Las montañas de España, day "0", getting there

In the past decade I have traveled several times to Europe to ride roller coasters there.  (I would love to extend my reach to other continents, but to date there has been plenty to attract me to Europe, both to places I'd been before and to ones that were new to me.)  This past summer I had an opportunity for another visit to untrodden ground for me, a trip to Spain.  It was a great trip, and in my plodding way I hope to document it here.

I had gotten wind of this trip over a year earlier, when I heard that the American Coaster Enthusiasts club was planning a Spain trip.  I had been on one of their earlier European trips--in 2002--but my trips since had been smaller affairs, with just a few friends.  Though I had a fantastic time on the 2002 trip I'd found I tended to prefer the smaller trips.  Since we were directly responsible for getting around, finding food, and sightseeing, the individual trips had given me a greater sense of freedom than the arranged coach trips.  I definitely had gotten a better feel for the countries I was in, though our fast-paced coaster tours had still not exactly given us a lot of leisure sightseeing time.  Having no other plans to go to Spain any time soon, I felt I'd regret it if I missed the opportunity, so in spite of my possible reservations we decided to go.

Some of our usual traveling companions were not able to join us on the trip, a bit of a disappointment.  We were good friends with only a few of the people who would take part in this trip, much fewer than had been on the 2002 trip.  The chemistry of the group we were hanging out with would change.

Though the trip was organized around roller coasters, I didn't really expect any of the coasters on the agenda to be blockbusters.  This was a bit unlike most of my past overseas trips, where there were several thrill rides I was highly anticipating.  For me this trip was going to be as much about the atmosphere of the parks, some historically interesting rides, and if possible some additional tourism opportunities outside the context of the group tour.  For the sake of the latter we specifically took a few days extra days on our own to see some of the sights.  Though the 2002 trip would always have a special place in my mind, I hoped that the additional tourism would give this trip some extra cultural oomph I couldn't get then.  If I'd been on my own I might not have done it, but fortunately Janna did a lot of research, and it paid off.

Though the tour wouldn't begin until Saturday, we took a Thursday flight.  Ideally this would give us a day of Madrid tourism at the beginning of the trip, but the real intent was to make sure flight delays wouldn't cause us any trouble.  The tour would begin with a morning meeting time at the Madrid airport, and even if we had an ideal flight on Friday the chances were good we'd simply not make our appointment.  Any delays at all would make that certain, so we arranged to go 24 hours in advance.  In fact our flight was such that even if we missed our first international flight we'd have another leaving later that evening going directly to Madrid, so we were about as safe as we could possibly be.  In the end, things generally did go well.  Though the travel was naturally an annoyance, we had less trouble on this trip than we'd had for a while in our international travels, and it mostly went off without any hitches.

Our flight was conveniently in the afternoon, meaning we didn't have to get up particularly early.  In fact, I set my alarm as if it were a regular working day.  We had been doing a lot of advance work trying to make sure we didn't miss packing anything, but most of the actual putting of items in suitcases happened that morning.  Even so, we wound up having plenty of time to spare before we had to leave for the airport.

Our experiences in packing for other trips came in handy here.  We were used to traveling lightly because we had to get around in trains and carry our luggage with us many places, so packing compactly was not hard to do.  Additionally  it helped that we expected hot weather, so all the clothes we'd bring would be light.  Unlike travel further north in Europe, where sometimes conditions could be distinctly un-summery, I knew exactly what I was going to get in Spain and didn't have to plan for too many contingencies.  I even had room to pack a spare set of shoes, something always causes me the most anxiety if I don't have them.  I didn't do this so much in case we got rained on, but in case we went on water rides.

We were planning on not checking any bags if we could avoid it (one of several ways we hoped to minimize the possibility of travel troubles).  This meant I didn't have to worry about separating essential and non-essential toiletries, but also meant the inconvenience of putting all my liquids in a plastic bag.  The most annoying thing about this was having to bring along enough four-ounce saline solution bottles for both of our use for nearly two weeks. 

My biggest decision was where to keep my money.  On past trips I'd been able to wear a vest jacket with a lot of interior pockets, making it easy to keep money secure from pickpocketers, but this wasn't a very viable option during Spanish summer.  In the end I decided to use a money pouch attached to my belt, which also had an interior pocket to make it harder to snatch bills from me, though it also made it a bit inconvenient for me to use myself.  It took me a while to get used to, and it felt very weird not to have my wallet in my back pocket for a couple of days.

I'm always very cautious about getting to the airport early for an international flight.  I had hoped we'd leave by noon, but it was 12:30 by the time we actually got on the road.  Right before we left we thought of just a couple more items we probably should have packed but decided not to go back for them, and were never seriously inconvenienced.  In spite of leaving a bit late we got to the airport with plenty of time to spare.

We spent some time next trying to figure out how much money to exchange for Euros.  The older woman who served us at the Travelex desk was quite helpful, and was also somewhat curious about our trip.  We were hoping we wouldn't need too much, since many of our meals were already paid for as part of the group tour.  However in the end though we got a bit more than we originally intended, we undershot by a considerable amount and had to get more at ATM's a couple times during the trip.

Neither of us had eaten anything significant yet, and we had time to get some lunch.  I saw that the place I used to go to get soups was gone completely.  I wasn't as disappointed as I might have been, as I'd really liked their soup and salad combination, which they had stopped offering.

Our flight was to Newark; from there we'd hop overseas.  I had mistaken the departure time, thinking it would be 15 minutes later than it was.  We were early enough that this didn't matter, even if there hadn't been a delay--as predictably there was.  First the plane was late getting to the gate, then the boarding process was slow.  I might have gotten paranoid about missing our connection, but we'd allocated a whole lot of time for our layover.  Even if we'd missed our layover we had a backup option for getting overseas.  Bitter past experience had taught us that it paid to be conservative about scheduling international flights!

Usually by the this point on an international trip I'd be getting very excited, feeling like I was about to embark on a new adventure!  Oddly enough I didn't get the same feeling before this trip, perhaps due to trepidation over how smoothly our flights would run.  I couldn't otherwise account for my feelings.  Fortunately it turned out I had no reason for anxiety; in spite of some hiccups our outbound travel went reasonably smoothly, and the trip itself was everything I could have expected it to be.

Because our first flight was on a small plane we had to gate check our bags.  Paranoid that ours would get lost, I looked out the window to see that they got loaded.  Small propeller plane thought it was, I was surprised to find the rows having 4 seats; on similar flights I often found three-seat rows.  One of the stewardesses seemed to be wearing perfume; we'd smelled it from the beginning of the flight and commented on the rudeness of wearing perfume on a plane but hadn't realized at first that it was not a passenger.

There was a bit of turbulence on the flight, enough to prevent there from being any beverage service and enough to prevent me from getting much rest, as I'd hoped to do.

During the flight I became aware of a family sitting behind us that I couldn't help but overhear were in grave danger of missing their connection to Milan.  The stewardess was reassuring, but their chance of making their connection seemed to become out of the question when we began to circle Newark.  I had just begun to feel that the plane was making too many turns in one direction before the pilot came on and confirmed we were flying in a "racetrack pattern".  The stewardess tried to tell people as they were getting off to let the family by, but it didn't really help much-and anyway they also had to pick up their gate-checked bags, which meant more waiting.  I didn't personally mind the wait to pick up our gate-checked bags; at least we knew they'd be with us when we arrived in Spain.

It was a little before 7 by the time we were finally on the ground, but our generous layover still left us with plenty of time.  I was glad not to be rushed because I thought we might have a chance to get some of the good pizza I remembered from our prior trip.  I wasn't sure if we were in the same terminal as we'd been then, but whether or not we were there was a Famiglia stand and so I went over to get a slice or two.

While I was contemplating which type of pizza to get, the man behind the counter said (in a thick accent, whether genuine or not I wasn't sure) of the one he was working on, "I pulled it out of the oven just for you".  Though I wasn't otherwise inclined to get sausage and pepperoni on the same pizza I was charmed enough to get it.

I am always confused on international flights about whether and when one has to have one's passport scanned.  Since nobody had done it in Pittsburgh I got increasingly worried we'd missed a step that would delay us from boarding, but there was nothing to indicate that we had to do it at the Newark counter either.  I was particularly worried because my passport was a few months away from expiring.  I had learned that its expiration date had to be 3 months after my flight home, which I had been unaware of.  Though I was safely within this margin I had residual concerns there might be a problem, particularly since the window was longer for other countries.  I didn't want to have this sprung on me at an inopportune moment.

After a while I got worried enough that I got into the line at the counter.  There were a lot of people already waiting, including the family on their way to Milan, apparently rerouted onto our flight.  It turned out that indeed had to scan both our passports as well as show both of our boarding passes.  I had to wait a bit longer in line because somebody came back from the gate, where they were already loading, saying they were given a nonexistent seat.  When I finally was served there was a little confusion because I accidentally gave the passes for our flight from Pittsburgh.  The person at the desk sarcastically asked me if I wanted to go back there, but printed out a new one before I could get the correct ones.

The plane we were taking was the smallest I'd ever been on for an international flight, with one aisle and three seats on either side, totaling six seats per row.  The seats may have been more cramped than usual too.  In any case one of us had to take a middle seat if we were to sit next to each other.  We wound up with an aisle and a middle seat, though I personally would have preferred the window to the aisle.

Fortunately our big pieces of luggage fit in the overhead bins.  To my surprise our smaller pieces were the ones that were problematic.  My somewhat overstuffed book bag did not fit well under my seat because of a metal box that took up some of the space.  It turned out to be an outlet, which on another trip I might have found useful.  I ultimately was able to put my bag up above the seat (taking some books out to put in my seat pocket for in-flight reading) but initially I put it under Janna's seat, which was not a very good solution!

We knew the flight would be full, but initially the plane seemed to have a lot of empty seats so we thought perhaps we could spread out a bit.  Only right near the end did a bunch of kids in "Interway" T-shirts board all at once.  Earlier another woman came by and acted as if we were in her seat.  It turned out she was in the row ahead of us.  She wound up moving to a different row, which turned out to be the exit row.  I'm not sure if they let her stay there as I think English-speaking may have been a requirement for being in that row, but in any case she didn't return to her original seat, which remained empty through the flight, one of the few that did.

At first I was confused by the entertainment system.  I was expecting there to be a controller unit in the arm of the seat next to me, but I could find none.  It turned out that it used a touch screen.  I saw that it had to be rebooted once, and as a technical guy I was interested to see how many error messages flew up the screen during this process.  The system worked, but it certainly looked like sloppy configuration to me.  Later on I tried to play a crossword puzzle game, but found it almost impossible to use.  It was too frustrating and I gave up on the game quickly.

The in-flight map was the only thing accessible before we left.  I have a fascination with maps in general, and these flight maps are no exception.  In the middle of an overseas flight there's not much to see, but my eyes are often glued when we are over land.  One of the views was particularly interesting.  It showed a flat representation of the entire Earth, showing the boundary between night and day.  Over time I enjoyed watching this move as time passed, and as somebody with astronomical interests, I also liked speculating about how the view would be different in a different season.  There was another view with a map of the eastern US.  This would alternate between English and Spanish renditions, but oddly enough on the Spanish map some city and state names were fully translated (i.e. "nueva" for "new"), while on others they were not.  Oddly enough, even this wasn't always consistent; sometimes the proper Spanish names would appear.

It was about 9:30 by the time we left, about an hour off schedule.  I noticed that we traveled south for a while before finally turning east over the ocean.  The route also was distinctly further south than the routes to some of the other European cities I'd visited.  It still did cling to the Canadian coast for a while, but not as much as a trip to London would have.

There were two meal options, "beef with lasagna" or "chicken with rice".  I wound up getting the lasagna, which though not great was the better of the two options.  I helped Janna finish her rice (I usually try not to let food go to waste), but didn't like it much myself; it came with a tomato sauce, something I don't usually care for.  Both meals came with what seems to be typical accompaniments these days:  salad, roll, and some Brussels cookies.  Janna observed that they did not give us much pepper, which would turn out to be typical of Spain--where pepper was often entirely missing.  There was no complimentary wine-it seems to be a thing of the past.

I had no complaints about the service, but did notice one odd thing.  Almost all of the flight attendants spoke both English and Spanish, but one older woman seemed not to.  I wondered how she got on that flight.

I read for a while, but soon tried to get to sleep.  I wanted to rest as much as possible going into the trip because I expected the first few days to be the most difficult.  The first day we'd be on our own, but didn't want to sleep too much so as to adjust to the new time zone.  The next two days, according to our trip schedule, would involve two amusement parks apiece each day and a pretty considerable amount of driving, so we didn't expect to have much chance to relax then either.  The pace of the trip looked to slow down from that point, but the first days were going to be hectic.

Unfortunately, I had trouble sleeping.  Though I probably tried for about 2 1/2 hours, it never felt like I got more than 5 minutes of consecutive sleep.  Being near the aisle didn't help.  Strangely, whenever I opened my eyes it seemed like I saw the same guy across the aisle and a few rows forward playing a game on his entertainment unit.  As far as I could tell he played the same game all night.

Since I wasn't doing well in getting to sleep, I did not mind when they turned the lights back on and announced that breakfast was to be served.  It consisted of a croissant and some fruit, which helped me rehydrate somewhat.  This was good because drinks were served a bit late.  I was eventually able to get two orange juices, which I really needed.

After this I tried to look out the window, but due to my position in the aisle and my not having my contacts in, I didn't get the best view.  Both Janna and I noticed that there were some patches of ground where there were plants arranged in patterns.  As I recall they were on a hexagonal grid.  She thought they were olive groves.  I wasn't so sure.  We were never able to verify one way or the other.

On the whole it was a reasonably uneventful trip, though not the best Atlantic crossing I'd had.  Now we had a day ahead of us to spend in Madrid, before the roller coaster tour itself started.