The Trip to Madrid Via Frankfurt

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 near a gate and then another ridiculously long taxi to get back to the runway.  I thought Germans were supposed to be efficient.

I've never heard of Condor Airlines but their paint scheme is awesome. They come in multiple colors.

We landed and practically sprinted to retrieve our bags and pets.  It turned out that neither Nellie nor Maggie had been given water for either flight even though the required water bottles were taped to their crates.  Yet another pathetic failure by Lufthansa.  Both were fairly dehydrated but appeared to be OK.  I acquired a 7-person van from Enterprise and we loaded everything and everybody into it for the 5 hour drive to Villaviciosa.