Our Trip to Spain (Part 1)

I've been meaning to write this down for a long time. Now that I have a blog, I have no more excuse... so here goes. Presenting the first part of Our Trip to Spain.

Prologue

Spring 2007, we went on a vacation to Barbados and we’ll remember that trip for our lifetime. After spending 10 fantastic days with our friends, it wasn’t a surprise that we were looking forward to another vacation with them! It was just a matter of time…

To go or not to go

Summer of 2008, our friends were heading to the other side of the Atlantic for a brief assignment. Their plan was to go on an extended trip around Europe upon completion of the assignment; they suggested that we join them for a week at some destination of our choice (read: Spain). We were thoroughly excited, but just excitement wouldn’t help us. V’s parents were planning to visit us around the same time! Not just that, I had burnt a major chunk of my vacation days with our India trip in spring. As tempting as the thought of another vacation sounded, it was becoming increasingly difficult to work out the logistics.

Later in July, V’s parents’ visa process lost traction and summer was soon to be over… it was decided that they’d postpone their trip to 2009. One hurdle down, one more to go. I took a look at my remaining vacation days and found out that I had four days remaining. Combined with a long weekend that would be plenty.

Like they say, when the time is right, things just fall in place. All of a sudden we found ourselves busy planning a trip to Spain.

The Nitty Gritty

We were moving on a tight schedule. There was no time for thorough research, thanks to all our busy work schedules. Trip Advisor was our savior for this time. Here's how we worked,

1. Identify the place we are visiting
2. Identify heart of the town
3. Visit trip advisor.
4. Look at points of interests
5. How close the hotel is to our points of interest
6. Check for pictures.
7. Send out links to everyone.
8. Get comments and approval
9. Book the hotel.

Actually, most of the time it was my friend who did everything and we all came in to picture at #7 and then did 3,4,5,6, and then 8 as a review exercise only for the links that she sent across.

I should not forget the miracle; Vicky and Payal agreed about the places we wanted to visit – First shot. Identical itineraries. No back and forth. Boom! Madrid – Cordoba – Seville – Granada.

In about two to three weeks time, we had gone from, “Oh we are going to Spain, but we don’t really have a plan” to “Oh we are going to Spain, here’s our itinerary” including hotel accommodations, plane tickets, everything. It was some accomplishment!

Soon after we got our visas too. Ready set go.


To be continued....