Back from Spain (Catalunya) – Part One – Getting There

Well, I’m back from my trip to Spain, or should I call it Catalunya since most of my trip was within the region that has been a bit restless under Madrid’s control. I’m not well-versed enough to even dive into that discussion, so don’t even ask what I think about it because really – I don’t even know enough to have an opinion. However, in the Catalan language, the region is referred to as Catalunya so I’m going with that.

Anyway, as I normally do my trip posts, I’m going to do a couple of posts. Feel free to skip the next couple if you’re not into travel babble. I’m sure I’ll be back to my regularly scheduled cancer posts soon.

As I mentioned in my previous post, this was the first time that I had gone to Europe with my husband. In fact, it was his first time he had been to Europe. I was gratified to see that he was really excited about going. I kept badgering him to let me know what he wanted to do so we could plan the itinerary and book lodging; but he kept sidestepping the whole thing until a week and a half before we were leaving. Finally, I told him that I would plan the itinerary and book places to stay and if he complained even once, I was going to leave him in the middle of a foreign town.

Because the awesome airfare deal I got required us to get to Orlando, I erred on the side of caution and decided to spend a night there on either side of the trip to ensure that any unexpected delays didn’t cause us to miss flights back to Austin. So, we flew JetBlue out to Orlando on a Friday evening. It was also my hubby’s first time on JetBlue and he spent most of the 2.5 hour flight marveling over the leg room and DirectTV. I really am a fan of JetBlue and not at all happy that my corporate travel agency doesn’t seem to ever let me book flights on them when I have to fly for work.

We landed on time in Orlando and fought through the throngs of hyperactive kids and frazzled parents to get to the hotel shuttle. I could feel sweat dripping down my back as we waited for it to arrive. Oh, Florida humidity… I was grateful for the blasting AC in the van once we climbed aboard. Sadly, I couldn’t say the same for the AC in our room. It was anemic to be charitable. Why in god’s name do Florida hotels provide heavy down comforters and not have working AC? After a restless and sweaty night’s sleep, we made our way back to the airport for the next batch of flights that would eventually land us in Barcelona.

We had to change planes in Washington Dulles, which is an airport I loathe. The walkways are narrow; the windows are tiny so it always feels dark and closed off; and to change terminals you have to take something that looks like the Empire in Star Wars used to shuttle troops around. We boarded the United 767 and realized that we had a crew that wasn’t going to go out of their way to make the flight more pleasant. The lead flight attendant was active in her dislike for the passengers. And to top it off, my entertainment system didn’t work after they reset it a hundred times. So I couldn’t even turn on the overhead light to read. It’s totally a fail to have the controls for the light be on the entertainment system if the darn thing fails. I had to ask for a flashlight in order to read my book.

I don’t know what the deal is. Normally I can sleep on planes but in the last two years, I’ve really struggled with getting sleep. I think the elimination of air vents has not helped. The crew always seems to want to keep the cabin way too warm for me to sleep well. But you’d think I would be exhausted from not really sleeping the night before. No luck, I spent the entire 8.5 hour flight awake. I did get to see a beautiful hazy dawn break over Barcelona as we made our final approach, coming out over the Mediterranean and swinging back to land. We touched down and made the taxi to a remote stand where we had to queue on the external stairs to wait for the bus to take us to the terminal (although there were plenty of open gates; the mystery of why so many of my flights in Europe have to disembark at a remote stand is beyond my comprehension). But on the steps, we got to watch the sunrise and it was a gorgeous way to be welcomed to Spain.