2022 - FIP Seville

We landed about five minutes early, and after a mid-length walk (good to stretch the legs), I was in the Singapore QC, that although has undergone a few renos over the years, essentially looks the same as it always has, maybe a bit bigger. Although the layover at Singapore was three hours, you have to be at your departure gate no less than 45 minutes prior to departure. I normally have a shower when at Singapore, however, elected to go without this time and just relax. Upon checking-in to the QC, I was informed it was about a seven minute walk to Gate C15 and I should leave the lounge at 7:45pm. There are no boarding announcements in this lounge so it is up to you to make your own way there. As soon as I saw the Gate was open I headed off.  After passing through the scanner again, me and my bags, complete with bag of fluids out, it was then a 20 minute wait for all passengers to pass through security and for the non-ambulant passengers to board. Finally on board, seat 6K on the A33...

After a restless sleep due to thinking the worst with respect to my flights, I was up just before 6am and did some more packing and searching the room and bathroom for items I may have overlooked. Had a coffee and rang Greg. I checked-out about 7:20am and was in a taxi soon thereafter. I arrived at Terminal 4 of the Madrid Airport, and as luck would have it, the BA counter was open for my flight, but only for those in Business Class or Gold/Sapphire FF and above, and this was three hours before the flight was due to depart. I was through passport control in no time as the terminal was still pretty quiet. As my flight was leaving from T4S (satellite), I had to make my way there via the underground, driverless train. That took about five minutes, then another bag check (liquids, laptops, etc) and passport check and I found the Iberia VIP lounge that is in the middle of the duty free shop. It is a nice open and airy lounge with 2 feeding stations, with a good variety of breakfast items; j...

9-23 deg C, quite a chilly morning! Whilst I had breakfast at the usual time of 7am, I did not venture out until just after midday, when it was warmer and I needed a walk and sustenance. I spent the morning re-arranging the bags for the flight, and started the MEPS Post Congress Report for the next Newsletter.  As I was not yet too hungry, I decided to take a walk to the Parque de El Retiro, a very big park here in Madrid. It would have taken me tow days to walk the entire park, so because I had the start of a blister coming on, I decided to head to Maccas for lunch, after seeing a fraction of the park. Oh well, next time perhaps. I reckon you'd need at least three weeks at Madrid to do it justice. After the worms had been fed, it was back to the hotel for a snooze. Post snooze, I did some more packing, MEPS stuff, photobooking and blogging. Leftover cold chicken salad for dinner with a couple of beers.  UPDATE : Imagine my horror when I log into the QANTAS site to check on my...

14-22 deg C, quite chilly compared to last week I was awake at 6am, and decided to wait until breakfast to have a brew, so spent the time doing some more packing and talking to Greg. I thought I would have a leisurely breakfast, being my last; however, when I got downstairs, there were two bus loads of Americans doing "The best of Southern Spain" tour, so you can imagine the noise and chaos. And as a number of them were coughing, I decided to expedite the breakfast consumption process and was back in my room about 25 minutes later, with a coffee to go. My train was not until 11:43am, so I passed the time by reading, pacing and doing a final pack. I checked-out at 10:15 and 10 minutes later I was in the taxi heading for the train station. I found a spot to wait until they opened the platform my train was on, then joined the queue. After a ticket check and luggage scan, I began the long trek to the other end of the platform to Carriage #1 and seat 6C. I thought the train would ...

16-28 deg C, a relatively cool day Walk: 14.2km Had breakfast with Sylvain, then said goodbye as he was leaving later in the morning; I'm the last one standing, as I was in Glasgow 2018 and Abu Dhabi 2019. I caught the #27 bus into the city, and wouldn't you know it, the final stop changed. Just great; by doing the recce yesterday, I thought I was all set. Never mind, the stop was in the same street, just a couple before the normal route (there was some kind of run on this morning which may have been the cause, but the run finished about 9:30am and the changed route was still in play when I returned after lunch)? My plan was to visit the Mushrooms again, then catch the HOHO bus from #13 to visit some more sites. As the bus would have taken at least 1.5 hours to get to #13, I decided to just walk the route, in the reverse direction. On the way I stopped at the  Alameda de Hércules with the Roman Columns, Arco de la Macarena, the old Walls Of Seville, Torre de los Perdigones (Sho...