BARCELONA, HERE WE COME!!

      No outage of electricity at the hotel today.  This Garden Inn is in a very quiet location but it is old and has a musty smell in halls and room.  The employees are super nice however and our breakfasts were good.
     After breakfast we packed up and headed out to get our covid tests at the Sanai Urgent Care just next to where we used to live.  Our appointment was at 11am and that's when they called us in.  Every one was very nice and this was a very pleasant experience.

     After getting tested it only takes them an hour to get the results so we went to our old neighborhood and had a wonderful visit with our long time friend, Charlotte Stockard, while we waited.  Sure enough it was exactly one hour when I got a message to come pick up our test results--NEGATIVE FOR COVID.  They gave us a printed copy for our records.

     Then we headed out to the airport to the rental car return and on the shuttle bus to the terminal for our flight.  We had a very nice AAL agent who got us all checked-in and issued us our boarding passes.  There was no line for the TSA check so breezed right to our gate which was in Terminal A, not the usual international terminal, Terminal D.  So we had nearly three hours prior to our flight now.  So we took the Airtran over to Terminal D as I wanted to get some dollars changed to Euros.  I also have a Priority Pass to "The Club", a private lounge for waiting away from all the hustle & bustle down in the terminal area.

     Here drinks and food are complimentary so we had a glass of chardonnay to kick off our air travels.  I had a small Caesar salad and a couple pinwheel sandwiches to tide me over until we have dinner on our flight.  Of course, Rebecca had her Atkins bar!

     We are about to head back over to terminal A for our 4:45pm flight.  It is on a new Boeing 787 and our seats are 2L & 3L in business class.  We have never flown on a 787 so looking forward to the flight.  It is extremely windy her today so will be a bumpy climb out for sure.  Next post will be from the Hilton Barcelona.

Dallas--Day #2

     Our day got off to a bad start.  A line of thunderstorms passed through the area around 3am.  Lots of rain with them.  Not sure if it was related to the storm but shortly after 6:30am the electricity went out.  I was awake but Rebecca wasn't so just let her sleep until about 7:45.  I tried to take a shower in the dark but the water was COLD.  After getting dressed I went down to the front desk (room phone was out) to see what was going on.  This was about 8:00am and they said Oncor was working on it.  Finally the electricity came  back on at 8:30.

     After breakfast, we headed out for our 10:30 hair cut appointment with Helga.  Then on to Jane VanHarlingen's, our good Dallas friend of many years, house to see her remodeling project.  Unfortunately, due to the transportation problems her appliances were back ordered and not delivered yet.

     Back to the hotel by 2:30pm after a quick bite and coke at McDonalds.  I am doing some work on this blog post while Rebecca showers (yes, we have hot water again) and dresses for dinner later.  My turn next to shower.

     At 4:45pm I tried to check-in online with American Airlines to get our boarding passes for tomorrow's flight from DFW to Madrid then on to Barcelona.  It would not let me check-in and said to check-in at the airport tomorrow.  I am required to go online to register with Spanish Travel Health before they will let us fly.  They wanted to know our flight number and seat numbers, passport numbers, covid vaccination dates, and where we will be in Barcelona.  A covid test is not required by Spain to travel there IF you are fully vaccinated.  So we went down to the hotel business center and used their computer to complete these forms.  It was more time consuming than I had planned but finally worked my way through it.  Then after successfully completing it, they sent an email with a QR code which we will have to show Spanish immigrations when we arrive in Madrid.

     We had a 5:30 reservation for dinner at Pappadeaux Seafood but I changed it to 6:00 in order to complete the Spanish Travel Health forms online.  

     We split the four piece fried catfish dinner and split the baked potato too.  I added a fried soft shelled crab.  This is also one of our "must eat" places when we come to Dallas.  Our server gave us a piece of key lime pie for us to take back to the hotel with us.  YUM!

     Back at the Garden Inn now enjoying a bottle of La Crema chardonnay we picked up yesterday and watching the baseball World Series.  Of course we are cheering for the Texas team, the Houston Astros.