The Pain in Spain Comes Mainly from the Plane

I just got back from a day of return-travel from Madrid, Spain.

That sentence originally said “harsh return-travel”, but I edited it to reflect reality. The truth is, although I flew 6200 miles yesterday, and it took 27 hours bed-to-bed, I admit here, to the whole internet, that to call my life “harsh” would make me quite the dandy. (I’m quite certain that the daily grind of a Chilean coal miner is predictably rougher than mine, even though I was charged $3 for water while waiting for my stuff to come up out of the ground on a conveyor belt, and I believe they get their canteens refilled for free, I’m just sayin’.)

I woke up yesterday at my hotel in the Recoletos neighborhood in the heart of Madrid, and took a taxi to Barajas Airport.
The Good: friendly taxi driver, no traffic at 7am, got rid of some of my foreign currency

I got to the airport and found the Continental/United desk. Saturday, the day I was to spend all day traveling, was the day that United and Continental were merging their computer systems, so I got to the airport 4 hours early, rather than the typical 3 hours that’s recommended. However, it seems Spain is a little sleepier than the US on Saturdays. I was told that nothing was open yet, and I could check in around 9am. I did find a coffee place, though. That was the only place open at the time, except for the ubiquitous “wrap your luggage in Saran Wrap” guys. Their customers must be traveling to places where the baggage handlers rifle through your stuff. My protection scheme is a week’s worth of dirty socks.
The Good: the coffee, and the fact that I wasn’t flying on whichever airline had the line of 600 people that wrappped around the lobby twice. Many of those folks had cellophane-wrapped luggage.

Shortly after that, I found the Star Alliance International Lounge, and sat there for awhile having more coffee and charged up my laptop and iPad, and laughed at the guy who was outraged that there was no free wi-fi.
The Good: come on, I’m not going to complain about the travel lounge.

Flight took off, and I got exit row, window, so tons of legroom, and I’m going to sleep. But then middle-seat guy arrived and took off his shoes. AND SOCKS. Plane door closes, and I quickly ask If it’s cool for me to move across the aisle to the other exit-aisle-window. I do, and everybody, including monkey-feet-guy, gets an open middle seat. Exit aisle seats don’t recline, though, so I actually ended up sleeping on my tray-table.
The Good: 11 hours with nobody right next to me, and prescription painkillers to keep me knocked out.

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