Day One: DCA to JFK and JFK to BCN

Well, it is official, the trip to Spain is up and running! Things started out great - we got to the DC airport about 1.5 hours ahead of time, which was unnecessary - but we wanted to play it safe.

After checking in, we enjoyed some mozz sticks and wings from TGI Fridays. Security was a breeze, they actually opened a second line right as we arrived so we flew through. The flight to NYC JFK was amazingly short - a mere 38 minutes. However, once we landed we drove around the airport forever - it took nearly 20 minutes to get to our gate!

The flight was supposed to take off from JFK to Barcelona at 6:45pm - due to a late arriving plane, we did not end up leaving until around 715 or so. There were a ton of people from Spain on the flight, far out numbering the Americans. One Spanish high school class was returning home - thankfully we did not have to sit by them.

Before boarding we stopped at the duty free and picked up a bottle of Makers Mark and a bottle of Captain Morgan. We decided to crack open the Captain once we were about 2 hours into our flight - we ended up finishing the entire bottle! Stupidly, I gave the empty bottle to the flight attendant when they were going through the plane and asking for garbage. Once we landed in Barcelona, one of the male flight attendants told us that "just for future reference, you can not serve yourself alcohol on the plane, only we are allowed to do that"... lol opps..

The movies on the plane were lame! They were showing a bunch of kids movies, like Ice Age - which is very odd considering the flight was an overnight flight. So we chilled out and caught up on some reading. The flight was nice and quiet - a big plane with 7 seats across. Luckily, we got to sit in an extra row - man the extra leg room was NICE!

We watched the sun come up as we were descending into the Barcelona airport. It was quite beautiful. Customs presented no problem - we quickly flew through and grabbed a cab (although we found out later that the hotel offered a free shuttle) 25 Euro later we were at the hotel. Btw, the exchange rate is about 100 US Dollars for 63 Euro.

The hotel is amazing - 5 star all the way. Luckily, we were able to get checked in right away and head up to our room. It was about 10:00 am Barcelona time - around 3am Chicago time. We went up and crashed until about 4 in the afternoon.