5:45 AM CST

I woke up promptly when my alarm went off this morning after a very restless night. It’s hard to sleep when you keep imagining yourself flying in a small metal tube across 3000+ miles of water. However, after a classic “everything” shower (ladies, you know), and a heartfelt breakfast cooked by my Gammy I was feeling much calmer. Preparing to take on the “I’ll sleep when I’m dead mindset.”

6:45 AM CST

The Family Dolan, as Christian likes to refer to us as, exchanged hugs and farewell wishes and we headed to the Nashville airport. Christian was very much looking forward to the prized BNA carpet, I informed him that it may all be gone due to the new renovations.

7:30 AM CST

Arrive at airport! Hugs all around and the BNA carpet was found! Thank you mom and dad for driving from Johnson City just to see us off! Also Happy Birthday momma!! Still under 50 if anyone is curious and more beautiful than ever!

8:30 AM CST

The BNA carpet lives on! Our excitement pictured. This was followed up by a quick wait for our first flight to Newark. While waiting I did my makeup sitting on the floor, a classic airport move. Boarded and headed to Newark without a hitch!

12:00 PM EST

Arrive in Newark! We chose a flight that had a long (about 7 hours) layover so that we could travel into NYC to meet some friends! Traversing the city with extremely heavy backpacks and a carry on suitcase is always fun. We met up with a few of Christian’s friends from his previous Spain experience at The Half Pint. It was nice to put a face to the names that have been featured in many crazy adventure stories! They invited us back to their apartment and we watched part of the Ravens game before heading back to the airport. Despite being five floors up in one of the largest cities on earth, surrounded by millions of other people, it felt very homey!

5:45 PM EST

Thank you to the Master of Public Transport, Christian, for navigating us to and from the airport. I am in for a shock when I have to do it myself in Spain! While heading back to the airport we received our first notification that our second flight from Newark to Madrid had been delayed. Pushed from 7 PM to 9 PM We weren’t stressed yet, as we still wanted to use our passes to the United Club.

7:00 PM EST

We arrived back at the airport just in time to receive our second notice that our flight had been delayed. Pushed, once again, from 9 PM to 11 PM. Luckily, we were enjoying our extensive space, numerous outlets, and free buffet inside the United Club. However, from the club we could see our gate…which did not have a plane yet. Not an encouraging sign.

11:00 PM EST

We received our third notification that our flight would be delayed. At this point both of us were starting to feel a little frustrated and worried that perhaps our flight wouldn’t be going today. We walked to our gate, since the club closes at 10:30 and decided to have a seat at the bar to wait it out. United gave us a meal voucher to make up for the numerous delay, we used it one ONE airport beer…$15! You would have thought we were in Neyland Stadium with those prices! Below is what one beer, a funky bathroom mirror, and a 7+ hour layover will do to you…

A plane finally arrived and they began boarding shortly after! It always astonishes me how long people are willing to stand and wait to get on the plane. We finished out drinks and got on board! Initially, I was blown away by how large the plane was, I had never been on one so big before. Definitely my first plane where immediately to the left was more seating instead of the cockpit…mind. blown.

Once we were finally seated, I was doing some people watching of everyone else boarding, as one does and Christian played a trick on me while I wasn’t paying attention. He sneakily changed the settings on my inflight monitor to “parental control,” taking away all expect 8 movies. Then neither of us could figure out how to exit it, and he had to summon the flight attendant for assistance. The flight attendant had to lean across the row only to admit he didn’t know how to fix it. He ended up having to reset the monitor completely! Hence the all black “please wait” photo…very fitting for the day.

We also had an inflight dinner at 1 AM EST, it prepped me well for a very subpar night of sleep. We finally touched down in Madrid around 12 CET and promptly made our way through customs! A long long long day.

12 PM – 8 PM CET

We met up with Zach and Hannah, our friends who are also in the city, to grab their apartment key so we could crash for a bit. Our first Uber driver from the airport was very gracious and greeted us happily. We noticed on our way out of the parking lot that there were several other people struggling to get out of the parking lot, the automated arm was refusing to open. Our driver, trying to problem solve put it in reverse to go to another booth but SLAMMED backwards into a pole. No joke. He quickly got out of the vehicle to inspect the damage and got back in. No idea what his car looked like but the pole had a HUGE dent in it.

After our eventful Uber experience, we were happily greeted by Zach and Hannah outside of their church, where they offered to take the luggage our Uber driver said he “couldn’t fit” in his car. In his defense, we did have 5 suitcases. We went our separate ways (or so we thought), and we headed to their apartment and they headed to their rec league basketball game.

However, after exiting the second Uber, we quickly realized that we ended up at the basketball game instead of the apartment. A copy and paste error. We decided to stick it out until Zach and Hannah finished playing their game. I took a quick nap on the world’s smallest bench, it just felt good to be completely horizontal. Post basketball, we all Ubered to the apartment, each took lifegiving showers, and headed out for our first night in Madrid! Bonus points if you can guess what one of our first meals was…pictured below. Thank you Zach and Hannah for already being the most gracious hosts abroad!