#111 Family Visit in Spain

Another long hiatus on the blog while I was traveling. Catching up now that I’m in Buenos Aires again. Went to visit my brother and sister-in-law in Spain on the way to BA. They are retired and living on the southeast coast close to Valencia. I have been to Spain before, but it was when I was a child. The only things I remember about being in Madrid were that they ate very late at night, so it was difficult to find a restaurant. And looking out the back window of the hotel at night, the hundreds of pairs of green eyes on the rooftops. Cat city.

As an interesting aside, here is an article from the BBC as to why the Spanish eat so late. I wonder if it is the same reason in Argentina, but I don’t think so.

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170504-the-strange-reason-spaniards-eat-late

*Travel Note – On landing in Madrid, when transferring to a domestic flight, and you’ve arrived from overseas, you of course go through immigration. After that, if you are worried about Internet connectivity, the airports have quite good free internet via Aena. But you can also go up to the departure level in Terminal 4 and buy a data SIM from the technology stores there.

Surprisingly, the 4 months of not practicing my Spanish wasn’t as awful as I thought. It came back to me relatively quickly. That really did shock me.

Being January, it was quite cold. It averaged in the high 30s to low 40s for most of my six-day visit. Fahrenheit that is. I almost forgot about that. Luckily I checked just before I left Asia and brought a jacket.

It was good to see family again. It had been more than 20 years. Those who know me, understand that I am not perhaps the most family-oriented person in the world. 😊 But still, I enjoyed the visit. Although it was odd talking about people that I hadn’t thought about for so many years.

The countryside is really beautiful, as you can see from the plethora of photographs I have posted on this blog article. It didn’t seem very crowded there, because thankfully this would be considered the low season. The low, low season. As such I really enjoyed that part of it.

I would hate to be here when it is thronged with the British tourists during the summer. The roads are exceedingly narrow, although very well maintained, but I cannot imagine what it would be like when you have thousands more vehicles fighting with cyclists on these very same winding lanes.

For the first time in a very long time I rented a car from Hertz, and I chose a Mercedes as a treat to myself. Lovely car, except that it took me a few minutes to figure out how to turn it on because I didn’t understand that one pushes a button. On top of that, it has what my brother referred to as “nanny mode”, and it took me a while to turn off the buzzers that sounded every time you crossed out of your lane. Or, in fairness to me, what the vehicle considered to be “in your lane”. Really startled me the first few times. I was laughing at myself. Ostensibly a technology guy, and I was having problems figuring out the car I was driving.

I stayed at a Marriott close to a national park and with a golf course. Thankfully they had at least one restaurant open at 3PM. Very nice room.

Although I worked every day to the extent my jet lag allowed, it was pleasant walking every morning in the cold, clear air. I think I will have to go back to visit again.

Driving around that little corner of Spain was interesting. The Google direction finder made life a little difficult… It really works 99% of the time. But you certainly have to be careful on those roundabouts. As my brother pointed out 😊. They have roundabouts everywhere, at least in that part of Spain, and they can be a little difficult to navigate if you’re waiting for Google navigator to tell you which exit to take and then you take the wrong one. Sometimes the exits are very close together, and on top of that, some of the exits that I consider an exit Google doesn’t consider an exit, or vice versa. And Google’s anglicized pronunciation of Spanish street names is funny to say the least. Next time I’ll change to Spanish language see if it is any better. Why didn’t I think of that then???

I had a lovely time driving up from Dénia to the Valencia airport at 430 in the morning. Lovely drive, nice roads, almost no traffic, until I got close to the airport. I haven’t driven like that for a long time. It was really enjoyable. Then Google Maps complicated my approach on the labyrinthine maze of roads around the airport. Overshot twice 😊.

The only problem that I had was during my flight to continue on to Buenos Aires.

Regardless, I managed to find my way to the airport and the real hurdle became the check-in staff at the Iberian Airlines counter. As it turns out, for reasons that I won’t go into here, I had two separate tickets going to Buenos Aires. One from Valencia to Madrid to Doha. On Qatar Airways. And then another ticket from Doha to Buenos Aires, again, on Qatar Airways. The two ladies that I ended up talking to at the Iberian counter were clueless. They absolutely refused to check my bag all the way through to Buenos Aires, even though it was all on the same airline or partner airline (And Iberian is a partner airline). Morons. Very unhelpful. I finally decided that it would be better to take my (very heavy) bag off in Madrid and then go to the Qatar Airlines counter rather than have to do that same thing in Doha after a 10-hour trip. And, as I expected, when I got to the Qatar counter in Madrid, the lady had absolutely no problem. Naturally she could check my back all the way through to Buenos Aires. I do like that airline.

On the positive side, the Iberia Business Class lounge in Madrid at the 4S Terminal was really nice. Great showers, excellent food.

I’m doing a few short blogs over the next week or so, rather than a long one. So that is all for now.

#111.5 A New Look

#110 End of a Decade