sleepybyes

The precautionary measure of packing lightly a couple of days in advance meant that I didn't have to do anything more complex than format some memory cards after last night's silly-late finish. I tried to get some maps onto my phone but I wasn't allowed to update the old version of Nokia Maps and the new version seemed to have some sort of long-drawn-out subscription process to get new content so I'll have to just use paper-map or a photo of a paper-map depending on how unwieldy and look! a tourist! the paper-maps available turn out to be. Apart from waking up all I had to do was move bicycles to a safer place (where they would at least be safer from casual thievery though probably in more danger of falling over and smashing the wardrobe doors) and look in the fridge to see what might start to smell within the week.

I generally prefer getting public transport to the airport as it doesn't involve being a car-passenger, works out cheaper than leaving the car in one of those fenced-off areas of wasteland and doesn't involve having to travel to the airport in an incredibly warm and stuffy and fag-smelling seatbeltless minibus driven by someone several times less careful than even the recklessest LRT-big-bus driver. I also mildly resent funding anything which involves large, vicious dogs, conveniently situated right where cars have to be dropped where they can bark and rattle stupidly at people getting out. It turned out to be the one we've used most frequently before but its name as been different every time and when I tried to find a better location than the rubbish partial address on the email receipt (having been lost in the Newbridge industrial warren before) the website refused to tell me anything sensible and certainly didn't provide anything useful like a map or postcode. The directions worked but only because we ignored the wildly inaccurate yard-measurements and went where we thought it was.

We usually avoid the airport at peak times by getting the cheapyflights at stupid-O'clock on weird days but EasyJet usually recreate the peak-time airport experience by only have one check-in desk open for all their approaching departures which at least provides some time to tie rucksack-straps to each other to help prevent them being eaten by an eager conveyor belt mechanism. For some reason rucksacks (even lightly-packed ones well under the weight limit) seem to have to be taken to the outsize baggage conveyor at Edinburgh but nowhere else. Sometimes this means that ours pop onto the retrieval-carousel minutes before everyone else at the other end but sometimes means the opposite. As well as primitive conveyors unable to cope with large packages Edinburgh also lags behind the rest of the world in the provision of those machines for clingfilming flimsy luggage. Not that I'd consider paying six euros to have my rucksack laminated but I'm sure some people would appreciate it, particularly those who didn't heed the EasyWarning about only taking one and only one piece of hand luggage onto the aircraft and had to attempt to further overstuff their bags to the point at which the zips wouldn't close. I hadn't bothered testing the weight of my bag when packing as it was obviously well under the limit but it was nice to know that I had seven whole metric kilogrammes' worth of spareness.

It was possibly due to it not being really early in the morning but not quite mega-busy that the securi-checking process took far less time than it usually does. As far as I recall from our last trip there were still only two scanners of which only one was ever in use (even post-11/09 when everything took twice as long) but now there are many though not quite enough to mean that we didn't have to stand amongst the queueing-ribbons listening to already-drunk idiots barking at each other and hoping that they weren't on our flight. We were leaving via one of the left-hand gates so didn't have to wait anywhere near the bar, never a pleasant sight in an airport, especially in the morning. There was a beer-serving fish-bar stand-thing opposite the Costa but no-one sitting at it seemed to be drinking. You have to wonder at the wisdom of having a fish-bar in an airport, though. Have they not seen Airplane? Hopefully no-one mixes both fish and drink before travelling as the smell-combination if that got out could easily set everyone else off. I don't think I've ever seen or heard anyone being sick during a flight but it presumably still happens. I was slightly too tired to spend the entire flight staring out of the window and the brightness was increased by the presence of clouds so just read instead. I don't recall anyone impinging on my consciousness too much though the bloke behind was a little careless with his knee-movements.

It always comes as a slight surprise to see smoking still permitted in airports, even if only in little enclosed spaces like giant versions of the chemistry lab's fume cupboard. They weren't very efficient at stopping the gases from escaping but at least it freed up some of the entrances to allow people to walk through without getting a fine coating of tar and a light smoky fragrance, though the cupboards only seemed to be sited where there was no nearby door to the outside world. Madrid airport is on the everything-in-a-big-strip plan but I unfortunately forgot to switch on my step counter to see how long it was. There were a few of those flat escalator conveyor-things but I prefer walking alongside them to try and shame the people wasting their feet and legs. It would have been nicer to walk outside but the sun looked way too burny and it woud have been too easy to miss the signs for the tube though the stop was sensibly located at the end of the terminal building and featured many easy-to use machines with nice easily-selectable language options for foreigners. My limited attempt to learn some stuff didn't get anywhere near the finer points of the half-phrases on underground tickets though even the English-translated version didn't specifiy what the penalty was for being caught with a ticket on which the airport supplement hadn't been paid.

Although I live in a city it's a small city and I usually walk too fast to be at risk of being pickpocketed though I also don't look like anyone who might be carrying lots of things of value unless anyone pays attention to my camera bag. Though I don't dress in the traditional manner of the tourist (again excepting the camera bag and except when it's so sunny that I have to wear my floppy wide-brimmed sun-hat to avoid being burnt to smithereens) I can't really blend in anywhere sunny, partly due to wearing shorts and a T-shirt when the locals are still huddled up in scarves for what they consider to be winter and partly because the shorts and T-shirt reveal pale, untannable skin. There's probably a legal requirement for guide books to warn against pickpocketry but the Rough Guide's warning for Madrid's tube had been especially severe and had been augmented by reports from everyone we knew who'd been here and had had something nicked at some point. I was trying to watch all my stuff and Nicky too, hands on my stuff in my pockets and being especially wary of people bumping into me or anyone who looked like they were watching everyone. Apart from the stop one down from the airport the platform side of the track remained the same for the first part of the three-line journey so I could stick my bags behind me to protect them. Apart from one pair who boarded, spread out and started watch people closely nut discreetly (paying, I thought, particular attention to my pockets) before which one started sneezing in what looked to my paranoid eyes as a very false and distracting way we had no trouble and eventually emerged after several changes and fun trudges up and down station staircases with everything we'd had when we'd started.

As well as knowing no useful Spanish regarding buying train tickets from automated machines I hadn't yet learnt anything specific to collecting the keys to an apartment from the owner though we both knew enough French to sort out what was necessary. I'd been expecting a studio-flat version of the tiny little room we'd stayed in in the Barcelonian hostal we stayed in two years ago where the window looked onto a lightwell containing the lift and thumping noises emanated from behind every wall. There was one normal-size window at one end looking into the central courtyard of the block but little extra-windows on the opposite wall, most of which looked onto the grey concrete of the academy-of-dance building but also let in the light reflected from it. The flat could technically hold four but they'd be fairly cramped and would probably get very impatient with each other if they needed the toilet. There was a fridge, a microwave in a cupboard, one of those two-ring plug-in electric hob-things and (nice touch) a stovetop espresso thing though no kettle and we'd thought that the flat having a kitchen would mean that taking the little euro-plugged travel-kettle would be a waste of a very small amount of space. The initial impression was that it was very good for the money - plenty of stuff and shops nearby, central but not so central as to be heavingly busy and reasonably airy at this time of the year. Wouldn't like to be there in the summer but I wouldn't like to be anywhere near as far south in the summer.

Being slightly knackered and having no plans to do anything specific we sat about for a bit then headed out to find somewhere selling basic apartmtent foods and to generally poke about. I hadn't yet made any effort to study the map to see where we were and which direction was which so we ended up wandering south-eastwards along a street which appeared to be called Acacia Avenue. We hadn't collected any smaller maps yet and the central streetname-detail map in the guide book map of which I'd taken a photo before leaving stopped a block south of the apartment though we weren't turning much and would have had to have been asleep if we wanted to get lost; as a last resort there would always be Google Maps via the phone but I'd need to be fairly desperate to pay roaming data rates. Finding nothing more exotic (and plenty less) than the apartment-local area we wandered back to the Carrefour twenty metres from the door and loaded up on basics, including some relatively cheap-compared-to-home ground coffee which would be as good a thing as any to use some of my spare 7kg bagagge-allowance for. I haven't really done the souvenir-from-holiday thing for a while now. As a child I would usually be granted some form of trinket labelled with the name of something we'd been to see but I've never really gone mental for buying anything abroad either just for the sake of it or because a particular thing was particularly comparatively cheap in whichever foreign was being visited. I bought a lens in Munich a couple of years ago but only because I'd just bought my camera along with a kit lens but couldn't find anywhere selling the 50mm f/1.8 anywhere at home in the few days between delivery and departure. We've a couple of bits of earthenkitchenware in the flat from a couple of visits to a nice earthenkitchenwarearium in Barcelona but did not avail ourselves of anything else Spanish or Catalan such as a leathery belt though I did idly look about for a leather satchel of a kind which was common when I was small but which now seems to exist only in memory. Coffee doesn't really count as souvenir despite the Spanish packaging.

We didn't quite believe the everything-starts-at-2100 guide yet so went for a wander at about seven when we started getting hungry to see if anywhere looked good to eat in. A few places spotted but nothing was open and after the travelling and a long beginning to the week we gave up and found a sort of microwaveable instant tortilla thing in a shop instead.