Category Archives: Spain

Sick in Gran Canaria – January 2025

Spain, Travel, ,

Early January was cold. Horrifically cold – by Irish standards. Nighttime temperatures plunged to minus four degrees Celsius. There was snow on the footpaths. Compared to Canada or Finland this may seem tropical but for Ireland this is catastrophic – snow, ice, frost. There were colour coded warnings of ‘multi weather hazard events’ to terrify the nation. I was not scared of the weather. My fear was that Dublin Airport wouldn’t be able to de-ice the airplane on which I was due to fly. To Gran Canaria. In June last year a Finnish friend had asked whether I was interested in spending a few days in the New Year in the volcanic, mid-Atlantic, Spanish archipelago off the coast of Morocco. My response was in the affirmative. Little did I know that as the motherland hunkered down to deal with the cold spell, I’d be jetting off to enjoy BigTourism – Spanish style.

On the beach

Until January 2020 I had a snooty aversion to mass market tourism – preferring a nice city break where I’d get a false idea of what living in another European city would be like. My nose curled in contempt when I heard of the sun, sea, sand and sangria trips. ‘It’s just like Ballybunion, except with sunshine,’ I would sneer to myself. In 2020 I took the plunge and visited Gran Canaria for the first time. That trip was amazing – partly because I travelled with a friend who rented a car meaning that we saw the island from all angles – the western cliff coast, the volcanic centre, the capital city of Las Palmas, as well as the industrial tourist town of Maspalomas and its beach – Playa del Ingles. It was also because mere weeks after my maiden voyage to Gran Canaria the world shut down. My memories of that trip grew even fonder as the nation locked down. Thankfully the pandemic didn’t halt my wanderlust and I continued to travel throughout that bizarre time – just more discreetly so as not to attract the ire of the online twitching curtains. My first trip after my inaugural bout with Covid 19 was the day I came out of quarantine – to Gran Canaria where I met up with the Finnish friend I was visiting this January.

This time she would be accompanied by her daughter. I was joined by my regular, Irish travelling companion.

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Madrid in December

Holiday, Madrid, Spain, Travel, , , , , , ,

My plan to visit Madrid in December 2022 was thwarted, when standing at the gate in Dublin Airport, ready to board at 7pm an announcement was made, to inform us that due to weather conditions our flight was cancelled. Disappointed, as I had been looking forward to visiting the Spanish capital for the first time since 2006. This December another flight was booked – for our winter wanderings we’d be spending three days in Madrid followed by three days in Tangier in the northernmost tip of Morocco. Sunshine at this time of year is a great means of cheering oneself up in the Irish grey season.

‘Guernica’ by Picasso at the Reina Sofia Museum

The Ryanair flight from Dublin to Madrid was non-eventful and we landed at 2pm, whereby we each acquired a ten-ticket metro pass for fourteen euros and followed the internet’s instructions on how to access our apartment. Lunch, en route in Chinatown involved Szechuan chicken and rice. Out apartment was located on the edge of the city centre so theoretically it was possible to walk to the heart of the city. We took the metro that evening to Gran Via which was festooned in Christmas lights. We enjoyed a few drinks in the Chueca district which seemed to have calmed down from the riotous party district it had been twenty years ago. A more likely story is that Chueca has remained the same and it is I that has become more sedate. We dined on pizza at ‘ThatsAmore’ – a pizzeria owned and run by an Italian man. Rather tasty.

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Nigerian wedding – chapter 3. The flight home and the extra passenger upon arrival

Nigeria, Return to Ireland, Spain, Travel, Wedding,

Continuing the account of the Irish / Nigerian wedding held in Ibadan in Nigeria. Previous instalment can be read at the link – https://midnightmurphy.com/2023/06/22/nigerian-wedding-chapter-2/.

Sunday 18th September 10pm – KLM flight KL0588
We started boarding our flight home to Ireland at 21.45 on Sunday. Take-off from Lagos was scheduled for 10.05pm with an expected arrival time in Schiphol Airport Amsterdam at 5.40am and then our onward connecting flight to Dublin at 7.40am. Progress was slow. Three security agents were performing a last manual check of our bags before we could board the plane. With 294 passengers on the fully booked Boeing 777 they were busy. I was sitting in a dreaded middle seat – 38J – on the right-hand side of the plane, about five rows behind the middle galley where a set of customer toilets, and flight attendant refreshment trolleys were located. Take off was delayed by an hour thanks to slow progress in boarding. So far that made three out of three delayed flights on this expedition– Air France and KLM (airlines that are part of the same company) weren’t covering themselves in glory so far this trip.

Eventually we took off at about 11pm for which the pilot apologised and promised to try to make up some lost time on the journey back.

It was raining heavily outside the window.

Plane diversion

Take-off was smooth, but ten minutes into the flight just as I was about to settle in to watch ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ on my TV screen the plane lurched forward. The passengers screamed in terror. This wasn’t some mild turbulence that often happens in flights – this was turbulence that displaced items from tray-tops. Suddenly the plane lurched again. I had the seat top in front of me clasped in a vice like grip. The woman on the seat to my left started praying out loud.

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Tenerife

Holiday, Spain, Travel, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

The flight to Tenerife was chaotic. It was a sold out flight, and the passengers were a youthful demographic. I am not saying they were all feral but there was a sizable number who seem to  have been dragged up. After a spot of turbulence I decided to avail of the facilities. The agitated, young man in  front of me  in the queue starting banging the toilet door shouting ‘Will you hurry up, I’m dying for a slash!’. I recoiled in horror. The occupant was a companion of his and the expletive laden response burned my ears. Everybody seemed to order multiple mini bottles of hard liquor for the flight. Being far classier, I demurely sipped my bottle of flat warm Diet Coke, while reading ‘Enduring Love’ by Ian McEwan. I ordered pasta for lunch estimating a twenty minutes delivery time. I took my insulin injection at what I thought was a reasonable time before food would arrive. One hour later there was no sign of it, and the food trolley was still far away. I was starting to feel poorly so I invoked the help of the lovely Clondalkin girls beside me who fed me a Kit Kat. ‘Are you alright love? My sister’s s diabetic. It’s a SCOORGE.’

My friends collected me in the rental car and we made our way to the villa in Adeje on the south west of the island, which was to be our home for the next five nights. Four days before our arrival I had received an email from booking.com informing me that due to an ‘electrical fault’ at the property our reservation had been cancelled. No alternative was offered – leaving us without a place to stay mere days before departure. With four of us in the group I was stressed – booking rooms had been my job. Thankfully AirBNB offered a few alternatives. Several were managed by a character named Oksana however – the same charlatan who had cancelled our booking.com reservation. Avoiding all properties managed by her, I located a beautiful house with a pool, only marginally more expensive than the previous place. That evening we dined on steak – mine as always, rare – and met a Scottish couple. They had been a couple for a few years – she’d been widowed three years earlier and this was her first subsequent relatrionship. We consumed a few beverages with them.

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My weekend in Madrid

Madrid, Spain, Travel

My first visit to Madrid was in 2007. The memories are hazy, but there was a sense that it was a city that I would revisit one day. It was too vast a place to absorb in a solitary trip. I felt joy when Aer Lingus had a sale in September – a return journey cost a hundred euros. As I was still on my post pandemic travel binge, I booked my flight and accommodation. I would be making my triumphant return to the capital of Spain between the 9th and 13th December.

Along the way I acquired some travel companions. I am comfortable as a solitary traveller but am amenable to some company on the way. I will book my trips in the expectation that I will be a sole wanderer and if I acquire some companions en route then this is a bonus. In the end it was a group of four – two who were travelling on Ryanair at 9.30am and two (myself included) who were taking Aer Lingus flight EI0594 at 17.30 that evening.

In the days pre departure, the forecast from Madrid looked ominous – it was an unseasonably wet December in Spain- with persistent rain forecast for the duration of our stay. The temperatures were mild, but the rain promised to be constant. So much so that a few days before take-off our travel numbers were reduced to three. Disappointing but it was still going to be exciting. Among us we have agreed that the Saturday would be spent exploring the ancient city of Toledo. Located about an hour by train from Madrid, this was a UNESCO world heritage site and one of the most historically significant towns in Spain. I had almost visited back in 2007, but the shenanigans the night before rendered me unfit for purpose on the day of travel. It was finally time to rectify this. A return visit to the Prado Museum was also on the cards. This was a ‘must see’ for both my travel companions and as such I was willing to participate.

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