11/10/2007 - Travel To Madrid

So I am in the lobby of the Hotel Agumar in the Madrid city center waiting for our room to be ready. We arrived at the hotel around 10am CET Sunday and they told us it would be about two hours before they had one for us. We just took a walk to loosen up and get some fresh air. The temperature is in the 50s somewhere and they say it will warm up considerably by midday. For now I am just trying to stay awake.

We started the day on Saturday at Detroit Metro airport waiting to board Northwest flight 40 to Amsterdam. We arrived at the airport about three hours ahead of departure and there were no lines at the ticketing counter or security so we breezed right through. With a lot of time to kill I browsed through the Scotch at the Duty Free store and reviewed my Spanish phrasebook. I spoke to a nice couple traveling to Barcelona for a Mediterranean cruise. They were kind enough to point out that my camera was on the floor under my seat. If not for them things would have gotten off to an unpleasant start.

The plane was an Airbus A-330. It was configured well and the seats were pretty comfortable.

There is usually a nice entertainment setup on planes that fly long hauls. Ours was no exception. Each seat had a personal screen and remote control. You could choose from about twenty different movies to watch and several video games to play.





I had my iPod with me and I had encoded a load of movies for the trip so I kept myself entertained by watching Airplane. “Joey, do you like movies about Gladiators?” Aside from that I basically listened to music and tried to sleep.

Overnight international flights always seem to follow the same pattern. After we take off they serve a drink. I chose Dewar’s and they gave me a double.



After the drink service comes the dinner service. Dinner was chicken and mashed potatoes. It came with veggies, rice, salad, crackers, sharp cheddar cheese, a dinner roll, apples, cookies and white wine.



After dinner they turn off the cabin lights for the night. People can watch TV, read or sleep. They don’t do any regular drink service during the night. About two hours before you land they turn the lights back on and serve breakfast. I wasn’t a big fan of what they gave us. It was a mixed fruit cup, raspberry yoghurt and a egg and cheese biscuit with orange juice. I didn’t really eat much of it.



After that it’s time to get ready to land. We got into Amsterdam got off our plane, walked to our gate and got on the Madrid flight immediately. We didn’t have much of a layover and we had to go through customs to get into the EU. I would’ve liked to spend some time in the casino that was in the concourse but you can’t do everything.

The flight to Madrid was very nice. We flew KLM on a Boeing 737. It was clear the flight attendants knew Dutch and English but no Spanish. When they gave the pre-flight instructions in Spanish they were looking around to see if they were buckling the sample seat belt at the right time. They gave us some disgusting chicken salad sandwich which I would not have normally minded but it was 7:30 in the morning and I wasn’t in the mood. After that I basically slept the rest of the way in.

Our luggage came out quick in Madrid and the cab was small but fine. The hotel seems to be pretty nice but I’m not in the room yet.

By the way… I was bored on the plane.