Spain: The Departure

Our taxi arrived last Friday promptly at 8:30am and Mary got the car seats situated in a few minutes. When I arranged the car I asked the woman about renting a van but she said she felt 2 adults and 2 kids would fit ok in the wagons; Mary did manage to squeeze into the back between car seats but with little room to spare. It felt odd just leaving Watson in our apartment. We had arranged for Watson to be visited regulary and felt that being at home was much better than having to kennel him. Turns out it was a great decision.


Upon boarding our flight from Prague to Madrid we were told the planes didn't have enough room for the kids car seats so they would have to sit without them. Apparently the budget carriers cram the seats in a lot tighter. For Sofia it didn't really matter but it made handling Ali more challenging since she is too small to sleep in the big seat so she ended up falling asleep only with Mary holding her.

In Madrid we had only an hour to switch from our Smart Wings to our Spainair flight to Malaga. We had to rush across a terminal being renovated which was a complete mess and were rushed in a bus to a different terminal for our flight. We went directly to the gate to check-in since we didn't have pre-assigned seats but at the gate they told us we had to go a Spainair counter to get our boarding passes. The line at the counter was long and I slowly trudged through the line as Mary tried to keep the kids corraled and we both kept glancing at the clock as it ticked closer to departure time. By the time I got to the counter I started by saying we had 5 minutes before departure so the woman told me just to go directly to the gate. This time they assigned seats right at the gate. It would have been nice if they done that the first time but at least we made the flight.


Our takeoff was slightly delayed as we were told that they had put a bag on the plane for a passenger who didn't make the flight so now they were going to have to unload the plane and re-check all the bags to make sure that one was removed. From a safety perspective it seemed appropriate but didn't give us any confidence our bags would be there when we arrived. It's only 50 minutes from Madrid to Malaga and we were thankful for that. Because we were the last ones on we were also in the last row and in that rear-engine plane the noise and vibration were almost unbearable. The often-stated mantra "it's all part of the adventure" always managed to get each other to smile during this less than perfect start to our vacation. The flight was fine although the wait for our luggage took a while. One bag finally came out and as a fairly sizeable group of us was still standing and waiting the luggage carousel stopped moving and we realized then that one bag hadn't made it. Tired and hungry at this point we filed our claim, got our rental car and got on the road for our 30 minute drive to our resort. Once on the highway the views of the mountains to the north and the ocean to the south quickly made the day's misadventures insignificant and we arrived ready for a good week.

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