Throughout this web page, you'll see small photographs from our trip. You can see larger versions of the photographs by clicking on them. In addition, most of the links buried within the text will bring up photographs from our trip.
The Canary
Islands are a Spanish-owned string of volcanic islands located about 100
miles off the coast of Africa and due west of Morocco. Given their
proximity to mainland Europe, The islands are a popular destination for
many Europeans. However, Americans rarely venture to these Atlantic jewels.
As a result, transport to the islands can be difficult and usually requires
a stopover in
Madrid
or another major European city.
The islands themselves contain a vast range of geographic formations. Terrain ranges from the old growth laurel forests on La Gomera to the barren volcanic rocks of Fuerteventura to the snow-covered peak of El Teide (the highest point in all of Spain) on Tenerife. All of the islands are the uppermost slopes of underwater volcanoes and they contain a vast array of rare plant species.
For a long time, these islands were considered the western-most land on earth and they served as the final port call for Christopher Columbus as he set sail on 9/6/1492 for his expedition the ended with his landing in the New World.
For more information on the Canary Islands, including history, geography, and econmoics, browse the Wikipedia's entry for the Canary Islands.
It turns out that although the Canary Islands are a popular tourist
destination for Europeans, it's pretty hard to get there from the states.
That's especially true when your point of origin is a small airport with
limited international flights. In fact, there's only one flight to Europe
from RDU. Unfortunately, that flight heads to London late enough that we
couldn't have flown to the Canary Islands without spending an additional
night in the airport.
So we made the best arrangements possible: a short Delta flight from Raleigh to JFK in New York, followed by an overnight flight from JFK to Madrid. From Madrid, we were to catch an Iberia flight to Tenerife Sur, the major tourist airport on the southern tip of Tenerife. The return flight was just as easy: we would depart from the northern airport on Tenerife for Madrid, connecting with a Delta flight to JFK, followed by a short hop back to Raleigh. We even managed to find the tickets six months ahead of time at a bargain price.
About a week before our wedding, I went online to Travelocity to double
check our reservations. To my suprise, there was a message in red asking
me to call the travel agent. (No, neither Travelocity nor Delta ever called
me directly. Only this message in red on the screen.) It turns out Delta
had decided to shift their Madrid-to-JFK flight for our return trip. By
several hours! Needless to say, this changed our 3 hour connection time to
about -1 hours.
Can you imagine one week before the wedding (with all the last minute planning going on), we get this bomb dropped on our flight plans. To make things worse, Delta refused to reschedule us on any other airlines for the Madrid-to-JFK leg even though their were several alternatives that would have fit the rest of our flights. Apparently, only Delta could fly us across the ocean.
After giving us several options, such as "end your trip 2 days early" or "leave at 3am with 4 nights in some random airport," Delta decided to be nice to us and offer to give us a full refund. Right! We had two weeks of hotel reservations, a car reservation, a full honeymoon worth of plans, all just one week away and they wanted to give us a refund! Not to mention that last minute tickets were, at best, 5 times the cost we had paid a few months ago!
Finally, after pouring over the Delta and Iberia flight schedules, along with the schedules of their partner airlines, I found the best alternative and convinced Delta to at least let us schedule flights that wouldn't shorten our trip. Unfortunately, it meant an exhausting four-flight jounrey on three airlines and five airports. I'll leave the rest for later in this travelogue, but we know from the start that our return trip was going to be quite an adventure.
After saying goodbye to my parents, we passed back through security to
board our flight to Madrid. We found our seats and settled in for the long
flight across the Atlantic. The plane was an old Delta Boeing jet, without
any of the modern entertainment amenities of a newer jet. No per-seat
screens. Only the big projection screen every 20 or 30 rows with a bad
movie. It made the flight long and boring, but we were excited to be
newlyweds on our honeymoon.
The only excitement on the transatlantic flight occured late at night when most of the plane was asleep. I was returning from the bathroom to my seat and saw that Anne, who was sleeping in the window seat, had moved a blanket from her lap to my seat on the aisle. I pulled up the blanket and collapsed into the seat ready to catch a few more minutes of sleep.
Pop! I felt, not even heard, a muffled pop as I hit the seat. For a split second I was confused, not sure what to make of the sensation. It wasn't long before I felt the cold clammy spread of water as it soaked into my seat cushion, pants, and jacket. I quickly stood back up, but the damage was done. Anne had placed a little plastic cup of water, given to us at dinner, on my seat when she moved the blanket. Water was all over the seat cushion, which splashed like a wet sponge as I sat down again, resigned to spending the rest of the flight sitting in a pool of pure natural spring water.
When the pilot woke us up for breakfast by turning on the cabin lights, the woman behind me awoke to wet feet and water-logged shoes. With a tap on my shoulder, she quickly asked what I knew about her wet toes. Luckily, she didn't make much of an argument and was just happy to hear that it was only water and not a more sinister liquid! With that incident behind us, we landed a few minutes early and deplaned in Madrid, our penultimate stop.
MORE TO COME! Soon you'll be able to read about our baggage claim problems, flying standby, and sitting apart on a plane where I couldn't speak the language!
MORE COMING SOON!
MORE COMING SOON!