Día 97, 13 April: 12-Hour Travel to Madrid

Hostal Miralva, Madrid, Spain, Día 97. 12-Hour Travel to Madrid

View from the Palermo Airport

      At 6:30am in the pouring rain, we rushed to the taxis—I was the last one out the door once more (my luggage is quite a pain). Once at the airport, we quickly got through check-in and waited for a while before heading upstairs to security. This was our last time as the six of us, since the girls Caitlin and Devon are heading back to London while we travel onwards to Spain. Vito played his last few games of Temple Runner on Caitlin’s smartphone, much to his sadness. Vito and Caitlin had recently earned enough points to get a new character in the game, and now he was sad to part once again with the boredom-suppressing game.

       Once we were at the gate, Italian announcements kept surging overhead—and went over our heads (pun intended). We eventually learned that the plane could not land at Palermo airport due to the severe weather. In fact, during our time in the security queue, the floor shook below us and yes, it was an earthquake. Big enough to notice beyond a doubt.

      We had to wait for a bus for around 30-40 minutes. I slept on it, and woke up at Tripoli airport where crowds swarmed up the escalators and into the security lines. Another half-hour later, in which Joe incidentally got through airport security with deodorant and a lighter, we made it on the plane.

View of Tripoli during Lift-Off

      I didn’t mind the two and a half hour flight. I finished Stephen King’s novella that inspired the movie Shawshank Redemption. I loved the narrative commitment to the prisoner’s voice. It was so genuine and the story could not have been written from any other perspective. I went on to read three short stories that I had been assigned in my creative writing class weeks ago but had been so busy with essays that I never read them. They focused on interesting narrative perspectives—one story was entirely written in the second-person (as in, the first few lines read, ‘Go to America. You love the books the TV shows, the movies. Tell people…’ and it’s interesting to realize that this perspective is really a series of commands). 

      We arrived in Madrid and took a metro so similar in its accessibility and efficiency to ones in Italy and the UK and France that I have now officially become jealous of the European metro systems. They are just so much more superior to any in America.

      Vito took the translator’s steering wheel in talking to the hostel owner. Despite taking three years of Spanish (…four years ago) and using it occasionally already here, I know that it’s been a long, long time for me and certain words have fallen out of memory. Vito claims the same, but he’s quicker on his feet in the language, I’d say.

      Once in the gorgeous yet small room, the three of them took naps while I finally skyped Katya. In fact, as I write this a minute before midnight, they are all still sleeping. Hm, I think I should wake them. Apparently, the night life they plan to head out to tonight does not really kick in until around 1:30am, but maybe I’ll convince them to go out for tapas first. As for me, I ploughed through this day awake, so I will probably sleep within the next hour or so.

Madrid on the street 'Calle Gran Via'