Pat And Patty Travel Blog

The biggest difference that we've noticed about living in Spain is the price of groceries. Most everything is much cheaper. Hot dogs on pizza?? Six large bottle of water were 1.62 €                                                A six-pack of Dannon yogurt for 1.55 € In addition to the difference in prices, they obviously carry some different items. Seriously large fish So much olive oil This  This is the entire cereal section.  No Capt'n Crunch!!

 We slept the best that we could the first night after the exhausting journey.  There is only one other apartment on our floor and it is apparently inhabited by Satan's child.  At least one of them was screaming and throwing tantrums until after 2:00 a.m.   The next morning we went over to the town hall to register.  The information that I had received was incorrect though, as we were told that we would need to travel to Gijon and register at the National Police office.  Once we got there, however, it was too late.  We were told to come back on Tuesday morning.  When I asked about the requirement to register within 72 hours, the officer told me "it is no problem". While in Gijon, we found a pet supply store and rounded up the all-important litter box for the cats and some treats for all of our herd.  Just down the road from the pet store, we saw this future destination. Also in Gijon, we stopped by the Spanish version of Home...

Patty endured a fair bit of stress getting the pets checked in at Atlanta while I returned the rental car.  The return lot is 15 minutes away from the terminal so it's a full 1/2 hour round trip. Plus the 10 minutes waiting for the shuttle back to the international terminal. By the time I got back, all 8 bags were checked and Maggie and Nellie were just finishing up with TSA.  From there we headed straight to the lounge thanks to our first class upgrades.   The 8 1/2 hour flight went shockingly fast. Especially considering a complete lack of sleep on my part.  We landed at 2:30 am EST, which is about my normal bedtime. Frankfurt is an awful airport in my opinion. It's absolutely massive and very spread out. Once we landed we taxied for 15 minutes and must have traveled a couple of miles.  To get to our departure plane for Madrid, it involved a 15 minute hike to our gate, a 10 minute bus ride to a large group of planes that were nowhere ne...

Well.....I guess that we should have seen this coming.  Lufthansa couldn't check us in because they only showed one of two cats booked in the cabin for our SECOND LEG!  That's right, we were booked fine though Frankfurt, but we couldn't board because of an issue with the second flight to Madrid. If I wasn't so angry, I'd be speechless. I can't stress enough how bad Lufthansa has been through this process. I'll definitely never use them again. We're rebooked for tomorrow. Hopefully the bugs will be worked out. I did snap a couple photos of the house before we left. Turns out we'll still be here one more night.

Our last day in Macon. Both of us are feeling very anxious. There's been a lot of drama with Lufthansa regarding our pet reservations. We now have to take two of the cats in the cabin. I'm not sure how that's going to go. I spent over 4 hours on the phone with them yesterday. At least the container is loaded and on it's way to Savannah. It is packed! Although it did have a bit of a "farmy" smell to it. Looking forward to all of our belongings smelling like a barn.

 Less than one week before we leave and I'm still making last minute adjustments to our travel plans.  The company that's shipping our container just contacted me to reschedule the pick-up for the same day that we leave.  That's obviously not going to work. The pets don't know that this is their last week in a house before transitioning to apartment life.  The cats will adjust, but I'm worried about our dog Nellie. She's always been very skittish and barks at any noise. Miss Nellie Tommy can't escape the power of the sunbeam

Deciding what to bring to another country is difficult when you've spent a lifetime collecting things.  Patty loves to wear vintage clothing and she has a lot of it.  This is load one of about 3 heading over to our storage unit to be packed onto pallets.  We will fill a 40' container and we'll need to put everything into storage once it arrives in Spain, until we find permanent housing. It's not what I'd recommend doing, but we're both pretty bad at letting things go. This is what it looks like when the pallets are ready to go.  When exporting to another country, don't forget to use plastic pallets as there's restrictions over using wood ones.  Something to do with the possible introduction of insects to places where they might not already exist. Still a lot of work to do.  The pets are booked and we've got approved crates for them.  Definitely a big estate sale with everything that we are leaving behind.