It is time to take off!

After days of intense preparation, Monday has come and we are very excited and ready to go !
We leave our house close to the sea early in the morning and well in time, we drive into Barcelona, we drink the last Italian style cappuccino made by Jacopo at our favourite bar Crema cafè around the corner, we drop the keys of our ( rental ) apartment&office once for all after 4 years ( in a very casual way as if we just rented for a long weekend ) and jump in a taxi to the airport … “Terminal 1, please, Qatar Airways”.

Surprisingly it is a quite morning at the airport … we skip the long queue by putting ourselves in the drop-off-bags-for-online-check-in-only dedicated line, walking straight to the young and smiling hostess who is there to welcome us … to discover that to be checked in to our flight to Ho Chi Min and enter Vietnam for a less than 15 days stay without Visa – as we were well aware of – we HAVE to show the actual purchase of our tickets out of Vietnam prior the departure ! – ” NEXT, please! “

It was in my TO DO list for the 2 hours of waiting before boarding and also one of the reason why we arrived early at the airport…

So, here we are, backing off in slow motion, sweating while pushing a 3-story airport trolley approaching a typical 3-seats airport bench, getting off my 3-days-moving aching back my perfectly organized, highly modern multi pockets backpack ( hold your horses dear Chiara Ferragni! you also wear one “zaino” of your line: only mine it is not so flirting like yours but yet, it looks like a bit more advanced in terms of usability) to switch on my computer and run&buy 3 one-way tickets out of Vietnam on the 30th of December … pffff … big questions: at what time? “better in the morning, right Mr. F ? “, ” which airline company: Vietnam or Thai airlines ?” Well, let’s go for Vietnam airlines: all set, 3 passengers, 30th of December, click click click… payment accepted and confirmed… email received… we are ready to check in !

…and here we are again, fast forwarding the scene of checking in, with myself waving the computer opened at the confirmation email page as a winning trophy in an imaginary fight against time, rushing to the finish line just to be told by the same hostess of before : “Hold on, Mrs Martina! we actually need the ticket number of each passengers to allow you to check in… let’s wait few more minutes until you get it by email… “NEXT please !”

A fast and furious call to the Travelgenio call center saves the wait when a young Victoria in a blink-of-an-eye sends over the electronic tickets via email even before I finish the sentence with the question and asks me if she can be of more help … ” Muchísimas gracias y Felices Fiestas Victoria! ”
Et voilà, we are checked in and ready to go!