Traveling days abroad are always "super fun" - you have packing, public transportation, long periods of waiting, followed by even longer lines to stand in, overpriced food, sore shoulders, luck-of-the-draw airline seating, language barriers... you get the idea! Earlier "today" (the 26th) we left Tenerife via the North airport at 21:00h and landed just after 1:15am, now the 27th in Barcelona. We had planned to sleep at the airport and take a bus to our apartment at 13:00 when we were due to "check-in" with our host. It wasn't until we landed that we realized; one, we were starving and two, if we tried to sleep in the terminal we would be away from our checked baggage long enough for it to possibly "walk away." After a long debate about finances we agreed that booking a hotel for the night was a good idea, regardless of the cost - losing a bag and it's contents is more pricey in the long run.

Scouring the terminals we found the only open restaurant at 1:30 in the morning - good ol' McDonald's! We ordered off the €1 menu, broke out the laptop and found out that the Barcelona Airport didn't have free Wi-Fi. Luckily we had purchased an Orange (European cell phone provider) USB stick for 30-days of Internet while in Tenerife, which works in mainland Spain, and we were able to score a €59/night room at a hotel near our apartment for the week. After collecting our checked luggage, which we were SO glad to see still on the baggage claim carousels, we hustled out to the taxi line and set off for the hotel.

With each kilometer we traveled Megan became more and more nervous about having enough Euros left for cab fare. After all our snack sessions we had managed to spend every last bit of coin change and between the two of us only had €36 in cash. Luckily as we pulled up to the hotel the meter read €25.90 - but after the driver added the €10 luggage handling fee we were completely drained of all our money! However we walked away with HUGE grins on our face - we made it to Barcelona safely, penniless, but nonetheless ecstatic that everything had worked out in our favor! However, the poor cabby did not receive a tip.

The best part is that the room is awesome, we have FREE Wi-Fi (how we're writing this at 3:45am), and checkout is 12:00 giving us time to get some much-needed ZzZ's in before we head to our Airbnb apartment in the morning.

From Barcelona
XO,
M&K