I’ll admit that I was not looking forward to the flight from Barcelona to Prague. The only airline that offered non-stop flights was Vueling Air, a partner of Iberia Air. The reviews of the airline were pretty dismal—anything from unclean planes to missed schedules to strict rules for baggage and refunds. But it didn’t stop in Frankfort, so there’s that.

Our first outing from Barcelona was today’s train excursion to Figueras to visit the Dali Museum. I have to put a word in for Spain’s trains. They are superb. They’re quiet (all electric), fast (top speed today was over 200km/h), spotlessly clean, roomy, comfortable, and they run on time to the minute. The stations are also clean, as well as light, spacious, and efficient. It’s really a pleasure to travel this way. If only…

Our options for eating on this trip quickly galvanized into a happy routine. Breakfast at the hotel, which offers a superb variety of eggs, meats, cheeses, fruits, yogurts, juices, and breads (excellent croissants) each morning. Lunch is “find a little spot that offers simple sandwiches and. Hopefully fresh orange juice.” Dinner has been tapas every night this far, and I see no reason to change that. We’ll run out of days here before we run out of little out of the way tapas restaurants. So far, each one has been better than the previous. A couple of truly outstanding dishes come to mind—some grilled octopus served on spiced mashed potatoes (last night) and tonight’s roasted red peppers stuffed with mushroom humus and served on crusty bread with a really good sauce. Patatas bravas have been a staple each night. Amazing how many different ways there are to prepare that simple dish.

Yes, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a compelling travel experience.

We used some Alaska Airline miles to take this trip—$19 and 22,000 miles (!) each. For this we got a 7:00pm flight from Kalispell to Seattle, a 4 hour wait until 11:30pm to catch a five hour flight to JFK. And it’s here we’ll stay until 5:00pm this evening, when we fly directly to Barcelona.

Five hours isn’t much time to sleep, especially when four of those five hours were spent experiencing some significant turbulence. And then to have to end up in JFK for 9+ hours for a 7.5 hour flight that arrives in Barcelona at 7:00am…

But it’s a gorgeous morning here in New York, and we cleared all the necessary check ins, and it’s only $19.