Good and Bad

Our last driving day began well. All packed, we set out on the toll highway. Good weather and light traffic made the trip easy. Passing miles and miles of orange groves it was hard to believe Spain is only ranked 6th in their production (Brazil is #1). We breezed through the toll booths laughing about how we had struggled with them 2 weeks ago. It’s expensive but Google told us we were saving 1.5 hours for the last 500 km. Our troubles began when we came to the last toll. Christine couldn’t find the credit card we had been using. Our best guess was that it had fallen out a the restaurant we had stopped at for lunch. At the hotel, she called Visa and Roger and Brian returned the rental van to the airport. Remembering we had to top up the gas tank, we pulled in to make a quick purchase. Not so fast. Despite Roger following all the robotic instructions, the pump would not work! He had already put in his credit card info so we were reluctant to move and try another pump. To make matters worse, the station was fully automatic and unmanned. We tried asking people in adjacent stores to no avail. Our luck changed when a young woman drove up behind us. She volunteered to phone her sister in law who spoke English and talked us through an alternate way of purchasing gas. Good.

Leaving the station, our GPS decided to have one last hiccup. Bad. After going in circles for 5 minutes, we finally got directions from the cursed machine and returned the van. We couldn’t wait to tell them our tale of woe. The Enterprise representative couldn’t have been nicer. She listened to all our complaints, apologized profusely, explained what we could have done differently and gave us a substantial rebate. Good!

Back at our airport hotel, we reconnected with our wives and enjoyed a complimentary glass of cava (not very good) and eventually, a surprisingly good dinner. Good.Read more