Well, we got our ID cards yesterday.  Resident Permit cards.  It went quickly enough - we walked in, gave them our tickets and the guy looked through the millions of cards he had in a box, found ours and handed them to us.  Just like that.  So, what we waited for for 2 years we finally have in our possession.  I see them as our ticket to Sweden since they'll allow us to be in the European Union longer than 3 months.  That's the best part of all!

Today we are heading to Madrid to meet our friends Bill and Connie Ehler, who are flying in from San Antonio.  We look forward to meeting them and spending another few days in Madrid before coming back to the house here for a few days.  Then we'll do a little touring around of Spain with them before they head back home on May 1st.  Here are a few pictures of some castles we saw along our drive to Madrid.

Forecast is for it to not be AS cold as it has been.  That sure would be nice!!!

So we are here in our hotel room in Madrid and have been ever since about 2 this afternoon.  We had a good drive to Madrid, good weather and only got turned around once when we were actually in Madrid.  The GPS tried to get us right at our hotel, but when it said you have arrived at your destination, we were going through an  UNDERPASS so we figured the hotel must be on the street above it somewhere.  The problem turned out to be that they had torn up the street one block up from the hotel, the GPS didn't know that and didn't know that we couldn't go that way, so there we were.  Trying to figure out how to get back to the vicinity of the hotel and get around that construction.  We called the hotel from a back road somewhere and they gave us the two cross streets of where they were located and with sort of help from the GPS trying to get us back on track, we finally found the place.

We are staying at the Abba Madrid Hotel and it is VERY nice but it has a very reasonable price.  Our room is comfortable, warm and looks out towards the mountains in the distance which still have some snow on them.  We thought that since the Ehlers were supposed to arrive at the airport in Madrid at 11:40, that by the time they got their baggage and took a taxi out to the hotel, they'd be here WAY before us.  But when we checked in, they were not here, and it is now 7 in the evening and they are STILL not here.  So, we are just hanging around wondering where they are and what happened and all that.

So, as it turns out, it was good we hung around the hotel because our friends finally came in around 8pm.  They DID miss their connecting flight in Paris, and had to scramble to find another airline to fly them to Madrid.  After getting them settled in their room (and because they had been able to sleep on the plane a little), they were still eager to go out into Madrid and have dinner.  So, we took the tram to the downtown area (Puerta Sol) and found the same restaurant Guillermo and I had eaten at at the beginning of March.  We had a great dinner there (our waitress being quite liberal with the wine!) and we were all happy with how the evening ended!