After more than two years of being home bound and wondering when we could travel again, we are off!
Very excited, BUT the world of travel is way more complex than before. We got N95s for the trip to learn less than 2 weeks before departure that N95s are NOT certified by the EU and we needed FFP2s, which we could only find on Amazon and EBay. We have over 11 hours on a plane, masked, and got to the airport in an Uber, masked, and now are hanging out waiting for our flight, masked. People in the immediate area are being pretty casual about masking (below their noses or chin) and three folks I can see from here have no mask in evidence at all. Apparently, enforcement in the terminal is non-existent.
I also discovered that even tho we have TSAPre, I still have to go thru the serious scanner because my fancy knee triggers the old kind. Drat! At least I got to keep my shoes on and not dig out the laptop and toiletries.
Our immediate destination is Barcelona, which I have been dying to see since Kristen visited there in the 80s or early 90s. We had intended to visit in 2002 when we bought our car in Germany, but when 'street people' broke into it and damaged the lock, we re-routed so that we would be more likely to not leave the car unattended while we explored. We did get a temporary lock fix then, but we became more cautious.
On our first full day in Barcelona, we plan to get a hop-on-hop-off bus ride that visits a bunch of the most notable Gaudi sites. After 3 and a half days in Barcelona, we set off on a coastal cruise along the southern Spanish coast with a stop in Gibralter and we end up with a couple days in Portugal.
We arrive in Barcelona about 24 hours, clock time, after we leave here, so the next post will probably not be until Monday.
We are totally ready to be on the road again and working toward being relaxed in spite of potentially challenging situations. My planner self loves to arrange everything and then just enjoy it without bumps in the road, but that's probably not realistic this time.
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