It continues......

I wasn't ready to leave. There was too much still to see. But, Lyle had business to do in Madrid on Thursday and to reschedule flights and a hotel was way too complicated. Iberia wasn't answering their phone. And we missed the deadline to cancel our hotel in Madrid.

I had carefully gone over the flight schedules when I planned the trip in November. I thought I did a good job of finding a flight leaving Wednesday afternoon so we could spend the evening in Madrid, Lyle could work the next day there, and we would fly out of Madrid back to Paris on Thursday evening.

So much for good intentions. We arrived at the Tenerife airport in plenty of time, glad that we were not going to have to send our bag through to Paris. When we checked in, the ticket agent looked at our itinerary, looked at us, looked at our itinerary, and looked back at us with a very sad look. Oh oh.....what now? We were well in time for the 2:50 flight.

Am I a dumb American, or what? Don't I know by now that Europe operates on a 24-hour clock? The ticket agent shook her head and pointed out that our flight was for 2:50 A.M.....and we were 12 hours late! I couldn't believe any flight would leave at that hour in the morning! That is crazy! She checked the flight and told us it was fully booked....maybe we could get out the next morning. (Actually, that didn't sound so bad, but it looked like we would have to buy new tickets!). She told us she would put us on standby....we would need to wait about a half hour. This was the SECOND stand-by flight that week!

But we were totally grateful to her for doing her best to get us on, which we did.....and in my heart I had to shelve all of my proposed letters to Iberia for what they had put us through.

We arrived into Madrid with no problems, snow now melted, but still cold. Our hotel was a small Spanish one off the Grand Via, a perfect spot for Lyle to get to work and me to shop the next day. Sales were going on in Madrid, just like Paris, and I managed to buy a pair of shoes.

We left Madrid that evening and flew back to Paris.

Our bag didn't. Again. When we were the last and only ones to leave the baggage belt with no
bag, we made our way to the counter, not believing this could happen again. But it did. The agent took our names, and told us she hoped we would get it the next day.

And yes, it did arrive the next day. The delivery man told me there were over 3,000 bags to deliver in the Paris airport. What is going on? There were no weather problems, no change of planes. Just a simple 2 hour flight from Madrid to Paris? Where was my son, Adam, once a baggage supervisor back in the states!

I have learned a few things from this trip:

1) Always pack a change of clothes and necessary toiletries in the carry-on, even if it means following that stupid 3-1-1 rule with the Baggie.

2) Avoid change of airlines on a trip.

3) Observe the 24-hour system when in EUROPE!

4) Take a train whenever possible.....or drive.