Monday, July 6, 2026
Today we leave for Europe. Our first stop is Spain to visit our friends in Madrid for three nights. Then we are taking the high-speed rail up to Barcelona to meet up with our Virgin Voyages cruise line. The cruise is eight days long, and we are doing the South of France and all the way down the Amalfi and Italian coast. We are definitely looking forward to this cruise, but we aren't looking forward to the 40-degree weather across Europe.
We were concerned that we wouldn’t make this flight with all the weather issues in Washington DC. But it looks like we are gonna make it… so we can make the connection to Madrid. Which isn’t a long connection.
We were fortunate enough, thanks United status… to be flying over the Atlantic in Premium Economy. It was a perfectly, but potentially tight connection and boarding started after a ride on the funky Dulles bus and a pee break. This is our home for the next 8 hours.
It is strange to be in America again. It has been quite a while and we have successfully done a gentle boycott for quite a while. The only thing we added to the economy was our pee… and yes, I know United is American but we gotta get there somehow!
Our flight is delayed thanks to weather and a backlog of planes waiting to get out. We get a little Apertif. The entire plane does, this ain’t just for Premium Economy.
They first announced olives but thankfully for Brad it’s just cheese and crackers.
Also… so in Premium Economy and above you can pre order meals. A note… if you change seats which many people did for some reason… it really causes confusion.
Beef short rib, some sort of risotto which was pretty flavourful. The beef was pretty tender and I will not complain about a butter tart. United flight to Madrid.
We almost slept through this one, prescription sleeping pills for the win! Brad and I were both asleep but managed to get some food still. It’s something sweet. We’ll see how it goes.
Update: I have no idea what I this was but I quite enjoyed it. It was not too sweet, moist and warm. I have confirmed it was Cinnamon Apple Bread Pudding.