Spain

We had a wonderful time in Spain. I absolutely loved Barcelona and would go back in a heartbeat (and once back, it would be very hard to force me to leave, it is just so entirely beautiful there).

Madrid... however... was a living breathing nightmare. I will NEVER go back to Madrid. Furthermore, I will NEVER fly Iberian Air, EVER again.

My mother had an early flight on American Airlines yesterday morning, so my friend (who had been in Spain with us) and I took the transfer to the airport with her. We got up around 6 am, finished last minute packing and showering and breakfast, etc.

We said our goodbyes to my mother when we dropped her off at terminal one. The transfer brought us to terminal four, five miles away, and we then tried to check in for our flight back to London.

The time changed while we were in Spain. Spain was six hours, then five hours ahead of home, and London was five hours, then four hours ahead of home. You guys on the East Coast changed your clocks back this morning, so now we're five hours ahead of you in London (again). It's all very confusing.

We walked into the 20 minute check-in line empty handed, thinking it wouldn't be a problem since we had our passports and they could just look us up on their pretty little machines. Oh how wrong we were.

We got to the front of the line and, I kid you not, four of the desk attendants got up to go on their breaks. At the same time. So we waited about 10 more minutes and finally someone freed up. But she was on the phone, having a personal conversation might I add, and she had no interest in us.

I don't speak Spanish very well, I have a very heavy American accent and I don't like speaking Spanish because of my accent, particularly around native speakers. But I do understand Spanish almost word for word. I hate it when people assume just because I have white skin and red hair and blue eyes that I only speak English, that I am a dumb American and that I can't understand what they are saying. Molly, if you're reading this, it's like people assuming that you're not Cuban when you totally are, and that's not right at all. Assuming makes an ass out of you and me.

So she was on the phone and we gave her our passports and, because of the time changes and our confusing, we knew our flight got in to London around 2:30 but we had no idea what time it left. I knew it was about a 2 hour flight so I said it either left around 11:30 or 12:30 (major confusion). The woman looked at me and said the only flight to London was leaving through British Airways (an affiliate of Iberian Air and American Airlines, for your future information) at 12:30. I looked at her, perplexed, and explained that we had a round trip from London to Barcelona and Madrid to London. She didn't understand what I was telling her, since we flew Air Europa to Madrid. She was pretty much a c*nt and I could have reached across the counter and smacked the smug look off her horse face.

She said she checked every single flight on Iberian for that day and that we weren't on any of them. She said, because we didn't have a flight to London, it would cost us around 600 euro (that's roughly equivalent to $1100, which is roughly 2 times what we spent on our round trip tickets from Boston to London and then back). Tears were already welling up in my eyes at this point, while I frantically tried to call my mother, who had turned both of her phones off. We were on our own for this one.

She directed us to tickets and sales, where we gave the girl our story and she said she checked all the flights as well and we were on none of them. I could have died on the spot, but she told us to go to information and customer service, which we did.

When we got to customer service, we gave the woman our whole story. At this point we had been enduring this process for the better part of an hour. After we told her our story, her exact words to us were "So?" in the snottiest voice ever. "What do you want me to do about it?"

In my head I was screaming "Hello! We are your customers! Serve us!" But outwardly I was just welling up with tears and trying not to burst out crying, successfully might I add. I held it together very well, actually.

She directed us to British Airways, since the general consensus was that we were probably just confused about which airline we were flying. We got to the queue at British Airways and the woman at the top of the line, who was directing people here and there and everywhere, looked at us and asked us if she could help us.

We said "We don't know, we think we're flying Iberian, but everyone thinks we're flying British Airways, and we don't have a flight and we have to get back to London..." and basically we were about to burst into tears in front of this poor woman, so she told us to go right into the line and they would help us.

We got to the front of the line and went to the desk of a man named Constantine. God bless this man. He was confused about our story at first and thought that we were flying from Madrid to Barcelona and Barcelona to London, but eventually we helped him understand. He said "No you're not on any of our flights."

And then, with a nod and a smile he found us on Iberian Air, the 1:15 flight to London.

All the people we had gone to beforehand who had told us that they looked everywhere and couldn't find us had been lying to us. They had looked us in the eye and told us we needed to pay 600 euro for tickets to London, that we weren't on any of the manifests and therefore weren't booked to go to London.

I am so. fucking. mad. about all the shit that happened yesterday. This man was the only one who bothered to help us. We told him everything we had been through and all the different people we spoke to and he told us that it is a common problem with Iberian (we had a similar, but much less devastating experience on our way from London to Barcelona with Iberian) and that he was sorry that his co-workers didn't do their jobs. An apology from him meant to world, I just wish all the others hadn't put two twenty year old women through such hell, apparently for the sheer fun of it.

So we got on our flight, at last at last, and headed back to London. We were seated in the emergency row on the plane (and because of our bad luck that morning we were pretty terrified that we were going to be the cause of the misfortunate of the entire plane), but it was really nice to have some extra leg room.

We went through customs and got our luggage and got on the Heathrow Express to Paddington tube station. We were so emotionally exhausted (and my friend had developed a nasty cough) and just wanted to lay down and sleep, but we had to soldier on and carry our heavy bags all over God's green earth and all through the stations, etc.

An Australian man ran up to us at Paddington, apparently in distress, with tears welling up in his eyes. He was short, with grey hair and very bad teeth but he was kind and very sincere. He said he was headed home to Australia with his family and they needed 13 pound 50 pence more for the Heathrow express to Heathrow. We couldn't overlook a fellow traveler in distress, so we handed him 30 pound and went on our way. He offered us his camera, anything we wanted in duty free, but we declined. He took my friend's email address and promised us that God would bless us.

The way I see it is, God blessed him for giving us a miserable day and causing us to have pity on a traveler in distress. Everything happens for a reason, the reason we had such a terrible day yesterday was so that we could help that man and his family to get home to Australia. I don't even care if I'm out my last 10 pound because of it, and I don't even care if he didn't really need the money or if he was just going to rob us and say he was going to get in touch with us and repay us, he looked sincere and I'm not one to judge.

I'd want someone to help me if I were frantic and just trying to get home.

Other than yesterday, the trip to Spain was very lovely. It's good to be back in London, though. So good to be back.