Spanish Spree - April 2009
Day 1: A Long Day at the Airport
We got a great deal on our flights on Iberian airlines out of JFK, but unfortunately when we tried to add in the leg from Rochester, NY (our home airport), the price skyrocketed, so we ended up purchasing the flight from Rochester to JFK separately. The downside to this was we wouldn't be able to check straight through to our final destination and needed to allow extra time on our "layover" to go through security a second time.
Our flight to JFK was very uneventful and we landed on time, giving us 5.5 hours to kill at the airport. We immediately left the Delta terminal we had arrived in, thinking there must be more to do in the international terminal. After a quick ride on the AirTrain, we arrived at our new terminal to check-in. Surprisingly, there is NOTHING to do in that terminal and very few food choices even! We knew it would be a long day!
We wrote some postcards (yes, from the airport) and snacked a little bit, and I even pulled out my laptop to study for awhile, but the time definitely dragged on. Finally, it was time to board our flight. Unfortunately, our flight was delayed...by another two hours! Finally, after sitting around in the airport for the better part of the day, we were able to board. We taxied for what seemed like forever, and my mom and I joked that we were actually taking off from a runway at Newark airport. Eventually, we made it up in the air.
I have never had luck sleeping on airplanes, but I was hoping that maybe I'd get lucky this time - after all, we had a busy day in Barcelona planned, and now that we'd be arriving late, we had even less time to rest at our hotel if we still wanted to fit everything in. So, in order to help me fall asleep, I decided to get some wine with dinner...hoping it would relax me enough to get comfortable in those tiny coach seats.
Unfortunately, this plan backfired. My mother thought I had the right idea, so she ordered wine as well. The wine definitely should not have been mixed with the motion sickness medication she had taken - and she ended up acting ridiculously drunk! It was entirely too entertaining to listen to my mom's ramblings and neither of us could stop laughing, so I ended up not being able to sleep after all. I do think I dozed off for about 30-40 minutes out of the entire flight, but so much for a full night's rest. What a great start to our vacation.
Continue to Day 2: Barcelona