Adiós, España. Bonjour, Genéve!

Geesh, where has a week gone? My time in Spain has sadly drawn to a close already. I’m always sad to leave Spain but it gets a little easier to depart each time as I now know with certainty each time I leave that I will indeed be back. 

My last meal in Spain... homemade paella!


For my last meal in Spain, Maite made the most traditional Spanish meal of all: paella! Add a bottle of red wine to the mix and it was a perfect last Spanish experience to have before taking off. We spent a low-key morning and afternoon at the house, me trying to make my luggage fit within the the very strict 20kg weight limits of the low-cost airline I was flying. We also looked through Maite’s pictures from her amazing trek across the famous Camino de Santiago in northern Spain. She didn’t do it all at one shot but in total she walked over 600 kilometers (nearly 400 miles) to finish the trail. A super impressive feat. She’s quite the spitfire, she is!

Inevitably, it was time for me to catch my evening flight to Geneva. Why did I end up coming to Geneva, you ask? Good question. For those of you who don’t know me well, I hate, hate, hate making plans and dealing with details. I avoid it at all costs. In my mind I knew I was coming to Europe for months beforehand but didn’t even book that ticket until two weeks before leaving. And that was the extent of my plans before getting on my flight to Madrid. I arrived knowing that I was going to Spain and to Belgium, and that I was flying back from Dublin. And that was it. But once I was here, I couldn’t put it off any longer and HAD to make some decisions (doh!). I decided to approach all other inter-Europe plans, true to form, by winging it. I looked at the flights I could get out of Bilbao and went with the destination to which I could fly the cheapest, which ended up being Geneva. I had no intentions of coming to Switzerland when I left home and yet, here I am. I kinda dig that.

I didn’t get into Geneva until nearly 11 so haven’t done anything as yet but, even so, so far so good! My flight was good* and I got my bag almost immediately. I got a free train ticket into the city, walked right onto the correct train from the airport 30 seconds before it left the station (thereby saving me having to wait 30 minutes for the next one), got off the train and easily found the right street, walked four easy blocks to my hotel where I was given a very nice room that included free wifi, free breakfast and free city transportation for the duration of my stay. This being my first time in Geneva , I had no idea what to expect nor any idea about how to get anywhere once I landed (I repeat: winging it). But so far, it’s been extremely easy to get around and to get settled in. Let’s hope that’s a good sign of things to come tomorrow!

* Excepting, that is, the baby-slash-toddler who started screaming back at the coffee shop in the airport in Spain, kept screaming at the gate while waiting to board, continued screaming during boarding, after boarding, while taxiing and during takeoff and kept on screaming for the majority of the 90 minute flight and especially the landing. I'm not talking crying here, I'm talking full-out, ear-piercing, mind-numbing, milk-curdling, bloody murder screaming. Two rows in front of me. Yeah, except for that part.