Day 1: denied boarding

I woke up from a restful sleep. I mean how can you not when you basically have a lie flat seat with blanket and pillow. At some point in the night I remember hitting my hand and this morning realized that half my pinky fingernails was hanging. It hurt and hopefully will become less tender. I had a fruit plate while finishing up the last Ted Lasso episode. 

I really need to subscribe to whatever provider has all the episodes so I can watch the entire show.

We arrived in Madrid 3 hours late. It was a long process. I had forgotten how laid back life is in Europe. Two international flights arrived and only two passport lines open for non-EU people. It is so hot I can’t stop sweating either; yet I look around and see people in down jackets and scarfs. I did get scolded for not removing an electronic device from my suitcase when I had to go back through secondary security which is my fault but was not expecting to have to go through security again since I had not left the secure airport area. I finally found my gate and have 2 hours to wait for my connecting flight.

BAM! Just like that my trip collapsed. My boarding pass did not scan so I was pulled aside. The gate agent got on the computer and then looked and me and said my ticket was not valid so I went back to the Iberia help desk. She told me to show the gate agent a specific number and went back to my gate. The original gate agent ignored me and after everyone had boarded the flight, she looked at my documents again and said, "this is not a valid ticket you are still denied boarding." I was baffled and asked what to do, “call American”. So that’s what I did, they could not figure out why I was denied and after a long wait and another missed flight, they told me my only option was to take the 11pm flight. On the verge of tears, I said okay. I had already looked for one way tickets but my problem was my return flights were attached to this itinerary so I was worried it would cancel those flights and give me a bigger headache at the end of my trip. So I waited!  At this point I have been on this journey airport-plane-airport for 2 days plus 9 hour flight in middle.  I am a bit frazzled. But I wait with very low expectations of getting on last flight of the day.  I am not going to lie it crossed my mind to just board a flight back to DFW . . . it was just that awful.

At 1050pm we started boarding, I was nervous and also trying to hide my non Euro sized carry on. When my boarding pass didn’t scan, my heart sank but on the second try it did. I almost cried tears; happy tears of course. I spent 12 hours sitting in the Madrid airport and it was painful! I was so worried about making a flight I didn’t eat all day so the tapas snack on the flight was nice even if it was almost midnight. 

The Iberia gate agent and help desk in Madrid were just awful and so unwilling to help but the crew on the plane was super friendly. I will not be searching out any future flights with Iberia when I had such an awful experience with them being so unwilling to help with a codeshare American Airlines flight.

It was an easy Uber pick up for the 25 minute drive to my hotel. The hotel was a delight. Since it is after midnight and dark it will be a nice surprise to see what the area looks like in the morning. Nighty night.