Day #1: Long, Long Day of Travel from Hawaii to Barcelona

On October 5th, Art's classmate and walking partner, Morris insisted on driving us to the airport despite the fact that Art told him we'd have to leave at 4:30 in the morning.

What a fun surprise to see Morris' wife Jane with him to send us off so wonderfully.  She said he promised her an early morning breakfast.

We got through the TSA pre-approval line without having to take off our shoes or outer garments.  We'd signed up earlier for the GOES (Global Online Enrollment System) card.

No movies on the 6:05 AM United Airlines flight from Honolulu to San Francisco.  Arrrghhh!  It's a good thing we had our Kindles and iPad.

I was able to charge our iPhone, iPad and Kindle Fire at the same time using the multiple charger I wrote about before in San Francisco.

Something did go terribly wrong here.  I charged Art's Kindle Fire and when he turned it on, everything on it had been wiped clean.  He'd saved a lot of maps and travel information on it and now they were all gone.  When we hooked up to Amazon to recover information, nothing came back.  It was very depressing.

After grabbing a bite to eat at the airport, we boarded our airplane at 7:00 PM for the long 10 hrs. 33 minutes flight to Frankfurt, Germany.

I sat next to a woman who worked in San Francisco but was visiting her family in Frankfurt.  I did not know during the entire flight that she had her tiny dog in a little carrier next to her.

 We arrived in Frankfurt at 2:45 PM.

After a short layover in Frankfurt, we caught the the Lufthansa flight to Barcelona at 4:05 PM and arrived at 6:05 PM.

With all the time changes, I was pretty darn exhausted.

I didn't even know what day it was.

Now came the challenging part.

We would have to call the Best Western Alfa Hotel to come and pick us up with their free airport shuttle.

Art tried using our phone card but it wouldn't work.  We couldn't figure out how many Euros it was either.  He finally asked a fellow at the Information booth who kindly called the hotel for us with his phone.

I thought it was humorous that a young woman started asking me questions about how to use the pay phone and I kept telling her, "No comprende." She kept trying to talk to me anyway.

I wish I knew more Spanish.  She said she was from Honduras.... at least that's what I think she said.

I emailed my daughter, Tiffany who said I should say, "Lo ciento, no me habla espanol."

Unfortunately the only phrase I have stuck in my brain for emergencies is, "¿Dónde está el baño?" (Where's the bathroom?)

The airport shuttle arrived at 7:00 PM.

On the shuttle, we met a young woman from China who spoke perfect English.

She said two of her friends got their passports stolen and she herself got the flight times mixed up and missed her flight back to Beijing.  She was therefore returning to the hotel for another night's stay.  That's Art below talking to her while waiting to check in at the front desk.

She was relating all the travel horror stories that they experienced.

This was rather ominous.

We were so tired that we didn't feel like looking for dinner.  We just grabbed some dry sandwiches from the hotel concession and went right to sleep!

I felt awful for my cousin and his partner, Nancy who would be arriving the following morning and immediately boarding the bus for a day of sightseeing.