Well, now. Yesterday was a … day. It started about 1 am local time (something like 6 pm here). Chris apparently had a dream or two. Maybe she was reliving her two crashes. She has certainly given new meaning to the term, “European Falls.”
Not long after the noises began. Our portable fan sputtered noisily, then died completely. I don’t think it liked the European power. It worked fine when we woke up around 6 though.
A dog started barking outside. Sounded like it was right outside our fifth story window. Surely that wasn’t the case. Then again … we were not the U.S. anymore.
The final sound was clearly the sound of a ufo landing and taking off. It happened numerous times between one and about 2:30 when I was finally able to get back to sleep. Explains the dog barking. Hmm …
During the hour and a half while the ufo was doing its maneuvers and the dog was barking at it, I played with ChatGPT. I downloaded it a while back, but never opened it. I used it to look at views of the airport terminal in Barcelona. Very nice and new. Looked like wouldn’t be TOO intimidating.
Oh, I found out the final tally of the distance we traveled from home. 6411 actual miles. From what I understand, that’s 5571 nautical miles. And that doesn’t count all the miles we drove and walked through Barcelona.
Whew. Feels like a full day’s report already, but I’m just now getting us to the airport. Our driver came a little early, 6:20 am. He didn’t say much, but hey, it was 6:20 in the morning.
We arrived at the airport around 6:50 or so. After a few wrong attempts, we finally found the American Airlines checkin line (around 7). And the line wasn’t all that long.
Once we got our bags checked, we wandered around until we stumbled upon a Starbucks (that’s Spanish for Starbucks). Chris had orange juice and an egg and cheese sandwich. I had some good ol’ American coffee and the same kind of sandwich.
From there it was just a matter of finding our gate. That was easy. It became evident early in the process that the flight was going to be sold out. There were people everywhere. And the workers approached us twice trying to get us to check one or more of our carry-ons.
Barcelona ATC airspace caused us a one hour delay because they didn’t have enough workers in the department. We finally started taxiing at 11:45. Off the ground at 12:13!
By 2:15 or so we had already had the proverbial sack o pretzels as well as our meal. That was chicken in tomato sauce with mashed potatoes and mixed veggies for me. Chris had the no taste meal. Dried chicken with all the fixin’s (except maybe salt). And then we faced eight hours of ocean.
The lady next to Chris talked her ear off from the time she sat down until they brought food. Nice lady. Just chatty. But after the meal both of them went fast asleep. I watched a movie, walked to the back of the plane to stretch, then put on what I hoped would be a good movie to sleep to.
No such luck. I did watch a movie, and I did sleep some. Just not at the same time. When I woke up … why not? I turned on a second movie. Chris tried one, too, but we had a hard time getting her screen to behave. She finally gave up. Not me. I finished my movie. About the time our real surprise showed up. Caramel sea salt ice cream. That was some good stuff. And I even had a cup of coffee to follow it up.
By about 6:30 pm Spain time we were within spittin’ distance of North America. OK. Nobody was gonna test that theory, but the little screen that tracks the flight showed land, for sure. And it said the time in Dallas was 11:30 am.
Which called to mind our next dilemma. Our ETA in Dallas was now 3:30 pm. Our connecting flight to Houston was scheduled to start boarding at 4:06. Not much time to grab suitcases, throw them through customs and get to a different terminal. About halfway through a notice appeared on our app that they were delaying departure from Dallas until 5:46. That kinda changed everything. Little less stress. Landed at 3:36, but had to hang out for a while due to a medical emergency on board.
And then the fun began. We had to go through Mobile Passport Control (AKA Customs). Then we had to go down a huge escalator to baggage claim to get our luggage. But they had turned off the carrousel because there were too many bags on it, so we had to wait for it to come back on. Once we finally got them, we went down a long hallway to the place where “all you have to do is switch moving belts.” However, for some unknown reason, there was a backup of suitcases there, so we were sent to a different terminal to put our suitcases on theirs. From there we had to go to the TSA line. It was long, but moved surprisingly fast. And through all those checkpoints, I only had to have an extra knee scanning twice. Yay me!
Once past that last checkout line, we went right to a guy driving a cart to ask where we should go next. He scanned the tickets and wrote down the gate number. It was in an entirely different terminal, and we had to ride the infamous Skyline train to get there. No, he didn’t offer to drive us.
A long escalator ride -down this time - and a brisk dash at the end (for me, not Chris) led us to the gate he had pointed us to, just as they called the final boarding call. She took our tickets and the scan revealed … American had moved us to another flight, in a different terminal yet. It didn’t even leave for another hour or two. I guess our faces looked particularly downcast as we turned to leave. She stopped us. And lo and behold - there were two seats available. So she hurriedly made us a couple of new tickets.
Sounds like a happy ending, right? Well …
Remember how American moved us to a later flight? They moved our luggage there, too. So it didn’t arrive in Houston for about an hour after we did. Poor Christina couldn’t make sense of when to come get us. Neither could we, Christina. Thanks for being patient.
We did finally arrive in Houston. Round about 6:15 or so. Found a spot to greet our luggage when its own flight got there. And after a quick chicken nuggets supper at Chick-fil-a (first sweet tea in 18 days!), we got our luggage before any of the people from that plane even got on the ground!
We’re baaaack!
Isaiah 53:5 says, But He was pierced because of our transgressions, crushed because of our iniquities; punishment for our peace was on Him, and we are healed by His wounds.
Father, thank you for this grand adventure that was our trip to Europe and back. It’s good to be home. And just in time to celebrate Easter! Amen.
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