Barb and Baden’s Excellent Spanish Adventure – Part 2
The Rain in Spain Stays Mainly on the Plane.
Good News! When we were checking in at the Air Canada counter in Vancouver, we were told that we would be upgraded to business class on the flight to Toronto. Frankly, this was surprising as one of our tickets was a free ticket redeemed on points. However, since we never argue such fine details, we gladly accepted the upgrade. For those of you who have never flown business class, I can tell you that (on a long flight), it is simply luxurious. There is about 6ft of room between the front of your seat and the next seat and the food is served on white linen and real glasses.
Advanced Travel Tip #1:
If you have not done a lot of plane travel, you may not know that it is not normal for it to rain inside of the cabin – especially when you are in the air. If you experience this situation, you would not be unreasonable to think that something was amiss and should ask to speak to someone about this.
The flight attendants took immediate action to correct this problem and began stuffing white towels into the slots of the roof where the water was coming out. These towels remained there for the rest of the flight and the change in precipitation allowed us to enjoy the remainder of the trip in proper business class comfort.
Mental note: I am glad that Air Canada’s current financial problems has not let them lower their standards in important areas like aircraft maintenance.
We made it to Toronto and transferred to our flight to Madrid which found us back in the economy section again but comfortable nonetheless. We had to pickup our luggage in Madrid as we had to transfer to another airline for the
1 hour flight to Barcelona.
Small problem: Barb’s luggage doesn’t arrive in Madrid. OK, so we have dealt with this kind of issue before and have learned to tough it out in a foreign city with only the clothes on her back and a VISA card to comfort her.
Somehow I know that Barb will survive.
We end up making it to our hotel in Barcelona around 8PM and fall asleep almost immediately. As it is now Saturday night and we have effectively lost one day from travel, we prepare to make a fresh start early Sunday morning to start exploring our new city.
Day 3:
We wake up at 1PM – not exactly the early start that we hoped for but hey, we’re on vacation and don’t have to live by the clock. We have missed our free breakfast at the hotel so decide to look for a good place for lunch. We find a nice cafe where there are actual local people eating and have a couple of café con lechés (coffee and milk) and a tasty sandwich. It doesn’t take long for us to realize that we are in Europe as just about everyone is smoking.
Since today is Sunday, most of the stores are closed and we will have to wait until tomorrow to engage in one of our favourite pastimes: European shopping. At around 7PM, we make it back to the hotel room to relax and prepare ourselves for a typical Spanish dinner which we will not start until about 9PM. My first dinner will hopefully be a popular Spanish dish: Paella (pronounced pie-eh-ah). This is a rice dish with many types of meat or seafood served in a large flat pan.
Our main objective over the next 3 days that we are in Barcelona is to explore more of the city and experience as much Spanish culture as possible before we leave for Madrid on Thursday.
Stay tuned …
Barb & Baden
Continue on to Barb & Baden’s Excellent Spanish Adventure – Part 3
