And So It Begins

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12pm on Sunday the 14^thof June sees me leaving pony club a little bit early, riding home and letting the beast (aka Betty) loose into the paddock for the next few weeks off. Fast forward two hours and everyone is home, frantically rushing to squeeze the last pair of shorts into their suitcases. (Or, in Dad’s case, actually bringing the suitcase out of the wardrobe and beginning to pack). After an extremely early dinner, particularly compared to the ones we are having in Spain, everything is loaded into the car and we are finally on our way to the airport, with Mum stressing out about how late we were compared to her schedule. We left at 6:37pm instead of 6:30. Less than 20mins later, Mitch had also caught the stress bug, wondering if we were close to the airport. Sorry to disappoint, but the Monash freeway is hardly the airport buddy.



When we finally got to the airport (we’d caught up to those seven minutes lost) and made our way to the International Check In. We said goodbye to our bags and proceeded to fill out those little green sheets in which Mitch decided he wanted to take over $10,000 dollars overseas (we wish!) before stepping through security with no problems. Once through we had over an hour to wander around duty free, in which Mum invested in a selfie stick to ‘take better selfies so my friends can’t make fun of my selfies anymore’. Unfortunately, it required charging before being used. (Damn).



Finally we were allowed to board our plane and Mitch immediately was enthralled by the inflight entertainment. It wasn’t until we were way past Perth that Dad finally convinced Mitch it was time to sleep at 1:30am Melbourne time. The next morning we touched down in Dubai, at local time of 5:30am. The airport was surprisingly empty, but maybe that was purely because our connecting flight was in the terminal furthest possible distance away from the rest of the airport. To get there we had to catch a train in between terminals, which made Tullamarine seem like child’s play. Mum finally got her selfie stick working and dragged us into her photo before realising that the free Wi-Fi didn’t work and she couldn’t show off her new skills to her friends.

One seven hour flight later, we touched down in Barcelona for the start of our trip. After getting a cab into the city and finding our apartment, we waited for the manager to show up. When he did, we went through the main door, up to our flight, through another door and then finally the door to our apartment. Luckily everything was mostly ready and Mitch and I had separate beds (yay). Everyone went off for a little nap as it felt like it was 1:30am back in Melbourne compared to the 5:30pm it actually was. Fortunately we woke up in enough time for dinner, which proved a little hard to find. Mum and Dad opted to try ‘tapas’ which is basically a selection of dishes that you pick at. Mitch had a pizza, despite the fact that in a few days we’ll be in Italy, with endless amounts of pizza on offer and I had a ‘bocadillo’ (a Spanish version of a baguette). After that we went back to the apartment and all crashed, ready for our two walking tours the next day.

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