The Adventure Begins (Not Well).

This is a long and really quite boring rendition – with way more details than 99 percent of you need or want to know. Skip right by this post and going forward I’ll try to stay brief and only point out highlights of the areas we visit. But this blog is also my journal so for my family and close friends (who may care and not mind boring) I am writing a little more in depth. Honestly – skip by – it’s 10 minutes you’ll never get back!

I can’t start talking about this trip that we are going on without prefacing that the planning has been going on for quite some time. Anyone that knows my obsessive personality knows that I am four binders deep and 1000 hours long of delicious, wonderful, meticulous planning. I love, love, love trip planning (and event planning and just planning). Great planning makes for great holidays and we’ve had a few. I have read books, watched videos, read blogs, enjoyed vlogs, and spoken with travellers about all of our proposed destinations and the journeys to get there.

This planning began when we were 19 and 20 and initially started planning a two month sojourn to Europe. We got busy for awhile. Fast forward many, many, years to Covid isolation and survival and the talk about an adventure to Europe began again. During the last couple years we lost a couple of close, special people and got strong reminders from their spouses not to put off plans anymore- live in the present. So we set a date and planning began in earnest.

BUT!!!! as important as the planning is, it is more important to be able to roll with the punches when life gets in the way of the perfectly laid plans. And it will!

Our first trip day was to be a flight to Calgary and later that evening a connector to London. We were strictly budgeting each part of the journey so we could see as much as possible. London flights were a quarter of the cost when we booked and although we weren’t including London in the itinerary this time round – we could grab an Easy jet flight to Spain the following day for 21 bucks. We booked and found a very nice, reasonable Airbnb right beside the Gatwick airport that was 5 minutes from a highly rated pub with fantastic fish and chips and sticky toffee pudding. Perfect night out!! We had to fly into Heathrow, and Easyjet to Spain flies out of Gatwick, but the National Express bus runs every hour between the two. It would be a nice hour and a half ride through London. We had lots of time. Great plan – we were set.

Until – we look at the departure board in the Regina airport and see that our flight to Calgary was delayed 30 minutes- no biggie – then 45 minutes -yikes we are going to have to run- then an hour and a half – we’re done. Can’t make the connector flight, next one out is 24 hours later – have to night in Calgary – will miss the night in London all booked, will miss the Spain flight – all booked, will miss our bike tour the morning we arrive in Spain – all booked and no compensation from West Jet….. delay was out of their control. I’d like to say that I was calm and cool through the whole thing but I think I teared up at least once and went from sad to mad and back to sad again. Thank goodness for my calm, cool, positive husband who reassured me that this was a small bump in the road and that our adventure would begin in Calgary instead, and let’s get on with it. He also warned me that there would be more bumps ahead in our plans without question and we were quite capable of handling those too. Only one of the many, many reasons I love him to pieces.

So we booked a night at the Garden Hilton beside the airport. West Jet booked us the same flight the next night to London and we started making calls. Easy Jet could move our tickets for a small fee and fly us out the same day to Barcelona if we could get from Heathrow to Gatwick in time. We had from 12:30 landing to 4:00 take off – but the two airports were an hour by car away. That meant, if we could make this new plan work, all we would miss is the overnight in London and the yummy pub evening but we would actually get to Barcelona just a few hours after we’d originally planned. One of the great WestJetter employees. (Even though the news they gave us was abysmal- they were all kind, caring folks) gave us the hint that although they weren’t allowed to compensate us for any losses or incurred expenses, our WestJet MasterCard might. So we called MasterCard right from the hotel in Calgary and sure enough, our card holds Trip interruption insurance. They would cover hotel, meal and incurred costs from the delay until we got to our destination. Yeah!!! And away we go!

So now that the background is over – trip summary report:

Day 1 – Regina to Calgary. Although this was only a trip through both airports and dealing with administration and off to a hotel – we already knew we’d made some packing mistakes. We ended up spending an hour in the Calgary hotel re-organizing and leaving quite a big parcel behind (shoes, an extra bag, etc etc) I can’t stress enough how important it is to be comfortable and able to carry your bags around the airports and to your destinations. If it’s not – you have too much stuff! We did and we don’t now.

Day 2- Calgary to London. We travelled in a beautiful Dreamliner jet that actually had lots of leg room. No one shared our three seat row so we had extra room. They fed us a nice supper, gave us a blanket and pillow for the night and woke us to have an okay breakfast in the morning. We both slept for short bits throughout the night. After landing we had a very fast trip through Immigration and through customs (thank goodness for no checked luggage) . ….Very fast trip from Heathrow to Gatwick (we hired a car as we were concerned that the bus and bus connections would be too slow) we had a sweetheart of a driver that never went below 75 miles an hour (which is the speed limit) the entire trip. We got to Gatwick in lots of time to check in, have another coffee and off to Barcelona, Spain. An hour and 45 minutes later we landed. It was about 8:00 pm when we touched down and 9:30 by the time we got to our air bnb and straight to bed. Beat but happy. We are in Spain. Pinch myself. Spain.