5-13-10: We (Sarah, Claudia, Nick, and Indy) met up at Chicago O’Hare’s International Terminal, more or less prepared for adventure. “More or less” because we soon encountered our first setback in the form of two bags declared too big for carry on and one which was okay for carry on, but too big to reasonably be considered a “personal item”. Three bags now checked, we grabbed a last meal stateside and boarded a huge 747 for the first leg of the flight: Chicago to Amsterdam via KLM, the Royal Dutch Airline, who served us some surprisingly delicious meals and from whom Sarah liberated a blanket. For Nick and Indy, most of this flight was spent playing Pokemon.
Sarah hides her shame and ill-gotten goods under Indy’s hat.
5-14-10: Amsterdam’s airport was nice, but also managed to look exactly like every other airport ever (except for the tulip shop). Our plane had arrived early, so when we walked to pretty literally the most remote corner of the airport to find out gate for the next leg, we were all deeply confused by the abandoned area where the signs had to lead to, but which was labeled with a different gate number. We decided food would make everything more understandable (except Dutch).
Eventually, other confused travelers filtered into the mystery gate, followed by less confused KLM employees. It turns out that the Gate at the End of the World actually had two numbers, despite being only one physical gate. Go figure. We finally took off for Madrid.
Madrid’s airport also looked like every other airport except that the familiar ads were in Spanish (they were still in English in Amsterdam). On the other hand, the Metro was very nice and just different enough from Chicago’s to weird out Indy and Nick (who puts all the line maps on every train?). Once at our stop, we realized that we had only a vague idea of where our hostel was, and Indy’s fancy GPS was still convinced it was in Austin, so we set boldly off in a direction until we found some street numbers, at which point we set boldly off in the opposite direction.
At the Hostel Salamanca, which has marble floors and a two person, 1920’s-style elevator, we discovered that a double room means one moderately-sized bed, and what we really wanted was a twin room (one of which Nick and Claudia got due to fortunate housekeeping error). Mishaps now comprehensible, though not fixable, we spent the rest of the day desperately clinging to consciousness to ward off jet lag (except for Claudia, who just slept).
This is a twin room.
This is a double room. Not quite what we had intended.
Next up: Madrid and many more pictures.