That means we slept in our own bed and we will eat at our own table this morning. No tour group around, and certainly, nothing matching Spanish scenery. When we travel, the reality of living in Dallas where everything is reasonably new and nothing is terribly beautiful or grand gives us great contrast. Still, Dallas is where nearly all of our people are, and we have pretty nice lives, here. It’s just that when we look at things that are spectacular and beautiful, we remark about how plain and dull Dallas is by comparison. I guess what I should be saying is it’s good to be home.
A few things I didn’t have time or space to mention yet seem in order here. First, English is pretty pervasive. There are plenty of Spaniards we met who had a lot of trouble communicating with us unless we tried some measure of Spanish, and Cas is certainly better at it than I am. They seemed appreciative of our efforts. One hotel employee even congratulated Cas when he conducted an entire conversation in Spanish. It makes sense, though. When you go to a foreign country, you expect people who live there to speak its language. What I didn’t expect was that everywhere we went (with the marked exception of the Flamenco show and the dinner where we heard tuna music) played songs sung in English. The first song I heard that had Spanish words on the trip was a Madonna one from years ago called La Isla Bonita. Everywhere else played music in English, except for when the song Despacito came up in rotation. That song was everywhere. We heard it twice at our cooking class, where we also heard a little good old American hip-hop. Somehow, paella class with a great Spanish chef didn’t seem like the place we’d hear Cardi B. To my mind, the songs didn’t match the space. The same was true for T-shirts, as well. If I had to guess, I would say about 90 percent of the T-shirts featuring words on the front were written in English. Congratulations, America! We are great at exporting music and T-shirt slogans. I deliberately avoid wearing things when I travel that may overtly indicate my nation of origin. I think I just heard once a long time ago that you don’t want people to know you’re not local. I’m not even sure that’s good advice, but I follow it. Certainly, wandering aimlessly and checking maps all the time isn’t enough of a clue, and they would have needed a T-shirt that said something very American on it. No dice, Spain- my clothes are blank.
My favorite English language T-shirt was on the Ferris wheel in Valencia. The little boy who kept getting up in the carriage and moving around wore a shirt that said It’s good to be nice. I couldn’t agree more, kid.
The other thing I know for a fact is that I would love to boycott American Airlines. They are such a big company and I love travel so much, that they may be unavoidable. Still, they are on my list right now, and we will certainly make an effort to fly with literally anyone else in the future. Our booking information said we had BA flights operated by AA. Turns out, they’re just AA flights. We got on three American airplanes, and just one Iberian Air flight. On American, we were seated apart from one another on both over-the-ocean flights. For the first one, Cas was able to persuade a gate agent to change it for us. On the way home, we had to swap with a stranger once we were on the plane. I had a seat in the middle, but on the bulkhead row, so I had some legroom to bargain with.
It wasn’t just us, either. The seating arrrangements were splitting apart mothers from their children, other couples from one another and notably, we saw one booking put five members of the same family in totally different parts of the aircraft. We’re convinced this is a ploy to extract more money out of passengers for the privilege of sitting together. They’ve already started to charge extra for window seats, aisle seats and seats on the exit row. This separation of families seems to be the thing nobody’s buying. People are getting on and working it out with other passengers. The flight attendants are moving people to put parents with their children and compensating folks who help out with a free drink. It sure seems like they’ve created a problem that wasn’t there before. Beyond that, the elevation of some other basic services to premium services is a little out of control. A long time ago, people would board by row in a logical order. Now, those who pay extra go first. Fantastic. If you don’t pay extra, you are more likely to go dead last and be obliged to check your carry on, which we had to do on our way from Philidalphia to Dallas. Nobody wants to check bags voluntarily, because there’s a cost associated with that, too. What happens now is folks wait for the gate agents to announce overhead storage is full and offer to check bags for free. It would be so much easier if they would remove the checked bag charge. Taking your clothes on a trip is not a premium neeed.
We were pretty exhausted after starting a day in Barcelona and flying away from the sunset, but we had to wait around the baggage carousel in the Dallas airport for our luggage. Cas and I deliberately pack light so we can avoid checking bags. Not the case, here. The worst part of any travel by airplane is the actual getting there and returning home. I know travel blog is typically pretty happy and sunny, but because I write about everything, this had to go in. I’m pretty fed up, American. And to my friends, if you fly American in the future, check if they put you anywhere near your companions. My guess is they didn’t. My guess is that they put you between an infant and an emotional support chihuahua, right in front of a kid who wants to play soccer some day, and is practicing his kicks on your chair.
Okay, Heather. Breathe.
Sorry about that. The trip was really great, as you may have surmised from literally everting else I wrote. I had so much fun, and so did Cas. We travel very well together. I think today, when we run our individual errands and such, we will spend our first moments apart in something like 17 or 18 days. I’m telling you- if you can find a traveling companion like that, pack a bag full of your cleverest English-language T-shirts and say hasta luego. Just try to book your flight with a different airline.
No comments:
Post a Comment