Heading home; the last leg

Final leg; Our journey home. 


What a trip!  Unimaginable beauty and enjoyable in pretty much every way.  We have taken in so much, in such a short period of time, we keep asking each other “what city was it where …?”   Every day seemed to include a favorite moment. It’d be impossible to single one out. 



In Barcelona, we asked the hotel to hail a cab for us to take us to the airport. We waited and waited; nothing.  We saw cabs across the street, so we walked over there.  Still, no one wanted to stop or they were occupied.  The front desk person crossed the street and confronted us, seemingly upset that he was about to loose the kick-back from the cab company.  He angrily asked if we wanted to cancel “his” cab?  “Yes!”, we wondered off over the couple of additional blocks to where we knew we could catch a cab; the train station. 


Traffic wasn’t too bad so we found ourselves at the airport in good time.  


There was some confusion with the tickets.  We were assured we had seats on Lufthansa but couldn’t get boarding passes.  Because Delta, Lufthansa and Air Canada are now partners, the left, middle and right hands have no clue what each other is doing.  Seems to me that we had a similar experience getting here.  After discovering we were actually flying Air Canada with our Lufthansa tickets, things began to run smoothly.  Security, find gate, find local bar and wait. 


Thanks to Barb contacting the airline regarding our seats, we were generously issued 1st class tickets for our leg of the journey from Barcelona to Toronto.  Very comfortable seats, real meals, iPads to watch movies on… nice!


Once in Toronto, however, things were a little different.  First off, we all have either NEXUS or Global Entry, which means we have been pre-cleared and certified safe travelers.  No matter; our luggage was re-scanned, we had to take our belts and shoes off and go through another scanner. Now, since we hadn’t left the secure area, this seemed a little over the top.  Then, we had to scan our passports, not our pre-approval cards. Oh, also had a fingerprint scan. Only one of us failed the scan and had to re do it.  Finally, we are questioned by a TSA agent and ultimately allowed to proceed. 


We had a few hours to go before out flight back to Seattle. A couple of expensive airport drinks and snacks filled the time. 


Air Canada is ultra frugal on its non overseas flights. Sure, this time we were in coach, but everything had to be purchased. Even the little package of pretzels was only available for purchase. 


It’s good to be home even though we had a fantastic trip.  

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