What we did while our flight took off without us

Would you be surprised to know one of our best travel days ever was in Madrid – and caused us to miss our flight back to the U.S.? We’ll take a break from more recent events to tell you what happened:

We knew Madrid was a great city from a previous visit. What would be better than spending a few days in Madrid at the end of our trip?

We splurged and booked a hotel room close to the sites we wanted to see. First up, we headed for the National Archaeological Museum of Spain.

Beth spent her time studying the great mosaic works.

She plans to attend a week-long workshop at the Ravenna Mosaic Art School (Italy) in 6 months and will make her very own mosaics. How inspiring to look at these wonderful works!

The next morning, our last day in Spain, was one of those magical travel days when everything goes perfectly. We started with a trip to the Prado Museum, one of the great art museums of Europe. No photos allowed, but we definitely took a lot in. The museum is so large that we knew we would only be able to see a small area. So, off we went with the agreement to enjoy walking through galleries and only stop at those works that we were most interested in. Still, we stopped often enough. Before we left the museum, we detoured to the gift shop, one of the best art museum gift shops in our opinions. To our surprise we found a few items that would have no problem fitting into our suitcases.

The Royal Botanic Garden is across the street from the Prado. What a treat in late Fall to see such an array of color.

A very late lunch followed at The Spanish Farm and, like everything else this day, it was the perfect meal for the perfect day.

As we walked back to the hotel, we realized we had not seen an email from the airline yet, reminding us of our next day’s flight. Beth logged on to her computer to check the status of the flight. The message popped up: the flight was today and the passengers missed their flight. WHAT! How can that be possible?

Yes, when the airline changed all the flights many months earlier, the return flight appeared to have a 10-minute change in the departure time. Actually it was not just a 10-minute change but also a day earlier. Who changes the day of the flight, and why hadn’t we heard from the airline like we usually do a day ahead of the flight?

Totally perturbed, we spoke to an airline representative who was a cool and soothing professional. Within 20 minutes she had achieved the impossible: booking us on a good flight the next day. No additional charge. Thank you, Air Canada!

The day was not yet finished. We took an evening stroll and weren’t the only ones to enjoy a performance on the busy sidewalk.

We peeked inside a dark restaurant to see an imagined whale skeleton floating above the diners.

We took a wrong turn, and it was fate that led us straight to a little espadrille shop. We’d wanted to buy espadrilles on each trip we have made to Spain, and now, on our 4^th trip, we finally discovered the perfect shop. We found just what we were looking for. And isn’t that exactly how the entire day had unfolded?

We were sorry to miss our flight – but ever so happy that we’d had this one last glorious and memorable day in Madrid.

 

October 2017