A Week in Spain, 30 hours in Pain

Took a "real" vacation to Spain last week and it was a love-hate relationship. Fortunately, the love part of the relationship lasted much longer than the hate and our fond memories outweigh the bad (at least mine do; Sara says she's never setting foot back in the country again). As you might expect, the hate part has a little something to do with the air traffic controllers strike. After an awesome few days in Barcelona with great friends Joost and Marleen and their kids Sara and Hugo, we drove up to La Costa Brava for a few days of off-season beach-time.

Our trouble began when we arrived back at the Barcelona airport at the end of our trip. Upon checking in, we were told that the flight had been oversold and only one seat remained. They said they'd put us up in a hotel and fly us back the following day. Problem was, we had a sick 2 year old and really needed to get home. Oddly, they will offer you a hotel and flight voucher, but won't ask other passengers to volunteer to give up seats for doing the same (like they do back home). We said a hotel wouldn't work and that they needed to find us a way home that day. They ended up booking us thru Madrid and then Lux and we wouldn't get home until close to midnight. Sucks, but we had to do it. After waiting in the airport for 3 more hours, we left for Madrid. Upon landing in Madrid I went to an information desk to ask where we needed to go to make our connection and was told you won't be going anywhere. After chuckling I said, "ok really, where do I go?" Information desk person said "Really, the airport is closed -- the air traffic controllers just walked out." I looked over at Sara who had a passed out sick kid strapped to her chest and had to tell her we were stuck. I'll be honest, I was scared shitless to tell her. She had a pseudo-Krakatoa and then we made our way to Terminal 4 by bus to figure out what the F we were gonna do. 

The guy at the check in desk for our next flight was no real help, nor did he try to be. Thanks again for that clown. Lots of resignation among airport workers that evening which really didn't jive with our American sensibilities of  "take care of this shit now dumbasses." Only in a European country with double digit unemployment can people who make a half-mill euros a year walk out on their jobs and strand hundreds of thousands of travelers. Really sours one's viewpoint on the whole idea of workers unions, but I digress...

Fortunately, we had some very kind Spaniards on the flight back to Lux who spoke English and helped us to understand the situation which was basically "no one knows anything." Hung around the airport until about Midnight and then decided to pull the plug and cab it into Madrid to get a hotel for the evening. Luckily for us, there was an open room at the Intercontinental Hotel, which I might add, is a pretty damn nice place to stay if you have to be stuck somewhere. We spent the next day tooling around Madrid and got to go to La Plaza Mayor as well as the amazing Christmas mercado nearby and ate some wonderful tapas -- so not a total loss. 

Went back to the airport at 6pm as signs pointed to us being able to get out of there by 8pm. Though, we did have to lay out cash for one more night in the hotel as we weren't going to take any chances and rooms in the city were at this point non-existent. When it was all said and done, we left closer to 10, got home to Lux by about 1 a.m. The good news re: all of that was I got home just in time to watch the Big XII championship game between Nebraska and Oklahoma. Bad news was that Nebraska choked it away in the second half. 

That's it for this post. Next, post will be about the love part of the trip (with pics)