A lot of my travel information I wrote and talked about was before the trip. Now having gotten back, some things have changed from what I knew (or thought) was true before hand. I thought I would throw some grab bag items out there.

  • Covid tests are no longer required to re-enter the US. This changed June 12, right before we left. After getting advice from other recent travelers, we were making plans on how to accomplish this on our trip.
  • Customs Forms are not used for entry – At least this is true for the US and the EU. This eliminates the ‘need a pen scramble’ on the airplane as you get ready to land. We did have some e-forms filled out for health screening which helped speed the process.
  • Air travel within the EU has pretty much the same restrictions – The only real difference I observed with security was I could leave my shoes on. There were still restrictions on liquids that needed to be in a 1L (1qt) bag. Electronics had to come out of the bag.
  • Security is not Safety- My son went through three different security checks with scissors in his bag before they were identified. Portland to Barcelona, Barcelona to Palma and finally Palma to Barcelona he was stopped in the bag scan. I don’t even know how that is possible to feel like this procedure is adequate.
  • Having friends at the airline has perks – We got priority parking and our own personal check-in when we flew to Mallorca. We also took advantage of sending a bunch of liquids back in order to not loose them.
  • Five fifty a gallon is a bargain- Our rental car was a diesel and the prices were in Euros per liter but the cost was roughly $7.75 a gallon. Fortunately, the cars are small and relatively efficient so it only cost about $30 to return the rental car.
  • Cash is still king- We got a 10% discount on fuel just by paying in cash. I really didn’t know what was going on when the price was different than registered but figured it out as I drove off.
  • Living/Travelling in Europe is expensive – Even thought the Dollar and Euro are near parity I would say items on average are probably 25-33% more. In one example, I paid 25 euros for a tube of sun block. For me, that was worth the price but I can’t imagine paying $25 for that, even if it was from France.
  • Spain is not Italy – I expected the people and experience to be very similar (if not the same). I found Spain to be orderly and law abiding compared to Italy. Traffic was not crazy and nobody got pickpocketed or had someone try to rip the watch off your wrist.
  • The world has become smaller- When I was in Italy in the 1990s, they siesta’d hard. Almost nothing was open between 1 and 6 pm. Siesta is still a practice in Spain, but I hardly noticed a change. Maybe it was where I was at but I think the world has changed to the point where this practice is not nearly as prevalent.
  • English is definitely universal- If my broken Spanish didn’t work there were no problems switching to English anywhere.
  • Spanish is not Catalan – The native language of the northeastern coast of Spain is not Spanish. While I can understand most simple Spanish, I had no idea what was happening when spoken to in Catalan. Many of the spellings are the similar but with the accent it is a different word. The tempo of Catalan sounds more like Italian but the words I could not understand.

I didn’t spend much time in the water. I am very susceptible to the sun and since it was literally 58 degrees as a mid-June high when we left, I didn’t have much time to toughen up. So, I limited my water time until after 6pm just to avoid massive sunburns. The kids went into the water here and it was a summertime high 80s. I wish I could, but the view was amazing.

Does this look like paradise or what?

End Your Programming Routine: I am wrapping up my week on vacation. There will be one more on Friday but I promise I am moving on. You cant exert that much money, time and effort and not have it play a factor in my work and opinions. I know that it is hard to enjoy someone else’s vacation, but hopefully there was at least some good information presented.