flying to Barcelona

Wednesday June 19, 2013
I finally made it to Barcelona. 24 hours after I got to the airport in Charlotte. Well, 18, but for me it’s 24 now that I’m 6 hours ahead!

It was an interesting day. The flight to New York was fine, just a normal 2 hour flight, landing in rain. We had to walk through an outdoor walkway to go up stairs to get into the building, then my gate wasn’t on the board yet. So, I wandered around to find a spot to sit and see if I could get internet, nope, it costs to get online. I found a Wendys, so bought some lunch and found a spot to eat it, right next to a woman and her two kids who’d been on the flight from Charlotte. We started chatting, the kids made a friend and played games on the computers in the terminal while the mom and I talked, they were on the way to Frankfurt to visit her sister for a few weeks. After a while, I figured I’d go ahead to my gate, which was finally posted.

The gate changed a few seconds after I got there, so I did a lot more walking, got more food and kind of settled in. I made a few more friends there. A woman from the Philippines going to Barcelona for an “eseren” conference, and a group of students from Greenville, SC who were going to Barcelona just to travel. In line to board, I made another friend, a woman who’d spent the last two weeks in NY to help her sister with a newborn, but she was going back to her family now. She ended up sitting in the same row as me. We were in the middle, and no one else was there, so we had four seats for the two of us! Turns out, her family moved via cruise ship. They did a transatlantic on Royal Caribbean and moved to Spain! We talked during the take-off and a bit from time to time afterwards, but mostly we just did our own thing (I slept some, walked around once or twice, and watched “Oz the Great and Powerful”). Not a bad flight, especially since I could spread out over three seats! :)

We landed about 45 minutes early, and I made another friend, a couple going on a cruise on the Nieuw A! They said they’d keep an eye out for me and we chatted while waiting in line to go through Customs. It was actually pretty quick, going through Customs, but getting baggage took a while. One of the students from SC actually has the same big blue bag I have, so I accidently grabbed his… twice.. before I found mine. Once I had my bag, I wandered around to find a phone to call for the shuttle. There, I met another girl doing the same, she’s joining the Nieuw A tomorrow as Youth Staff as well! We asked around about the phone, which was a pay phone that we couldn’t get to work. Then, we left baggage claim to find out where we could get coins to get it to work. We tried another one out there, but still didn’t work. So, we went to information and they just told us to try again. So, then we went to Tourist Information. They were awesome! Immediately they told us exactly where to go, and even called the shuttle for us! Very happy with the Tourism Information desk!

We waited and talked, and finally the shuttle came. When we got to the hotel, we both kind of just laid down on the beds and wondered how we were going to get through the rest of the day. I got online, then showered and changed while she napped, then I took a quick nap while she showered and changed, then we went out to see some of Barcelona.

We took the metro closer to town, and ended up getting off at a stop too early (yay my folded map-reading skills), so we decided just to walk and see how far we could make it. It was really too far to walk to get to downtown, so we wandered around, found a late lunch, and wandered around some more before deciding we were getting too tired for this to be fun anymore. It was nice to be out for a while at least.

When we got back, we sat by the pool for a little while, enjoying it and realizing just how awesome it is that we were in Barcelona, at no expense of our own, relaxing with our feet in the water! :) It’s one of those times when I’m amazed at how much I love my job. God has a marvelous plan!

By the time we were falling asleep laying at the edge of the pool, it was nearing dinnertime, about the time I’d told myself I could potentially start thinking about going to sleep. We agreed to wake up by 8 to check out the dinner downstairs, so we went down and had a nice dinner before we could finally get to sleep!