preparations

SFO -> JFK

JFK -> BCN

Barcelona

marketplace

Casablanca

Gran Canaria

The flight from JFK to Barcelona on Iberia was miserable: they've moved the seats so close together that most of us didn't have room to hold a paperback pocket book, much less flex our legs and relax. Whoever it is that's responsible for allowing such a design ought to be forced to sit in a primary-school all-in-one chair-desk combination at the office. What a horrible decision.

I hope market rejection beats this decision back. I'll never fly Iberia again, price be damned.

Isaac, however, really enjoyed the avalanche of hard rolls provided by the staff.

The first thing we did in Barcelona was to hold confirm our return from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (LPA) since we weren't going to take our ticketed flight from here to there. Instead we're going from here to Casablanca via Madrid-Barajas (MAD). Evidently the airlines don't like it when you take advantage of a fare loophole to book a leg of a journey that you don't plan on taking, and if they notice it they'll cancel the remaining portions. I must confess that I don't understand why they would care: you've paid for the empty seat, and a stand-by passenger may pay for it a second time.

Anyway, once that was done, we bundled Isaac up against the blisteringly cold winds at the airport and took the tunnel overpass to the train station, to enjoy our five-hour layover by visiting Barcelona.