Initial Thoughts on Barcelona Trip - Part 1: The Flights

We returned yesterday, leaving our hotel at about 7:30 a.m. CEST (Central European Summer Time, I think) and landing at Dulles about 3:30 p.m. Our trip across left Dulles at about 6 p.m. and we wound up in Barcelona about 11 a.m. the next morning. The debate was which is a better way to go, flying through the night, or over a full day. In either case, you land alive and a little loopy, but seem to manage. Perhaps it makes no great difference.

Iberia Airlines provided good, if not flashy, transportation. Everything came off on time, and the food was, for airline food, pretty good. Going across to Europe, the main course was beef goulash, spaetzele, Greek salad, a Wisconsin cheese triangle, and tiramasu. Welcome to Spain, I thought.

We transferred in Madrid both times. That is quite an experience. The Madrid airport is very large, it seems, and unique in the way incoming and outgoing flights are handled. When you leave the plane, you climb three long, long ramps. On one side, the large glass windows let you watch the runways and gates, on the other side, you see mysterious doors, this time clouded, leading to who knows where. The overall effect is very modern. At some point, a small arrow tells you to turn left through one of these doors, and another arrow tells you that connecting flights require you to proceed through still more doors. You then see screens that tell you what gate your flight leaves from. We were leaving yesterday from Gate U65. This means that first, you need to find U. You are helped along this task by going on interminable moving sidewalks that let you look out to the incoming ramps on your right, and into again who knows what on your left. Eventually, you see that you need to go through another set of doors (this time clear glass), because that is where R,S,T and U gates are. Then you go through security again. And then you go down an escalator and find yourself in the middle of a large shopping mall, with upscale designer outlets, duty free shops, places to eat and so forth. The various corridors go off from this area, including one that leads you down past several (I think it was) R gates, until you get to the U corridor, and of course, our plane was at the very end of this corridor. They tell you when you deplane at Madrid, that if you have to transfer planes, give yourself 30 minutes to get from one gate to another. This is not far off.

The Barcelona airport was very different. It is much less spiffy, and looks like it needs a major upgrade (in fact, construction is going on, but I could not tell whether it was for a replacement terminal, or a Terminal D to add to the existing three. Inside our terminal (B, which is dominated by Iberia), there were approximately fourteen billion people looking to check in their luggage. If you are going to any of the Americas (north or south, etc.), you needed to check into gates 24, 25 or 26. There were ten billion people in these lines. It took us about 45 minutes to check in. Then you need to walk to the opposite end of Terminal B (about the equivalent of one end of Dulles to the other), go up a relatively unmarked escalator, find yourself at security, go through security, also find yourself in a shopping mall, but have an easier time finding gate M5.

It all made Dulles seem so much easier. And, by the way, customs in all places worked very smoothly. Only when we came back to the US, and E. told the immigration lady (who asked whether we brought anything back with us) that our luggage was filled with anchovy stuffed olives that I felt we might be in deep trouble. M. disagreed: she said that our bags were about to be searched, but that we escaped this degrading step because no one wanted to put their hands into a vat of anchovy stuffed olives.