Arrival in Madrid

We arrived in Madrid! Although I guess what I’m more excited about is surviving the last few weeks of packing up and putting everything into storage. Cristóbal and I left Miami exhausted beyond words and ready to rest and regroup here in Madrid. Luckily, the exhaustion meant sleeping very well on the 9 hour flight from Miami.

We’re testing out our winter clothes and adapting to the cold weather. I promise I’m not complaining about the cold, but it was 85 degrees when we left Miami, and after nearly 6 years living there it takes me a while to adjust to any drop in temperature. It’s been in the 40s and 50s here during the day and the 30s at night, so it’s been the perfect weather to be cold but not too cold. I had to buy most of my clothes for the trip on Amazon because (surprise!) I couldn’t find any winter clothes in Miami in the middle of summer and all of the winter clothes that I still owned are so outdated or ill-fitting at this point that I needed a wardrobe update.

We’re here for two weeks before heading to London to actually start our trip. While we’re here the plan is to spend a lot of time with friends and family, but also to finish some of our last-minute trip planning items. We went to the Belarus consulate in Madrid the other day to apply for our last visa. We could have done it from Miami, but we would have had to mail our passports to Washington, D.C. and Cristóbal was worried about them getting lost when we already had our Russia and China visas in them (we almost lost our passports already when the Chinese passport agency sent them to the wrong address). We also need to re-pack everything to try to fit it all into two backpacks and one small suitcase. That should be fun since some of these winter sweaters take up half a suitcase on their own. Let me know if you have any winter packing tips, because I will probably need them!