The second annual Moms Trip (i.e., me, my mom, and my mother-in-law) got off to an ominous start about two hours into our flight from Newark to Barcelona. The pilot announced that they needed to turn the plane back around due to a navigation issue on the plane. Needless to say, this was concerning, but there was nothing that we could really do about it. We also weren’t sure what our options were going to be. When we eventually did return to Newark around 12:30a, we were in the same position as we had been before we initially departed almost 5 hours prior. After deplaning and some waiting around, we were eventually informed that we would be taking the same plane back over to Barcelona.
I was luckily able to have a short conversation with the pilots from our ill-fated flight, who were replaced by a new air crew for the second flight. I didn’t fully understand their explanation, but from what I could gather, it seems like the problem was actually with the flight controls and not exactly navigation. They said something about the throttle automatically pulling back soon after takeoff when the automatic system stopped working correctly. They were essentially in this manual flight mode for the next two hours, trying lots of things to get the automatic flight system fully operational. Before giving up and turning back around, they were even on the phone with ground maintenance and United headquarters. They also didn’t want to have to navigate bad weather in Barcelona in the plane’s degraded condition, and would not want to leave a stricken plane for the next air crew in Barcelona. As an aside, we later found out that multiple flights from the US headed for Barcelona around that same time ended up being diverted to Madrid because of the weather. The conversation gave me more of a sense of why they needed to turn around, and made me appreciative that we got back safely (and also appreciative of the time they spent conversing with some random passenger who had approached them as they were heading home). Unfortunately, this whole ordeal meant that we missed out on our tour of La Sagrada Familia that was scheduled for 1p on November 6.
The second flight turned out fine once it got going. I got a bit of sleep on the plane, but it wasn’t exactly of high quality. We arrived in Barcelona around 4p, and then eventually made our way to our hotel (HCC St. Moritz) by taxi around 5:30p. This gave us 30 minutes before we were to meet the rest of our Globus tour group (a total of 26 (?) guests, plus the tour director “Abbadi Klay”) at the welcome dinner around 6p.
--
After a (pretty solid) buffet breakfast at the hotel, our first activity of the 7th (a Friday) was a 10a guided tour of Park Güell (which we were a couple of minutes late for, but it wasn’t a big deal). The park was just about as impressive as I vaguely remembered from my first visit 20 years earlier, and it was good to get some background information about it this time around (e.g., I never knew that it was a failed real estate development). We had a bit of a scare as we were leaving, when my mom thought that she had lost her watch, but it turned out that she had left it at the hotel.
 |
| Park Güell |
After getting back to the hotel, we went out for a walk, during which Mutti got an ice cream and I grabbed a sandwich. We returned to the hotel to meet up with the rest of the group for an afternoon driving tour of Barcelona, which began at 1:15p. I struggled to stay awake during the tour, probably more because of adjusting to the time zone than boredom. We made a couple of stops to get off the bus: one extended stop to walk around the Sagrada Familia (plus a bathroom break at a souvenir shop), and another to take a quick photo looking down over the city from in front of the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (National Art Museum of Catalonia).
 |
| La Sagrada Familia |
We returned to the hotel from the tour around 4:30p. After some deliberation, the three of us headed out on foot to walk down part of La Rambla. We also made a stop at the Mercat de la Boqueria (a public market) to buy some treats. After even more deliberation regarding dinner (trying to accommodate vegetarian options, and also shrimp for my mom), we eventually made our way to a small tapas restaurant not far from the hotel. I turned out to be the only one who enjoyed my meal. To make up for this, we got some gelato before returning to the hotel.
--
Full trip photo album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ubSqXjyFue9AWmAn8
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.