San Sebastian/Madrid/Paris

Boy did that suck.

After five pleasant days with the lovely Basque people in Donostia, Madrid and the surly rudeness of its airport and hotel staff was a bit of a shock.

Some tips about Madrid:

• The people there are decidedly unhelpful
  
  
• None of their freakin' planes are on time (which is why we were staying the night instead of risking a missed connection)
  
  
• The people at the airport information desks look at you as if you've suddenly grown a second head if you ask for a taxi for more than 4 people. The conversation goes like this (and yes, it happened on several occasions):
  
  Us: 'Hello, can you please help us book a taxi that will carry five people?'
  
  Info Desk person (with the you've-got-two-heads look on the their face): 'But you have five people.'
  
  Us: 'Yes, we need a taxi that will carry five plus all our luggage.'
  
  Info Desk person: 'But a taxi only carries four people. You will need to book a special taxi.'
  
  Us: 'Yes, this is what we are asking. Can you help us?'
  
  Info Desk person: 'It is not possible. Try over there.' (points at hire car desk)
  
  
  Us to hire car person: 'We need to get five people to (hotel/apartment), can you help?'
  
  Hire car person: 'Yes, I will call you a taxi that carries more than 4 people.'
  
  

• People in Madrid hate being forced to speak English - even when the pizza place you're ordering from has it's menu written in English
  
  
• Juan the reception guy at the Holiday Inn Express probably hates us with a passion. We were so annoyed with his crappy service we decided to make pests of ourselves. Here are some of the requests/phone calls we made to him while he was on duty (in the space of about an hour)
  
  
  
  • Juan, can we please have the interconnecting rooms we asked for?
  • Juan, we were told we could have breakfast before checkout, will this be possible? (It wasn't.)
  • Juan, how do we order food? (This was at 4.30pm. Nothing in the vicinity would open until 7pm) 
  • Juan, do you have change for the hotel foyer vending machines? (He didn't)
  • Juan, can we have some extra towels please?
  • Juan, the tv in one of our rooms is not working, can you send up a maintenance person? (He couldn't, but we found the room's circuit board and flipped the switch ourselves)
  • Juan, what time does tonight's football game play? On which channel? Which teams are playing? (I kid you not)

We were up at 4am to get to the airport by 5am to check-in for a 7am flight to Paris.

The kids are now over flying, period. Maksim's words were "I think I like the destination more than the travelling part now".

Ditto.