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- Meg, describing the pangs of travel as only she can. |
 The Never-Ending Day, Part Deux of Part Deux • My first recorded impression of Spain? It smells. The terminal we enter at Aeropuerto de Madrid Barajas is long, with marble floors and lots of glass and wood trim. One way the windows extend forever, the other way looks like a subway tube to an older part of the terminal. With it being roughly 7 a.m., the place is deserted except for basically one man, smoking as he sits under a sign reading "Welcome to Marlboro Country." Some things, you just have to write down. Inside, the elevator music is the same as ours, but outside, there's not an American plane in sight. Spain is, well, Spain. Can't compare it to anything else, especially since the only part of the mainland I'm seeing is in the airport. Madrid isn't even in sight... there's mountains and what looks to be a bridge off in the distance, but that's it. As soon as we're off, Bethany proceeds to the exchange booth, which as opposed to what I've preached, gives a decent exchange rate. We proceed down the 'subway tube,' where the girls are fascinated by the moving walkways. I'm fascinated by the signs heralding Spain's 2002 EU presidency. To the untrained observer, you'd think world news interested me. But I assure you, my fascination with the twists and turns of the Zimbabwean election is an anomaly. I found the bathroom, and then wanted to go explore a little: hell, when else am I going to get to look around the Madrid airport? But that wasn't possible, because Bethany's was freaking out about everything. I can't say I blame her, as it turned out we were nowhere near where we needed to be, but still, I like calm, like the British announcer guy doing all the English on the loudspeaker. When we got to customs, all the others on our flight were long gone. Passports stamped, onto a shuttle bus, where we introduced the Spanish Main to the stylings of Tenacious D, a Free Press staple this semester. - You've all heard 'F&^% Her Gently,' haven't you? Yeah, we had the bus to ourselves. Probably should have mentioned that. Moving through the airport, I'm amazed by the laid back atmosphere of everything. The guys at the metal detector are just going through the motions, as Meg pointed out the guy at metal detector wasn't even looking at the screen - Note #2 to would-be terrorists.... Everyone friendly, everything's clean (minus the apparent Spanish tradition of dropping cigarette ashes on the floor). Course the one thing I'll remember from the Madrid airport (along with the debacle of a few days later) is the first time I ever spent a Euro. Dumb I know, but you are reading the writings of a guy who once though when someone quit cigarettes cold turkey, they actually ate cold turkey. The stand was called Robot, for reasons I suspect connected with the deep-seeded Spanish love of robots. I went over intending to buy the breakfast of champions: a hot dog and an orange juice. The hot dogs wouldn't be ready for a few minutes, so I cancelled that order. Cooch: "No, that'll be it." It was at that point he handed me a beer. It was disgusting drinking OJ and beer at eight in the morning, but that's not the point, now is it. Soon, there will be a picture of me sitting in Madrid, with an orange juice in one hand and a beer in the other.  -- That's the point. Flight XXX - Madrid to Tenerife (Norte - Los Rodeos): The good thing about Spanair is the flight attendants, who will go as far as to personally seat you on the plane. Of course, with that not being necessary to anyone who's literate, the bad thing of the plane smelling like cigarette smoke greatly outweights all else. Maybe that was why I suddenly decided I was in Spain, and did not want to be at all. I remember looking out the window with all the emotions of someone who just realized his girlfriend had broken up with him, and all the good times were over. That helplessness, that knowing that no matter what, even if you avoided thinking about it, you were still screwed. Like realizing you're too drunk at a party, and you want to go home, But your house is far away, like for example, in Massachusetts across the ocean. I suppose this could have also happened because I was between Meg and Bethany, and they were talking about getting manicures and pedicures as soon as possible, which caused me to take my keys and plunge them repeatedly into my forehead. Or something like that. Our seats were, literally, next to the engine. Like, cant's see out the window because there's an engine in it. Like there's bird guts on the window, because a bird just got sucked in the engine - were that to happen of course. I was supposed to be sitting in front of the girls, but some Spanish man apparently gave up the seat between so he could sit with his kids. Of course, since he was speaking in Spanish, he might have also said, "I hate you, you're ugly. Super karate monkey death car. Go Ravens." This doesn't change the fact I stole his seat. If you're a fan of dinner rolls, fly Spanair. Besides the fact it's the only way you're going to get to Equatorial Guinea anytime soon, all they kept doing was offering us more rolls. It was outstanding. We had a roll with our ham and cheese crepe. They then came around with another roll after dinner. Right before we landed, they came around again. Then they gave us candy. I kept expecting to get called to the cockpit, so we could kiss the pilots, fly the plane and get a little plastic set of Spanair wings. I don't remember much else, because I think I fell asleep again during flight. I just remember waking up to Meg shaking me... we could see our destination. Course I look out the two inches of non-engined window, and see what amounts to a giant chocolate chip floating in the ocean. The island I saw was, honest to God, a mountain. Nothing but an igneous rock formation. There were no beaches, no towns, no anything but mountain. Research later showed this was probably La Gomera, since it's small and rocky, but take another look at that picture and see if you want to take my word for anything. Our landing was horriffic by my standards, which probably makes it tolerable to most. I suppose because we were flying into a 100 mph headwind (which added over an hour to our flight time), and because the north airport's runway isn't exactly easily accessible, it would explain why I thought Capt. Pinochet was trying to bank us off a cliff. But hey, 12:35 p.m. and we're alive, right? Despite my initial three word notation of the landscape, "third world country," and feelings of not wanting to be there evaporated once I stepped out of the back of the plane. Lush. Warm. Sunny. It was, as one Californian described it, "Sun kissing your skin" weather. Everything was green. Everything. The weeds growing out of the runway's cracks looked better than my lawn, for crying out loud. Much as it pained me to admit to Meg, it was rather breathtaking after all... and I hadn't even seen the best parts yet. Tenerife Norte Airport was clearly built in a time when nobody came here. While the South Airport (which we flew out of) is massive and modern, the north is a room. A big, Home Depot-style room, with baggage claims and a glass door seperating you from the waiting area. They shuttled us roughly 100 yards to get to the 'terminal,' something I would have undoubtably found more humor in if I didn't feel like I'd been clubbed in the nuts - the landing and I didn't get along, let's put it that way. Picked up all our bags, processed back outside, tried to communicate to a "no anglais" cabbie where we wanted to go. Somehow he got all our bags in the trunk, then we piled in and were on our way to Puerto de la Cruz, 20-odd km to the south. At several occasions, the cabbie tried to talk to us, which was fun. The girls would look at me, I would look at them, then I would nod a lot. It was like how a three-year-old would talk to their relatives at a family party. Yes. Yes. Club Casablanca. No. Not German. America. America. In a span of three days, I was called German by a cabbie and Swedish by a guy handing out restaurant menus. Yet no one ever thought I was English, never mind American. Go figure. So semi-conscious me and my bitches are whizzing down TF-5 Highway at 160 km/h, with a steep incline of green to the left and a steep decline to the sea on the right. Rounding a bend, the cabbie pointed out our destination below, clearly the dominant city on this part of the coast. Puerto de la Cruz is a very wide city in that it covers a very ample swath of the seacoast. Our lodgings were before the actual city center, with the plazas and walkways, but we were still in a very populated area. This would be much easier if I could find a good map, but none of the ones I've seen make any sense. Stupid Spanish people... where's my map-maker roomie when I need him? On the way to Casablanca, we passed several strip malls, a larger shopping complex and several other hotels. The big high rises were down the hill some more on the coastline, but we were clearly in a tourism-driven area. Basically, Tenerifians aren't stupid - they know foreign dollars butter their bread, thus they paint the word 'Tenerife' on any piece of crap they find and Brit grandparents buy it for their brats in Sussex. The Aptos. Casablanca sit next to a deep dry riverbed on a steep downgrade. While the street our room faced was flat, the other side of the triangle was sharp enough down you wouldn't want to go free-wheeling in Granny's wheelchair unless you wore a helmet. All around us are shops: several small convenience stores, bars, rental car agencies, crap stores, camera stores, and the odd-man of the group, a Texaco station. Across from our room were a string of other hotels, most notably the Pez Azul and its large neon sign. When we parked out front and I stammered out a 'Gracias, Senor' as I handed our driver his tip, it was 1:30 and all my fatigue was gone. Being unable to check in until our travel companions (Todd - Rea's pal who's mom has the time share, his girlfriend Michelle and Rea himself) arrived, we set the luggage inside and waited in the sunshine. As we sat, the girls grew anxious. Bethany (who for some reason pointed out three supermarkets as we drove into town) is gushing that all she wanted was to put on her Capri pants. Meg, I suspect sensing I was going to kill someone, went off with her to the Supermarket Fisa halfway up the street, where they returned with Fanta Naranja. We had Fanta in the U.S. for awhile, didn't we? It's all the rage in Spain, with Naranja (Orange) and Limon (Lemon) flavors. I liked them both, for what it's worth. By 2:30, I sense the desk staff pitied us... that or they were sick of us hogging the bench outside. Either way they let us inside to our room, #5506, facing outward from the complex. And what a complex it is... pool, balconies off all the suites, palm trees, outdoor patios, large lawn bowling green, the whole shebang. Inside is even better: marble floors, satellite TV, balcony that stretches the length of our suite, windows... this was way too classy for us. We could sit our on our porch, in our lounge chairs and our patio furniture, and see all the way up to El Teide, peeking out from behind the lower peaks. I believe Tenacious D said it best. | ||
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AOL IM: JonCoochBU |
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