Flights overseas are always interesting. I think it is just one of those things where you have to put yourself into a mindset of boredom to get through the long haul flight! You can't get there any faster than the plane can travel and you have to be ready for delays, rude people, smelly people and crying children! You know it's going to happen so don't get upset when it does. So our flights were pretty uneventful except for the 9 year old boy who sat beside me and decided during the entire night hours that his mom's lap was his pillow and my lap was meant for his feet. It was a long night of getting kicked and forcing his feet and legs off my lap!
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| Coffee at Barcelona Airport |
We arrived at the Barcelona airport only to be told after all the bikes had been off loaded except my trike, that there was no more luggage from the Singapore flight! Great, no trike. As I stood in line at the "problem luggage" area one of the airport workers was waving frantically in my direction, they had found my trike! It supposedly was "stuck in a corner", not sure what that meant! But thank god it was here. We then waited for the vans and truck so we could load all the bikes, tandems and trikes and get on the road to our hotel for the night.
It was the Hotel Hiberus in Zaragoza, Spain. This is on the northeast border of France and a 4 hour drive from Barcelona. The drive to Zaragoza was interesting to say the least. I don't know what I expected in Spain but I found the countryside pretty desolate and flat. We did drive through areas of lush green farming and a number of vineyards (although the trees looked more like olive trees than grape vines) but on the whole it seemed very dry and kind of reminded me of the Badlands of the US with the dry land covered with tuffs of green brush, scrub and grass. But then out of nowhere there would be pockets, similar to an oasis, surrounding the highway petrol station! At one point the hills were so barren that Clare was heard to comment "looks like where the Taliban hang out", she was right!
I must say it was very quiet in our van, most of us had now been traveling for about 34 hours! The roads were excellent and no doubt the upkeep was from the numerous tolls that we had to pay along the journey. We complain about our tolls, but in our 4 hour journey we paid almost 100 Euro for the 3 vehicles! We knew we were getting close to the hotel with signs for Zaragoza, but finding the hotel was the problem. I think we got lost about 4 times. Eventually finding our way to the biggest hotel I have seen in a while.
The temperature was around 30 so the first thing was a swim in the beautiful pool, grab a quick dinner and then hit the sack. As I sit here finishing this blog and getting ready for a well deserved sleep a local band has just started up for a wedding being held right below our room window! Oh dear what is worse a 9 year old kicking me or a Spanish guitar playing band! Will tell in the next blog! Buenas noche
Yes it was a common local joke here during the search for Osama Bin Laden that the CIA was recording all those videos using a guy in disguise in any of those badlands surrounding Zaragoza. All that area is called Monegros (English Wikipedia, search for "Monegros Desert"), and it used to have massive patches of woodland until all the wood was used to build warships by the Spanish king in the XVII century. Actually Monegros means "black hills", because dark green is the colour of the pine trees and "juniperus savina" that made up those woods.
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