In the morning, Lakshmi, Ally, and I got up showered, stole breakfast, and called a cab to take us to the airport (Lakshmi wasn’t about to drag her maimed luggage on the train)
I think I was almost near depression on the ride. I really didn’t want to leave Spain, and for some reason it was hitting me right then when we were leaving Barcelona. Ally was on a later flight, but she waited in line with Lakshmi and me while we attempted to check in. We were exactly standard 2 hours early for our flight (we thought we were better than that….1 hr was enough NOT!) The line for our airline was outrageous! We stood there until we had 45 min for flight time, then we split up and covered all the lines. I even attempted to use the rush check-in. Apparently you have to be 30 min from departure to be considered rush…
Somehow we got checked in…30 min to get to the gate, we got this. Lakshmi and I hugged ally and took off running to security. Oh security. The lines weren’t super long, but Spain just really isn’t as efficient as the USA. When we finally get to the front, we throw our stuff in bins and wait to pass thro the X rays. I look behind me, and I see lakshmi letting some Middle Eastern women in front of her! What the heck! We have 20 min! Well then the women turns to me, “you did not respect the cue, I am first, let me pass.” Then she and her son proceeded to take their sweet time putting their items one by one into a million bins. Apparently the one time Spanish people respect lines is in the security line at airports (ayayay!)
Needless to say, we arrived at our gate just in time for the first zone to board. We even had time to sit for like 5 min! When we finally got on the airplane, we crashed, hard. One hour later and we were in Madrid!
Ally’s flight was just a little later than ours, so lakshmi and I decided to wait for her in the airport. By a little later, we mean like 3 hours. Hahaha we didn’t realize it was thaaat much later, but luckily we found an internet kiosk. The lady that was using it before us put in waaaay too much money so we had 2 hours worth of internet that we didn’t have to pay for!
When we finally met Ally, we cabbed to her parents hotel. This was the first time I remembered that leaving spain, although sad, meant I was going to see my friends and family again! That got me a little anxious to go home. Which was good because prior to now I had just been dreading it. Ally’s parent’s hotel was extremely nice, and apparently free! Her dad travels a lot for work. When we got to the room, first thing we had to do was rip off Ally’s cast and throw her into the walking boot her mother so kindly wore all day on the plane. One stinky foot later, we were starving. It was her family’s first time in Spain, and I was kinda amazed at all the things the three of us were telling them about life in Spain. I didn’t even realize the things that I had picked up.
We ate traditionally and it was delicious. Paella de pollo, followed by café con leche after the meal. After supper we walked back to the hotel, and met up with Brooke and two of her friends that she did the camino de Santiago with for her last week (they are both from spain and knew ally through church, brooke had gotten really close to them over the last week) I should mention that when we got to the hotel their was a lot of people outside, we had to squeeze it out of one of the workers, but he finally told us Hillary Clinton was in Madrid, and staying at our hotel that night! Crazy! So all of us girls went out for one last drink in Spain. Oh yeah! Ally’s younger sister Rachel was there! I love her. She’s very different from Ally, but they are best friends since I feel like I knew ally forever I felt the same about Rachel. That night we had a little slumber party. We pushed the two full beds together so that Rachel, Ally, Brooke, Lakshmi, and I could all sleep together and no one had to sleep on the floor……a great way to spend the last night in Spain!
No comments:
Post a Comment