Day 386: Back to Spain!

Time to leave Malta and head back to Spain, though to an entirely new spot - the Canary Islands! No real rush leaving today, as our pickup wasn't until 12pm, so we took our time packing up and organising things.

Our ride to the airport turned up about 20 minutes late but still in plenty of time, so we piled in and set off for the airport. Traffic was much better this time and the driver much saner, so no real issues on the way.

Check in was fine, though for some reason they were expecting us to have a cat, not a dog! Go figure. Checked my bag through to Tenerife and crossed my fingers that it'll turn up! Had a quick snack before security, then headed through and straight to the gate.

Not much to report from the actual flight! Schnitzel sat in his bag under the seat in front of Shandos for the full two hours and only made a noise once - when a nearby person had a loud conversation with the steward over whether he could have whiskey and water instead of whiskey and dry. But otherwise he was completely silent.

Landed in Barcelona around 5pm with plenty of time to kill. Schnitzel went for a pee in the smoker's area, Shandos grabbed some food at McDonalds though I passed as I'd had a larger snack back in Malta. Otherwise we just settled in to some random seats and vegged out. After a while I got bored and found a charging station, stood there and edited a video!

Finally around 7:30 it was time for our flight. I grabbed a quick dinner from McDonalds, Schnitzel had another pee and then we boarded. The boarding took absolutely f o r e v e r for some reason, absolutely no idea why! Our seats were in the second-last row of the plane and it looked like the plane had come from elsewhere - we were nowhere near the back of the boarding queue but all of the luggage bins were full. I opened nearby ones that were "full" in a fit of pique, and surprise surprise they weren't even close. I shoved our bags in, glared at the stewardess and then sat down.

Flight out from Barcelona was almost 4 hours and quite bumpy in a couple of places. The seats on Vueling planes are quite thin and not padded - it's good because you get more leg room, but it's not quite as comfortable. And they don't recline either, naturally! I got the middle seat too, so it was't super comfortable for me anyway, especially with a rather portly gent on the aisle seat and Shandos's handbag under my feet, but oh well. It was only a few hours.

Took a while to get off the plane again since we were so far back, but at least we didn't stand around at the luggage carousel - my bag turned up (thankfully!) within a few minutes of us arriving. Caught a taxi for the 10 minutes ride to our apartment, staying in the spare room of a young-ish French guy's apartment. His two children were apparently very disappointed they didn't get to meet Schnitzel since they were in bed when we arrived!

A brief chat and then a wind-down before bed around 12:30am; it had been a long day and a change of time zone as well!Read more