Adventure to Spain

We headed off to Newark, NJ from Houston early on June 16.  I was so excited I barely slept!  And at the same time nervous ... was this vacation even going to work out?  All my months of planning could quickly have been gone - no tickets creates some stress for sure.

We got into Newark early - around 11 - and the flights to Europe didn't start leaving till around 6pm.  So we enjoyed 3 meals in an airport.. awesome:)

We had many options to get to Barcelona - go through Paris, Madrid, Lisbon, Madrid, or our best bet, directly to Barcelona - what would the chances be of us not making it on!?!

As long as everything ran on time we would be good - it's very common for people to misconnect and that's what we were banking on.  The stand by lists were pretty extensive and we needed every person possible to not show up or miss their flight:)

Everything was looking great - the flight to Barcelona had a ton of people that were going to misconnect!!  Whoo hoo!

Oh lordy... wouldn't you know that there was a storm rolling through and the Barcelona flight got delayed... along with every other flight - meaning no one was misconnecting.  Things were looking bad for sure.

We opted to open up the United magazine and look at all the places we could go with open seats - Mexico?  Alaska?  Hawaii?  hmmm...

While I was looking into this Derrick was off chumming up with a gate agent in charge of the Madrid flight.  It was oversold and we were at the bottom of the list.  They hadn't started boarding yet and Derrick came running to me saying 'quick get your stuff - come on' - we passed everyone sitting there waiting to board and this guy gives me a ticket and says get on.  I felt like we were being snuck on... come to find out .. we were in a sense!  There was a group of people that had been told already they were going to misconnect on their flight over so I took one of their seats... but actually they would've made their flight!  Also, since we were at the bottom of the list we really shouldn't have been on the flight at all.  Derrick offered to sit jumpseat - meaning up front with no leg room, recline, nothing - for 8 hours - if I got a seat.  The gate agent though that was so kind - no one ever offers to sit jumpseat for that long - that he let us on!  Good ol' Derrick:)

So we are on and away we go!  To Madrid -- our final destination was Barcelona:)

We got to Madrid and the airport was confusing as anything!  We were so confused... starving... jet lagged.. exhausted (Derrick hadn't slept for over 24 hours at that point and me only 2 or 3) and we still needed to get to Barcelona and didn't have any tickets OR internet ...ever tried booking a ticket without internet and in another language -- it's tough!

So we headed to a kiosk, in broken Spanish I booked us 2 tickets to Madrid.  Our flight left in about an hour and we just had to get through security which he said would take no time.  The line was god awful long - we were stressed but don't worry - after some hiccups and Derrick's ticket not processing at first so we didn't get to sit next to each other - we made it on:)  My seat was switched around 3 times but finally... we were off! 

We got off - hopped in a cab - and 20 minutes later we were outside a big ol' door -- being told 'this is it' and away they went. 

We were in Barcelona - grimy, gross, greasy, tired, and hungry.  Welcome to Spain:0  We made it!