Lauren and I sat in the airport in Memphis for something like 6 hours. This was after our original flight was cancelled. When the second, less ideal flight into flash-flood warning Dallas was delayed, the helpful but sassy (and with a false sense of French geography) American Airlines guy Dwight snapped his fingers and arranged for us to go Charlotte, NC to Madrid with a little extra plus of a free flight on to Pamplona.
The morning of that flight into Spain, as the stewardesses came around with fake muffins (coffee-tea-orange juice-water? Tea please) I glanced at the little gps on my screen. The plane icon, which was enormous in proportion to the cities below, hung just over the little bullet labeled St Jacques de Compostelle. Immediately I jerked up the window cover, blinding everyone around me, to see the Spanish coast and then the checkerboard of scorched yellow land interspersed with rocky, jutting mountains struck me in a very real way. We were here! The trip that's more than a trip had really arrived at last.
Lauren and I breezed through customs--the Madrid airport was deserted at 11 am. No sign of a city, though the airport's undulating roof, slatted with wicked evoked Gaudi. In gate 72, waiting for our tiny, loud, terrifying plane with an adorable Spanish flight attendant who mumbled incomprehensible English that did not add up to drinks, we met Portuegues Susanna, a little solo peregrina who shared our taxi to St-Jean-Pied-de-Port, where we arrived some 16 (18? 19?) after we said farewell to Lauren's mom and she gave us a very brave smile MEM int'l.
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