Last night, we each took one Excedrin PM. We took half a dose, so we wouldn’t
oversleep our ride to pick up Madigan from the airport. The good news was it put us to sleep;
the bad news was it only put us to sleep for 4 hours. So at 4:45 AM, we found ourselves wide-awake. At first, I thought it was actually the
right time to get up. My cell
clock said 7:45. But I couldn’t
for the life of me figure out why the drunks were still singing in the streets
outside. Unfortunately, the phone
was still on California time—where it was 7:45 PM.
At 8 AM (because this was the only available time), the
shuttle arrived. We made it to the
airport in about 30 minutes and then spent another 15 minutes driving around
the Cargo area trying to find out where we had to pick Maddy up. No one knew.
So we ended up back at the regular terminal. We found the Continental desk and got
“specific” instructions on where to go.
Then we went looking for the shuttle desk to schedule a ride. Happily, the desk was staffed by the
same girl whom we had worked with the night before, and she spoke beautiful
English!! She helped us call the
Cargo terminal. It was 9:50 AM by
this point, and Maddy’s flight had just arrived. But they told us to call back in an hour!
We sat around the airport and killed time people-watching. At 11, we called back and were told
where to go: WFS Cargo. The
shuttle couldn’t take us (they wouldn’t be able to wait more than 10 minutes),
and the taxi cab drivers told us we could walk (they didn’t want to waste a
fare). So we found ourselves
walking 2.5 kilometers…I don’t know what the conversion is, but it took us
about 30 minutes.
The WFS office produced a little pile of paperwork, asked us
to pay their fee and then, in Spanish, told us the next steps. What would I do without Eddie to
translate?! So we take the
paperwork to the next office, Spain’s official veterinarian. First, we have to sign in, provide our
passports and get visitor’s cards just to get into the building! They have more paperwork for us to fill
out, and there’s another fee. But
get this, we have to go out of their office to the onsite bank to pay. Then we have to re-register as visitors
to get back up the vet’s office.
After a short wait, we are called in to sign more paperwork. It is only at this point that I get any
confirmation that Maddy is alive and well. But, to be honest, the ladies in this office were super
sweet and tried to chat with us in English. One of them was even nice enough to walk us to the next
office, where we presented all the paperwork to the Customs office and had it
stamped. By the time we returned
to the first building with all our paperwork in hand, it was 2 PM. They handed us a receipt and told us to
walk into the warehouse and present it.
And, after all of that, Maddy’s crate came rolling toward us on a
forklift.
She started whining when she recognized us, but I couldn’t
get her out because there were zip ties locking the gate in place! I made a scissor motion to one of the
guys working there and when we finally got it open, she came running out, tail
wagging, happy to see us!
We made it back to the hotel and decided to take a nap. More than four hours later, after
missing our apartment-hunting appointment, we woke up. Whoops. Oh well.
While Maddy seems a little out of sorts, and a little aloof
with Eddie (does she think it’s his fault?), she is clearly going to be just
fine. My guess is that she has
been awake for more than 24 hours and just needs to get back on schedule. We took her for a walk through the
Puerto del Sol this evening and had dinner at an outdoor restaurant with white,
fur-covered chairs. She is more
interested in the other dogs than anything else…it’s a whole new world for
her to discover and we are sooo happy to have her here with us!
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