their apartment is in the basement:
Notice the black dog curled up on the couch - that's not Kettle, that's Salvi's dog Goleta, pronounced "go-LET-a" - as opposed to the suburb of Santa Barbara which is spelled the same, but pronounced "go-LEET-a." Goleta had a bed in the living room, which Kettle appropriated for himself:
...and he would occasionally engage Goleta in a spirited tug-of-war:
One thing that impressed me about their house was the shelves full of books. I was also impressed by the amount of artwork on the walls - here are a few examples:
...and that's just a small sample - there were paintings everywhere. I came to find out that Juan Carlos is a very learned man, and is particularly knowledgeable in the fields of Spanish art and history - more about that later.
The guest room where we stayed was small:
Note how the bed on the right slides out from underneath the bed on the left. That's called a trundle bed. On the first night Terry slept in the lower bed, but it made her feel claustrophobic, so for the rest of the week, she slept on the upper bed and I took the lower one - it didn't seem to bother me.
After we got settled in, we went down to a restaurant on the corner for an afternoon snack:
Yes, Salvi has pink hair. I found a picture of them in their younger days, when she had brown hair, and Juan Carlos had a full head of hair, and a small beard.
I'll digress for a moment to talk about eating in Spain. To quote from my trip log of our trip to Spain in 2012:
Spaniards operate on a completely different time schedule than we Americans do. They'll have breakfast mid-morning, and then break for a long lunch at around 2:00 in the afternoon. In fact, many businesses - as well as tourist attractions - shut down completely for an afternoon siesta. Then they'll work until 7:30 or 8:00, and have dinner at 9:00 or 10:00 in the evening.
And so it was, for the most part, with Salvi and Juan Carlos. We would usually have a larger meal in the afternoon, and a light supper around 8:00 or 9:00 PM (always prepared and served by Juan Carlos). The funny thing was that I never had any trouble with heartburn or acid reflux in the night, as I would here at home if I ate that late. There's a lesson in there somewhere.