I guess this story begins with waking up sick at 5:30 in the morning to go to the airport. I arrived okay, no huge problems getting there. The first flight was uneventful, I made it on easily enough considering I was sixth on the standby list and there were 20 open seats. The flight itself passed smoothly and arrived a little early, leaving me close to five hours of layover in NYC.
After making sure I got a glance of the Empire State Building and downtown NYC, the first thing I noticed about the airport were how many airlines the world over were represented there. I saw them from Ireland, Egypt, China, United Arab Emirates, Switzerland, Czech Republic, and Canada to name but a few. After thoroughly exploring the airport, running into all kinds of people including at one point where all the Muslims stopped and started praying towards the East (which, to be honest, definitely startled me), and finding way too many Yankee fans, I decided to settle down next to a row of outlets and play some hearts on the ipad, where I promptly lost 16 games in a row until I finally won, decided to call it quits, and eat dinner. The airport had quite a few options, such as McDonalds, Duncan Donuts, NY pizzerias, and plenty of bars and grills. The bars would have been nice, but one look at the menu and I decided that was way out of my price range, especially for the amount of food they give you for the ridiculous price. I decided on Panda Express, ran back to my terminal in B41, and waited to see if I got on. This was undoubtedly the most strenuous and anxious part of my travels.
I was literally sitting in front of the screen watching the names move from standby to cleared. I started at number 9, the flight had eight open seats, and soon I was first on the waiting list where I remained for the entire boarding process. When they finished and were getting ready to close the gate I asked them to please check one more time, and they found a slight problem. A group of 7 had checked in but only 6 were on the flight. Upon further investigation they realized that the seventh person was en route from San Juan Puerto Rico and the flight was running late. This was how I managed to make it onto the flight at the last second, and ended up sitting by the emergency exit, the bathrooms, and the flight attendant station. Between the 10 flight attendants, the bathroom, and the woman next to me who had a vodka and three glasses of red wine, I didn't sleep well at all. The one consolation was that I had plenty of legroom and could stretch out or even get up and stand or walk in a circle in front of the emergency doors.
I watched the flight screen the whole way, which was very boring (considering the only thing on the map was a blue background representing the Atlantic Ocean). But, flying of Iberia was awesome!! The map showed Paris, Amsterdam, Rome, etc. and outside the windows I could see the Spanish countryside with all the little pueblitos scattered all over the hills in little clusters. Also, the buildings were all the exact same color -- a very rustic brownish orange color reminiscent of clay. Barcelona itself was a sprawling city highly concentrated surrounding its ports and becoming steadily less so the further inland. When the city reached the hills it didn't end, but simply petered out. The entire city only has three skyscrapers. As a whole, it looked to be roughly the exact same high throughout with relatively small streets crisscrossing to and fro. Just before coming in for a landing I got a good look across the Mediterranean and could just barely make out the strip of land which I knew to be Africa, so there you go: I saw Africa, albeit from several thousand feet in the air.
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