Travel to Madrid and overnight

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The first of many pleasurable travelling days commences today that will take us into early April. We need this break, although it was only nine months ago that we did another month long holiday elsewhere in America. Thank you to our local friends in the village for taking us to the airport.

We had an early morning start today and were collected from home at 8.00 am sharp. They took us to Tenerife North Airport for our relatively short flight into Madrid Barajas Airport. Alas, the flight was not a good experience. Note to self – Always try and avoid sitting next door to the complaining passenger from hell. The said British passenger found some chocolate on her seat and moaned about it for all of the flight to everybody. Any reasonable person would have just quickly wiped it clean with a serviette or napkin.

We were the first ones there to check in nice and early, but think the check in guy did not like it that we had booked with American Airlines and not directly with Iberia. We always book in three hours before any flight so we can be relaxed. He gave us seats in the middle of the three banks of seats on either side of the plane. So not only were we not sitting next to each other, but we were each sandwiched between two total strangers. Thankfully it was only a two and forty minute flight.

Note to self – In future when we check in, check the seat allocation before leaving the check-in desk.

At Madrid Airport we were collected by the shuttle bus from the SHS Hotel Aeropuerto.

On arrival, from the outside the hotel, it looked a little scruffy, but the rooms were good and the food in the bar was very tasty. Prices were very economical. Basic is fine with us for most things. We sat down for ten minutes and translated the Spanish menu. It got us off to a good start with the friendly barman. The hotel was very close to Madrid Barajas Airport overlooking two of the incoming runways. This was perfect for us. It was pretty cold and windy outside and getting dark. An early night followed to prepare us for the transatlantic flight tomorrow morning.

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