Day 1 – Madrid Spain
Our 3 week journey started with a test of our resiliency with an “itinerary adjustment”. Dave very kindly dropped us at the airport in perfect timing and our flight was on schedule. By the time we checked in and made it through customs, our flight was 3 hours delayed – just enough for us to miss our connection to Gran Canaria. Thanks to Suz for catching the announcement of a free coupon for food/drink for the delay. It seems Suz has an ear for freebies. So at 1am we finally caught the first leg of our flight – bodies well confused on when to eat and sleep. The upside is, it helps with the timezone change. One hour out of Madrid, the pilot informed us that we had made up 1/2 hour with a strong tail wind, so fingers still crossed to make our connection.
Apparently finger crossing is not an exact science. The delay was actually handled quite well by Air Canada, once we found the correct booth. Our only complaint was that Air Canada did not have an agent waiting to meet us when we disembarked in Madrid. So we had scrambled ourselves to the other terminal to try to catch our flight, where we had to wait in line to check in. In all the commotion we did not make it in time. That said, we suspect they had cut off boarding and perhaps even reassigned our seats by the time we arrived. At least our bags were confirmed to be reassigned to fly with us on our next flight, so that was a relief.
In the end, they had re-booked our flights for the next morning, set us up in a very nice hotel with exceptional food – dinner and amazing breakfast included. Dan even had some tempting moments checking out the well attended conference at the hotel which seemed to be some type of franchise pyramid scheme (think Amway). Perhaps his post-retirement plan….
Enjoy your 3 week journey, away from -50 🙂
Hi Ling – great to hear from you! We are actually back now – YIKES it’s still winter! We post on facebook while away, but Michael edit’s some of his better shots for the website, which takes time. As he edits the photo’s and uploads them, I update the site with the diary I keep on our travels. So over the next while we will get around to posting the trip – it was amazing! Hope all is well with you. Cheers, Audrey
Oh, welcome back. I really enjoy reading your diary, good English LOL. Actually I feel like I was travelling with you. Have you got promoted to be grandma?
Not yet – end of April. They are having a baby girl. So excited as we haven’t had many of the female variety for a while!
I wish you all the best, and congratulations too! Don’t forget to bring the baby girl to Dr. Bette 🙂