Home at last

Flying over the Rockies in Canada

Somewhere around Whistler

Arriving in Vancouver

We survived our travel day from hell and made it to Seattle. Considering that our trip home was so long it was amazing we arrived on time with all our luggage so maybe we can't complain too much.

Our day started when we woke up at 10am Sunday in Madrid. The day before I had this, what I thought was a great idea, that we stay up saturday night as long as we can so we can sleep all day Sunday. Monday morning the taxi was picking us up at 3:45 am so I thought if we could sleep all day Sunday we would just stay up until 3:45 and then sleep on the plane. Well this was not a great idea. First of all my plan failed miserably. I went to bed Sunday morning at 3 am and Pablo at 4 am and for some strange reason we both woke up at 10 am on Sunday. We took a two hour siesta mid-day but I felt like I didn't really sleep. I finally slept a little around midnight on the couch but Pablo stayed up. Around 3 we showered and went down to meet our taxi to go to the airport. Our first flight to Fankfurt left at 6 am. To our surprise it was actually snowing in Madrid when we left and we had to de-ice. Luckily we had a 3 hour layover in Frankfurt so even though our flight was late we had plenty of time.

In Frankfurt we planned to eat some sausages and beer while we waited but we both felt so sick and tired we passed on that idea. Our next flight was to Vancouver and we took off on time and started our 9 and a half our flight. The plane was nice but for some reason we struggled on this flight. I had to stand up every hour or so because I felt so cramped and the time was passing so slowly. We came to the realization that no matter how tired you are or how much you try, we can never sleep on planes. We arrived to Vancouver early, still had not slept, and still had one more flight to go.

We had to wait another 3 hours in Vancouver so we found our gate and Pablo slept on the chairs and I tried to sleep too but didn't work. They have free wi-fi so I checked my email and got an email from Air Canada saying our flight could be delayed or canceled because of a winter storm. I looked out the window and it was cloudy but nothing else. I started to stress out that we were going to make it home. About two hours before our flight it started snowing. Our plane arrived and I spent the next hour just watching it and listening to the lady at the counter to see if I could figure out if was delayed. All the while Pablo slept. Finally it was time to board and they said nothing about delays. We board our tiny, tiny, propeller plane and were told we had to de-ice so it took about a half hour to take off but we finally did. The flight to Seattle was only 30 minutes and that was good because I couldn't take much more of flying especially on that plane. Taking off in the snow on a small plane all I could think about was don't crash like Buddy Holly and that other guy. No idea why. I have problems.

We finally arrived in Seattle at 7:30 pm, did some calculations and figured we woke up Sunday at 10 am and arrived in Seattle at 5:30 am Tuesday (Madrid time) So in two days we probably only slept 2 hours and we were exhausted.

We decided that no matter how cheap the flight (these were really cheap tickets) having only two flights is way worth the extra money when traveling that far. Too bad for Pablo he has almost the same flight going home and he'll be by himself.