Spain - Day 8

On our very last day in Spain, we didn't have much time to do anything other than eat breakfast, check out of our hotel, and head to the airport.  Our flight was leaving at noon and we had to make our way there via the metro.

We decided to just have breakfast in our hotel again, so things could move along more smoothly.  Luckily, the breakfast was really tasty.  And check out the decor!  This hotel was so colorful.  I loved it!

After breakfast, we went back to our room to shower and pack up our things.  Then, we headed down to the lobby to check out.  So long, awesome hotel!

We made it to the Madrid airport without any problems and had plenty of time to kill before boarding our flight.  We relaxed, looked through photos from our trip, and stretched our legs before our long flight.

Eventually, it was time to board.  Thankfully, this flight was much better than our flight getting over to Spain.  Thank goodness!!

After about 8 1/2 hours, we finally landed back in Philly.  First things first, time for some pizza!  Sorry, Spain - You have soooo many delicious foods, but pizza is not one of them!

After our 3 hour layover and extra hour delay in Philly, we were finally able to board our super short flight from Philly back to Pittsburgh.

We arrived home in Pittsburgh around 6:30pm and completely mentally screwed up from the six hour time change.  Apparently it snowed a lot while we were gone and my parents, being the amazingly awesome people that they are, shoveled our whole driveway for us!  And my mom even left this little guy for us to come home to...

What an awesome welcome home!  We had such an amazing time in Spain.  We have been on many vacations over the years and this one was just so unique and different.  We loved every second of it.  We are already dreaming about our next potential European adventure.  Many Belgium?  Germany?  We shall see... :)

Spain - Days 1 & 2

This was our view at the airport on the day we left for our Spain vacation.  Yeah... needless to say, Pittsburgh got a horrible snow storm the day after Christmas (aka the day we were flying out of Pittsburgh).  It took us over 2 hours to get to the airport when it should only take about 35 minutes.  The roads were absolutely treacherous (thank you Dad for driving us!!).  Flights were getting delayed and cancelled left and right.  We kept checking the status of our flight, which continued to say "On Time" but I just knew that was bound to change.  We were supposed to fly from Pittsburgh to Philly at 3:30pm and then catch a connecting flight from Philly to Madrid, Spain at 6:30pm.  Well... our flight out of Pittsburgh ended up getting delayed so many times that we didn't land in Philly until about 11:30pm.  Which, obviously, caused us to miss our flight (the ONLY flight that day) to Madrid.  Womp.  At least it wasn't cancelled all together?  Positive thinking, positive thinking...

Basically, we ended up having to stay overnight in Philly and having our itinerary all re-booked for the following day.  But now instead of flying straight to Spain from Philly, we had to fly through Frankfurt, Germany and then onto Spain.  The whole thing was just such a mess, but I'll spare the in depth details.  So after an extra day delayed and a 6 hour time change, we eventually made it to our destination: Barcelona, Spain.  Hallelujah!

At least the Philly hotel we stayed at had cool liberty bell waffles for breakfast...

(And for the record,

all of the mess and stress of getting to Spain

was totally made up for once we were there.

It was incredible!)