Our flight was scheduled to leave 5:40PM, so I figured we'd be up in the air by around 6 o'clock in the evening more or less. One never really knows the exact time because airlines pad their scheduled times to help with on-time percentages. In anticipation of having to travel to the airport on public transportation, go through security, etc. we got to the airport a few hours early. The airport is about 30 miles from the center of the city. Here is a little map of the journey to Dulles International Airport.
Plane at gate before boarding began.
Well, after eating a Subway sandwich and waiting for a while, the plane finally began boarding. It was an Aer Lingus Airbus A330-200, which has two seat rows near the window, then four seats in the middle, then two seats again near the other side. Anyways, storms had passed through the DC area about an hour before our scheduled takeoff, delaying planes from taking off. So by the time our plane was loaded and pulling back from the gate, we had to wait a while before being able to take off because of the back log of planes needing to take off because of the thundershower. We finally took off about two hours later. It wasn't so bad because the plane had seat-back entertainment, we could watch movies, tv shows, play games, etc.
On board the plane mid-flight.
The flight over wasn't that bad, even the little microwave hobby kit dinner they served wasn't too bad (or we were just hungry). It's tricky leaving the U.S. on an evening flight to Europe, because by the time you get there it's morning...but at home and to your body it really is only in the wee hours of the night. Our plane finally landed about 9:30 Madrid time, which is 2:30 in the morning to us Texans. We tried to sleep some on the plane, but the best you can do is to really only get a couple hours before it's magically morning again and then you feel lethargic for a couple of days.
Looking out the window of the plane over the Atlantic in the middle of the night.
The sky gradually gets lighter and lighter and before too long a bolt of sunshine cuts through someone's window, and in the gaps of all the clouds you start to see land down there. Our flight path took us nearly entirely over ocean, so besides being dark, there really isn't anything to look at. By the time we started over the coast of Portugal it was light enough to be able to see the land all the way down there.
We finally came down and landed at Madrid-Barajas Airport, which like many airports are several miles outside the center of the city. We waited for everyone to deplane, then made our way through a maze to go through security, hand in our customs form, have them glance at our passport, stamp it, then voila...we were officially in Spain. It was now Wednesday, May 18th.
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