It is a good thing we like airports. And airplanes. And traveling. It makes up for the parts we seem to like just a little bit less: organizing the house, organizing the people in charge of the house, packing; you know all those pesky details that must be looked after so you can actually enjoy your time away, stress-free. Fingers crossed.

After frantically doing laundry, taking out the last of the garbage and getting all of our belongings stuffed into a couple of suitcases, we let out a collective sigh and waited for Anna to come and pick us up. It was finally time to go!!

We are flying Condor (a German airline that used to be owned by Lufthansa) and were lucky enough to get into business class. That meant lounge access as well! Woohoo. It was the first time that I encountered a waitlist to get into it though. I guess we were flying at a peak time and EVERYBODY was in the lounge. No worries though, we only had to wait 10 minutes and then we had a glass of wine in one hand and appetizers in the other.

Somehow, I was in complete shock that our flight from Calgary to Frankfurt was over 9 hours! That first leg was long enough for us to eat, watch a movie, sleep, eat again and watch another movie. It was a really nice flight.

Getting to Frankfurt, well…let’s just say it is not our favourite airport out there. But, we made it work. We found a couple of chairs in the ‘lounge’ and doom scrolled for a couple of hours until our second and final flight to Palma, Mallorca.

Just as we were about to board the plane, Jason gets an email from the rental car company asking if we could get to the store before 6pm, because that is when they close. What??? We booked this vehicle months ago and chose our pick-up time based on our flight arrival time. We can’t change this – we truly can’t make the plane go faster and now we can’t do anything about it while flying. To add insult to injury, our flight left 40 minutes late. So, we don’t have a hope of getting there on time. (When we booked the car, we chose the airport location, but apparently, for the car we need – a van – we were going to have to pick it up at a different location outside of the airport.)

Needless to say, it was not the most relaxing flight as we were going through all the possible scenarios in our head:

1. Do we book a hotel in Palma and get the car the next day? Essentially forfeiting the hotel fee we’ve already paid for in Campanet. Extra cost: ~140 Euros

2. Do we take a taxi to the hotel in Campanet – and then back to Palma the next day to get the car? Extra cost: ~$300 CAD

3. Do we try our luck with the airport location, beg, plead and cry? Hope that they can help us? Extra cost: $0, but so much angst and stress…

4. Do we rent another car, just for the day and exchange it tomorrow for the car we really need. Extra cost: ??

Long story short, we decided to try our luck with the rental company at the airport and they were amazing! They switched our booking from the original location to this one, made sure we had the car that we required and had us on our way in under an hour. All with a smile. We were so relieved. I think we may even have shed a tear. But that might have been spurred on by sheer exhaustion.

We find our van in the parking lot. It is a white van. A white cargo van. You know, the one serial killers use. Hmmm. But it was our only option to transport bikes with ease. Okay, I guess we’re those people now. In we go, with all the confidence in the world that we’ll figure out how to drive it and navigate the tiny Irish-like roads. It’s a good thing we’re rested. Oh. Right. We’re not.

An hour later, we pull into the parking lot of the most beautiful hotel. We can’t believe we will be here for 9 nights. We have arrived. 24 hours of travel from door to door, we are here. Let’s get the trip started!