Returning Home

Wednesday and Thursday, June 14 and 15, 2017—Valencia to Manises to Frankfurt to Houston to San Antonio

Wednesday...

Our flight on Thursday is so early that we booked a room for our last night in Spain at a hotel in Manises where the airport is located. Therefore, Wednesday morning was spent eating breakfast, packing up, chcking out, and taking the metro to Manises.

One problem occurred. We bought a ticket from the machine for two persons to make the trip. As I pushed through the opening with my bag and my laptop, the sensor apparently thought my backpack was the second person. The gate closed with Wes still outside and the card wouldn't work to open it again. No one was at the window in the station, so I went downstairs and had a stroke of luck. Two women inspectors were standing on the platform waiting for the next train to check people's tickets. One spoke English. She came up, let Wes in, said our ticket truly was for two persons and said we needed the luggage low and in front of us to avoid the sensor thinking that two people have gone through before two actually have. When we arrived at the Rosas Station in Manises, we followed her advice, and it worked.

Our Travelodge was just across the street from the Metro station, and they already had a room available for us. We checked in and rested in the room for a while. Around the middle of the afternoon, we decided to check out the possibility of getting to the airport by foot. Google showed a route, but the guidebooks and the lady at the hotel counter say it isn't recommended. As we approached the point where we would have had to walk along the edge of an expressway, we saw a dirt path up a hill and people with backpacks coming and going. Many cars were parked on the street where we were, so we quickly firgured out it was airport employees avoiding paying the fee to park on the airport grounds. The route they were following was even shorter than the one Google recommended. It only had one danger point—one where we had to cross a two-lane, one-way road entering the airport to get to the dirt trail. At the top of the dirt trail, there was a barrier to protect pedestrians the rest of the way. We discovered we could walk from our hotel to the airport in fewer than 10 minutes!

In the early evening, we explored Manises looking for a place to eat. It was pretty quiet, since it was still hours before the normal Spanish dining time. We found a kebab place that, even though it had no customers, was open. We ate there and returned to the room to take care of last-minute business before going to bed early—copying photos from the camera to the computer and to a flash drive for Wes, getting out the clothes for traveling, packing everything else away, etc.

Thursday...

The alarm went off at 4:00—way too early to have to get up for a long day of travel. But we were cleaned up, dressed, and out of the room before 4:30. We walked to the airport using the flashlight on my phone when we got to the point where we had to cross the road and go up the dirt trail. And we got checked in immediately. There was a long line for going through security, but it moved without a problem. Then there was the long wait for boarding

Our plane leaves here at 6:35 for Frankfurt. Then we have about 4 hours there, since we don't leave Frankfurt until after 13:00 for Houston. Finally, we have about 3 ½ hours in Houston before our flights leave for San Antonio (for me) and Corpus Christi (for Wes). All should go well with such long layovers at our two stops. But it will be 23:00 before I am at home and going to bed tonight!