Flying To Europe! : Travel Blog #1

Anytime you fly, it's a big adventure. Even if the flight is short, it can be pretty time-consuming to drive to the nearest airport, check your bags, go through security, wait at your gate, actually land, and then locate your bags and transportation from the airport. As a family, we have flown quite a bit and frequently fly across the United States. However, flying internationally was a whole new ball game. No matter what your flying experience has been in the past, don't let that stop you from attempting international travel. As you'll see from my experience, it doesn't have to be an intimidating undertaking!

Per usual, we arrived at the airport ridiculously early. We boarded a brief flight to Newark airport for a short layover. Even though we are staying in Europe for two whole months, we decided to only bring carry-on items so we we didn't have to check any bags. This cut our time significantly. We boarded our flight to Barcelona in the evening. In our family we have someone who is terrified of flying and someone who gets motion-sick incredibly easy which are two big intimidating factors to long flights. We watched movies, ate dinner, and attempted to sleep on the long, eight hour flight.

Upon reaching Barcelona, we were exhausted from a nearly sleepless night, but so excited to explore a new culture! As we were leaving the plane, poor Lucy threw up, the first to do so in our family on this new continent!

After landing, we went to customs which was very brief thankfully as we were the only international flight to have landed at that time. I got my passport marked with the first stamp: Spain!

We went to the airport's currency exchange and got about four hundred Euros in different bills. We then went to an airport cafe for a quick breakfast before meeting our taxi driver, Josè. Our AirBnB host had arranged this taxi for us kindly. Josè dropped us off at our apartment in downtown Barcelona. As we drove, he filled us in on lots of very useful tips about Spanish lifestyle. We arrived at the apartment and set off to begin our first adventure in Barcelona! Adiós for now :)