To paraphrase Kirk and Picard: “This morning we’re starting our 18-day mission to explore strange new locations; to seek out new destinations; to boldly go where we’ve never been before.”
Of course, getting on that mission wasn’t without its challenge. In a rare case of Airline snafu the plane was boarded, everyone seated but still at the gate when the commander announced something. The speaker was so bad that it essentially sounded like a New York subway conductor making an announcement and unlike Lily neither of us speaks conductor (nor do we speak pilot). We thought the issue was a maintenance or mechanical issue and it would be a couple of hours at least. In any case, we were clearly asked to disembark and left to our own devices from that point.
We camped, like most other passengers, near the gate, waiting for any information. There are very few alternatives to get us to our destination today. After about 30 minutes they posted a new departure time that’s 30 minutes from then. 30 minutes after that boarding time they pushed us back again. If you’re as good at math as I am, we’re delayed by 1.5 hours, boarding hasn’t started and we’re supposed to leave in 30 minutes. Another half hour later boarding started. We were 2 hours behind at that point.
They had to reopen the aircraft’s door twice to let stragglers in and one tired looking maintenance person with a roll of Aircraft tape (shinny duct-tape really). But at some point the door was closed for good, the aircraft pushed back from the gate and took off with about a two and a half hour delay. The fact that you’re reading this should tell you all you need to know about the quality of the repairs.
We’ve now left the European continent but not Spain exactly. We’ve flown to Tenerife, the largest of Spain’s 📍Canary Islands, off the coast of West Africa. The archipelago has seven main islands, many smaller islands, islets, and a good number of rocks (something too small to be an island without much life on it but still large enough to require a name). Our plan is to visit the four largest of the seven main islands. With the last Island we’ll be visiting, the not very aptly named Gran Canaria or Grand Canary Island being the third largest of the group.
It’s too early to cast a vote on how we like the island. By the time we got out of the Airport and checked-in we had an hour before sundown. We improvised a quick walk about to the Reloj de flores, the local park and went out for diner. I’ll give them that there were more flowers in the small city park than in the entire Malaga’s botanical garden.