The trip that fought back

Thursday, May 01, 2008

We got up early to get on the plane to Madrid. Or I should say, I got up early because Jaime didn't really get to sleep because her roommate and friend came back from drinking at 3am. Nice of them. Five-thirty in the OH-MY-GOD rolls around and we are packing up and catching a cab to the train station because the underground is under repair. We get on the train with time to spare and I decide to go back for coffee. (Actually I said, "I don't think I have time" to which Jaime replies: "You have TONS of time.") When I get back the train is gone along with all my stuff. After a little freak-out session I hop on the next train which is only 30 min behind the first one. Jaime's phone has run out of juice during this time, so all she knows is that I'm on the next train. It only takes a few minutes to track her down at the airport, crisis averted. So we think. We can't check in. The little machines won't accept our passports. We go to the helpdesk and they tell us we've been bumped up to first class (woot!) due to overbooking. I don't think that's why we couldn't check in at the machines, but who really knows. On the way to the plane my boarding pass falls out of my pocket, so we have to stop and wait for everyone else to get on and then get them to print me out a new one. Ugh. We finally get on the plane, we are rocking first class, all is good. We get to the Madrid airport (which is really pretty, by the way) and grab a taxi to our hotel. Except the 4-star hotel we booked weeks in advance doesn't have our reservation. Awesome. About this time the nasty airline coffee is catching up to me and I'm very glad we took a cab instead of the 1 hr metro ride. By the time I get out of the bathroom Jaime has brow-beaten the poor Spanish hotel staff into tears and they are begging us to take their presidential suite on the house. Or maybe I just imagined that part. Either way, we got a room, and it didn't completely suck. FFW through 3 awesome days in Madrid, which I will talk about at another time.

It's time to leave. We get up (not early enough we find out later). We hit the metro, which we navigate flawlessly due to my awesome mass-transit skills. It takes a little longer to get to the airport than I had expected, and then we can't check in again. Stupid automatic check-in machines. So we wait in line. And we wait. And we wait. The line isn't moving. I'm not quite sure what is happening, but they started a new line for people that were flying into Gatwick airport and we rush over and join that, but then it doesn't move either, and now all the people that didn't join the new line are complaining. Loudly. In Spanish. I mean fistfights almost break out. We finally get to the front of the line, and the lady puts the tags on our bags, but doesn't check them in, doesn't give us boarding passes and tells us to go "stand over there" for 5 minutes. Five minutes pass. Another five minutes. This is getting stupid. Jaime launches into action. Everyone screams and runs out of her way. The ticket-jockeys all prostrate themselves before her might and ask for the privelege of carrying us to England on their backs. Or something like that. Either way we get our boarding passes and hurry to the gate. But our flight is delayed, so it was all for nothing. By the time we get out of Gatwick we are an hour-and-a-half late, meaning that much time less to spend in Wales, as that is where we are heading immediately from the airport. In a car. Driven by a madman.

True story.