Coaching for Pizza: The Flight to Mallorca, Spain

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

The Flight to Mallorca, Spain

Tuesday, 20 June, 2017:

So today we embarked on the final stage of our EuroBall IX Adventure, the traditional end of the season one week vacation.

In our early EuroBall years we used this week to seek out major European cities with tons of major tourist attractions like castles, churches and museums.

Lately we have opted instead to find a sun lit strip of sand somewhere in Spain with really nothing to see.

We just like to slowly broil on one of the Mediterranean Sea's many beaches.

This year's choice, thanks to the help of Aiki Parts and Johan Hammarqvist, was the small village of Palmanova on the Spanish island of Mallorca.

We had never been to this island so there was an element of discovery but the sun and sea are really what we wanted.

First obstacle, how to get from our house to Stockholm's Arlanda Airport in time for our 7:25 a.m. Tui Airlines flight without a car.

As Janne would say, "No problem!"

We would take the 5:05 a.m.

bus from our nearby Ryttargatan

bus stop

All was good until we saw that rain was predicted during the time of our five minute walk to the bus stop.

On a good note, we had the worst lightning and thunder storm of my two seasons living in Uplands-Väsby from about 2:30 a.m. to 3:30 a.m.

I say good, because that turned out to mean that it did not rain on us on our trek to the bus stop.

Aiki and Janne both got up to have coffee and toast with us before we left to make sure everything was good and to say our final good-byes. They will be visiting Aiki's family in Estonia when we return from Mallorca for two days before flying home to Los Angeles.

Hugs and kisses given, we left the house in the darkness of the night at 4:40 a.m. as I wanted to be early and not miss the bus should it arrive ahead of schedule.

The view from the Ryttagartan

bus stop at 4:45 a.m.

In Sweden, at this time of the year, "darkness of night" is a relative term.

The bus arrived exactly at 5:05 a.m. as scheduled and dropped us off at Arlanda Airport's Terminal 5 right on time.

Time to get in line

Speaking of time, Arlanda had a copy of Janne's next wristwatch suspended from the ceiling as you can see in this picture.

The lines to both check in and go through security were long but they moved fairly quickly. School just got out, so many families were off to start their summer vacations just like we were doing.

We were at our boarding gate in

plenty of time

On a side, packing note, Tui allows travelers to check in one bag each weighing a maximum of 15 kilos or a couple traveling together like us is allowed one bag total weighing a maximum of 32 kilos.

Additionally, each traveler is allowed one carry-on item weighing no more than 5 kilos.

After our weigh-in mania experiences on Norwegian Air coming from Los Angeles to Stockholm earlier this spring, we had some thinking to do.

We opted for the one bag option and two carry-on backpacks.

When we got to Arlanda we used the self check-in kiosk to get our boarding passes and our needed bag tag.

When we got to ticket counter, I placed the now tagged bag on the conveyer belt and it was whisked away instantly without a second to check its weight.

Neither of our backpacks was weighed either.

It was a smooth 3 hour and

45 minute flight to the

Palma de Mallorca Airport

There were a lot of screaming babies on board but I was so sleep deprived that I did not notice.

We touched down on Spanish soil at 11:10 a.m.

It was kind of my old Spanish club,

the Murcia Cobras, to send a

representative to greet us at the airport!

We had some trouble finding our one checked-in bag but finally tracked it down and we were on our way to our hotel in the beach village of Palmanova via a transfer bus provided by Tui Airlines.