Off To Visit the Baby, Madrid 2025 Day#2. “We Get to See a Celebrity Today”

Any of you parents out there will be able understand why today was so wonderful.  Erica met us at the hotel after breakfast and then it was off to visit the Irish Embassy where she works as the Executive Assistant to the Irish Ambassador to Spain.   And if you don’t know how much I enjoyed writing that sentence or telling it to anyone who will listen then you definitely are not a parent.   When we planned this trip I asked Erica if we could meet the Ambassador and she said definitely.  I asked, how she could be so sure and her answer was “I make his schedule.  Hmmm, Friday December 5th, 11:00 AM: Meet my parents.  There, it’s done”.  If you don’t think that put me in parent ecstasy you are out of touch with reality.   

Meeting Ambassador Brian Glynn was a real treat.  As expected this career diplomat was very diplomatic and said all the things we wanted to hear about our daughter.  We also spoke about world affairs.  He had viewpoints about Ireland, Britain, and the United States that were spell-binding. In addition he gave me a chance to show him a few of my magic tricks.  I was amazed by how much time he devoted to us.  Mr. Glynn is a very impressive person who speaks 6 languages.  That reminds me of a joke you’ve probably already heard.  A person who speaks 3 languages is “trilingual”, someone who speaks 2 languages is “bilingual” and someone who speaks one language is of course an “American”.  

After leaving the ambassador we stopped for a quick snack.  I was feeling a bit guilty about not exercising so I decided to work out while eating.  See below.  

We bought our treats at a local market. Here are a couple of pictures from the market.

If that isn’t enough to make you give up meat try looking at this picture.

Then it was off to meet a celebrity.  Wait, did you think I meant Brian Glynn when I wrote about meeting a celebrity?   Absolutely not!  A very prominent and respected software engineer has been in London working on a project and is traveling through Madrid on his way home.   Yes, our son, David made it to Spain.   How lucky we are.  We met David at the airport and cautioned him to try hard to carry on his luggage and avoid the problem we had.  The 1500 steps to baggage claim is another matter but some exercise is actually a good thing.  Unfortunately David was not allowed to carry on his small bag but luckily his wait at baggage claim was a lot shorter than ours.

It was great having 2 of our 3 children with us.  We visited the Museo Arqueológico Nacional and saw some fascinating  exhibits some dating back to about 500-600 BC. 

That is going to have to be enough for now because we are off to dinner.

Adiós