London for a couple of days

At the moment I’m back in London, visiting some friends but also swapping out gear.

Next stop is Iceland, where I’ve heard a rumour that it’s kinda cold there, so I need to swap out my warmer gear for cold. 

This has given me the opportunity to try what I said in a previous post — doing just carryon only. As such I’ve repacked, dropped some stuff, swapped out others, and here is what results (note: the big grey thing attached to the back is my very warm jacket, I’ll wear it onto the plane, so it doesn’t count 😁)

It’s a nice backpack, and i spent a couple of hours today wearing it when fully loaded and I had no problems. 

It does weigh 12kg now, but that does include my 2kg laptop and my jacket. The other space user is my meds, they can’t really be shrunk/compressed, as they need to stay in their original packaging, least some customs official wonder what this unlabelled bottle of pills are.

Adios Madrid

My brief time in Madrid has made me aware of two things — I need to learn more Spanish, and then return to Madrid. And to everyone who has tried to politely tell me that Central American Spanish is not the same as Spanish Spanish, yeah, I’m aware, but even a little is better than none, and my lessons don’t stop with the six weeks of language school.

I’m thinking if the budget and time allows, it might be nice to return to Spain at the end of the trip.

Madrid Pt 2

Past couple of days I’ve done afternoon meal with Martin 
who has said that he only eats two meals a day here, breakfast and afternoon meal.

Past two days that’s exactly what I’ve done, and it’s been good. Part of that is probably due to the size of the Spanish meals.

Words cannot describe the size of that nacho dish. We had to go mining with a spoon to find the chips.

I find myself once again still working on drawing, and not even writing a single line of code. I did however open my laptop and confirmed it still works. At least I’m drawing in the hostel common room, rather than locked away.

On the art front, I’ve finally called my Mal picture done. 

It’s taken awhile because I wanted to get every fine detail right. Still can’t get the face correct, but I’m blaming Mal for that.

Tomorrow is my last full day in Madrid, so I shall have to make the most of it, today was definitely a rest day from the large amount of walking I’ve been doing.

Hello Madrid

Following on from the previous post, I’m now in Madrid. The train ride from Valencia to Madrid was rather quick, look at that speed.

I did however discover i had booked a train going to the north of Madrid, not the southern station — about 40 minutes apart by metro, but no worries.

The hostel is very nice, exactly the sort of high quality I’d expect for the price (€50, you’d be paying twice that for a cheap worse hotel).

For everyone who has been asking, yes, I slept very well in the dorm. Everyone is respectful of noise, in fact I’ve stayed in hotels where the overall noise in the room (from AC and neighbours/street) was louder than this. 

Last night I went for a walk through the Sol district of the city, and to say it was busy is a vast understatement. 

Goodbye Valencia

Well, I’m terrible at keeping this up to date, but yesterday I took the trains to Madrid.

Cullera was a great place to visit, very beautiful. In the summer months the population goes up by an order of magnitude from all the Spanish and British people who own summer flats here.

Those condos are all basically empty during the winter.

Directly on the beach are smaller condos that apparently are occupied more often. Shockingly real estate prices are surprisingly low here. Makes it rather tempting!

I enjoyed the last few days here, and I thought I’d be spending my down time writing code — why else would I bring a heavy large laptop with me? — but instead I spent it working on my digital art. I’m assured that this is perfectly normal, there’s a history of artists holidaying in the south of France and Spain and being prolific in their works 😂.

My cousin has a lovely place about 20mins walk to the beach, and beautiful views of the river.

Reunited

In what I hope is the last post on my saga of getting my luggage, I am now in possession of it. It was even an experience at the airport where I ended up in a bunch of places, finally got sent airside and had a customs inspection of my bag for my troubles. They were kind enough to tell me that I had no contraband, such a wonderful free service!

Jack Reacher Plus

Bag update: While it’s at Valencia airport, the desk for picking up the bag is closed and regardless I can’t pickup the bag until BA put it through the next part of the system. Officially they haven’t found the bag, but the bag was on a flight this morning to Valencia (their words, they maintain they haven’t found it, but it was on a flight).

At this time I have to wait for an email that will provide me instructions on how and when to pickup the bag. 

The AirTag shows the bag is at the airport.

Back to the regularly schedule post…

Lee Child’s Jack Reacher (not the Tom Cruise imitation) is famous for travelling with a toothbrush, at most.

I’m no way ready for that, but going single carryon only is sorely tempting. The last few days have shown how I can do it, and with proper rolling of clothes I can fit a surprising amount in (not that I want to!). 

I’m sorely tempted once I get back in London in a couple of weeks to swap out some gear (as I was intending for Iceland), but rock just the carryon. If I can manage the cold of Iceland with just a carryon, then clearly I’ll be able to manage a lot of other parts of the trip.

Regardless of these plans, today I await the arrival of my backpack at Valencia airport. The AirTag is a curse and a blessing. I can see where it was 3 hours ago, which was Heathrow airport, but that was a full hour after it should have left Heathrow on the flight. 

As of when I write this, the plane landed 15 minutes ago, so hopefully the tag should update soon and I can head north to the airport.