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Manoli's cafe con leche in the McDonalds in Paris, which was more an expressoWe landed in Paris (Charles deGaulle Airport) at about 8am, and proceed thru security, which was pretty crowded, but the folks at customs were pretty efficient and so it didn't take long. Next, we'd been told in Greenville that we'd have to take our bag off and check it in again, so we headed to the check-in counter. Here, we were told that we'd have to pay another 70 Euros for the bag to get to Valencia. Manoli was furious, so she asked the counter rep were Delta Airlines customer service was, and we made our way to a different terminal. I waited outside, having a cig, while Manoli discussed the fee. They agreed that she shouldn't have had to pay the extra fee, or even take the bag off and check it in again, but there was nothing she could do, except tell us to use the online Delta website to file a grievance. We found our gate, 56E, and after cruising around to see what there was, we settled down to wait. I found out they had a smoking room, where you didn't have to go back thru Security. Yippee! While we were waiting, my wife struck up a
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Our flight to Paris taxiing away from the airport conversation with a couple of South Korean women, and soon discovered they were waiting at the wrong gate. My wife, being the good women that she is, walked with one of them to validate the gate, and soon after, both women moved to the right gate, quite a ways away, thanking Manoli profusely for her help.
At around 3:45pm, they started boarding. Our seats were for 2A and 2B, so when they called "*** 1 and 2", I assumed they were calling rows. We sort of pushed our way to the front, to discover that she had she had announced "zones 1 and 2", but she was nice enough to let us get on. It was sort of nice not to struggle with our back packs, and all the other passengers though. We settled into our seats for the little less than 2 hour flight. Soon after take off, the flight attendants started coming down the row with drinks and a sandwich. Again, we got lucky because they started in row one! We were pretty worn out by then, but we ordered drinks and the sandwiches. I'm pretty sure I nodded off a bit before began the approach for
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Our plane just getting airborne Valencia, our first true destination for our trip.
In our approach, the sky was clear enough that we could see all the mountains, valleys, and small towns along the way. We finally touched down right on time, and again our sitting in the 2nd row paid off, allowing us to get off the plane quite quickly, and we were waived thru customs by one of the nice customs agents. Now, we just had to find our way to the hostel, which turned out to be a hotel, and located quite a ways away, the last part of it being a fairly long walk. First, we got a metro pass and took the metro to the Estacion del Nord, noting how the metro gained passengers along the way. There, we had to come up from the underground metro station, lugging our gigantic suitcase between us because there was no elevator. We easily found the ticket office in the train station and the lady gave us tickets and told us when to get off. We road a very crowded train for quite a distance, wondering how far away the hostel... err hotel was. Well, we got off at the Alfafar station,
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One of the many awesome views on our approach to Valencia hoping we didn't have much further to go, since we were both getting tired. My wife asked people were the hotel was and we kept on walking, finally arriving at the Hotel Ibis Alfafar. The scenery along the way was mostly big city stores and restaurants, reminding us of being Atlanta or New York, not a town in Spain. Every American fast food place seemed to be present, all in that short... well not so short walk.
We checked into the hotel, which was quite modern and clean. They had a bar, restaurant, and lounge area. Our room was on the 2nd floor, actually 3rd floor in America, and besides a nice bathroom, it had a king sized bed. We did have a glitch, thinking there was no electricity, but when I asked at the counter, she explained I needed to put the key in the slot next to the door. That worked fine. After unpacking a bit, we realized it was after 9pm and we hadn't had much to eat recently. I told Manoli I'd like to go to Lidls, she agreed and off we went. We actually went the wrong direction, but found a nice supermarket where
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Taxiing into the Valencia airport we bought some of our food items. I got Ensalada Liguera, 2 cups of Tocino de Cielo (a very sweet dessert), and shared a nice ripe mango. Manoli just a got an assorted of fresh fruit. After eating and winding down, we hit the hay.
See you tomorrow!
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