Monday, September 21, 2009

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Canary Islands




Got back from the Canary Islands on Sunday. It was a good trip. Filled with good meetings and successful egg drops. (Well at least our egg drop was successful...) It was my first time on an island. I say that knowing full well that Japan is an island, but it was my first time on something that felt like an island if you know what I mean. Some of the beaches were rocky (like hurt your feet rocky, not fun to climb on rocky) but my favorite was a black sand beach with super soft sand with very clean water.

The biggest adventure was the journey back. Paul, Timon, and I, along with another lady, were flying back to Madrid. (Although the flight was never delayed on the big board, the plane didn't arrive at the gate until 5 minutes after we were suppose to depart. Turns out someone had smoked in the toilet, meaning he had to be arrested when the flight landed.) The actual flight was uneventful, til the last 10 minutes. We were close to the ground, going in for the landing, when the pilot jetted the engines and we shot back up. The PA system come on saying this was very normal. (Ha ha yeah.) turns out the tail wind was "just outside the safe" landing speed. So we circled around and landed going the other way on the other side of the airport, which meant about a 10-15 min taxi to get to the gate we were suppose to go to.

Thankfully we had a hotel reserved for the night that had a shuttle service. (We didn't get in until 1am.) The next day we got out of Madrid with no problems. And the ride back to Caceres was smooth (although I finished my book 10 min in, and my DS died, so I had nothing to do the last part.)

The lesson learned on this trip was that Timon doesn't like to ride the little animals that you put the coin in to ride at the mall, even with 2 girls asking him to every time we pass one. BUT he did right one of the spring loaded animals in the airport when I rode it with him (it was a 4 person one).