Spain 2022: Girona to San Francisco

 We got up early, ate breakfast, packed everything into the car, and drove out past the garage and bollard before returning the keys back into the apartment. This time, everything went smoothly. The drive was easy, and even gassing up the car right next to the airport was straightforward and easy.

Once we returned the car, we discovered that we were early, standing in line waiting for Iberia/Level to open. Once they were done, we cleared security and had our last tapas lunch before clearing passport controls. At the duty free shop we bought chocolate that would be hard/expensive to buy in the US: kinder surprise (banned because of a choking hazard), ritter sport (hard to buy), and then bought sandwiches and other meals for the flight.

Returning to the US after the flight, we cleared customs and passport controls easily only to find ourselves stuck waiting for the car seats. Once out, ride share was easy to get at, and we easily got home. Not surprisingly, after the kids started school, we started getting COVID exposure notifications from their classmates, no doubt acquired by visiting destinations in much less vaccinated places than Spain. In retrospect we should have stayed for a week longer until the rest of the families had gotten their COVID bouts over and done with.

But the trip was excellent and I still think Spain would be a great retirement location. My wife asked why I didn't think of it earlier, and the only answer I can give was that my first few nights in Spain during the 2008 tour were so awful that it took persuasion from Brad Silverberg before I would change my mind. Spain is not a great location for the kind of bike touring I do, but would be a perfect home base, which explained why my 2008 visit was so different from my 2019 visit.