Mostly Spain 2023 - Arrival

 I write to you from our home for the next month El Campello, Spain. El Campello is a town just north of the city of Alicante on the Mediterranean Coast halfway between Barcelona and Malaga. This is an area we are exploring specifically as a potential longer-term stay locale. We will get more into that in further posts. 

Getting to our destination was its usual set of challenges.

The actual flight from Albuquerque to Madrid was uneventful. Madrid's International Airport was packed, plus is is quite large. But that is not atypical of any large international destination. Let's just say it was the typical Airport World experience (long-term readers will remember my observation that ALL international airports are pretty much the same and make up their own unique ecosystem.)

We were staying in a Marriott Hotel overnight before picking up a rental car and driving to El Campello. The room was nice with nice soft American style beds. We had a disaster of a meal at the hotel restaurant when the waiter totally failed to put in Wife's order. Then there was a shift change. I get all my food. She goes foodless. She is tired and hungry. Finally they get the food to her. In between there were a few other acts of disrespect. She lost it. Good for her. One should not just be a victim. But we were both in a pretty poor mood so sleeping wasn't that great. Not to mention, we don't do well sleeping together because of my snoring and other sleep habit differences. Let's just say we were both tired and crabby in the morning.

I will say that the breakfast buffet at the Marriott was over the top. I joked with Wife that we should have come at 6am and stayed until it closed at 10:30am so we could gradually try everything. They had all you can eat jamon iberico (super expensive cured ham). They were charging the same price at the restaurant for a small plate of this stuff as we paid for the whole buffet per person.

Then off to the airport to get our rental car. We wait in line for the agent to get off the phone for about 15 minutes. Then she tells us our contract is already and to go out to the parking. Of course the car we are assigned has an electrical issue and won't start. (This determined with the attendant at the lot who only speaks Spanish). We are assigned a new car, a larger version of a Mini-Cooper. This had a really bizarre (to me) control panel. Of course, the language was in Spanish which took us a while to figure out how to change. Plus, I couldn't figure out how to get my phone holding attachment on the windshield so I could see the phone for GPS purposes. And, of course, the audio instructions are still not working with Google Maps off my phone, a problem I've had for some time and have not been able to resolve. So Wife is trying to read off the instructions which is hard because she can't actually see and read the phone screen map too well. 

Nonetheless, we do make it out of Madrid. At our first rest stop, I change the location of the holder so I can see it which helps a lot. We make it to our destination without further problem. The apartment (as you will see below) is really beautiful. Exactly what we were looking for. There are some issues but i will save that for a next post. 

We took a quick drive to a supermarket and experienced the quintessential European underground parking experience. Wife and I are always so upset with ourselves that we don't video these experiences where you are making a 32 point turn to try to get out of the parking space and work your way round and round the narrow road up (or down) to get in and out of the garage. 

On the other hand, we bought a ton of groceries including a lot of alcohol and only paid $130! We had French picnic for dinner and collapsed. 

But this morning, I was up as the light was rising and saw why we have made all this effort.

And the good part of our hotel meal, mine. A nice soup/stew of beans plus vegetables and some off the chart croquettas that were incredibly delicately fried and smooth on the inside.