Saturday, 8th of May 2010

Me and Pia had planned this riding-tour journey for a long time and now it was getting close! 2007 we went to Iceland together, it was the year the both of us turned 40 and we wanted to give ourselves something really nice. We chose a riding-tour on Icelandic horses on Iceland and we had such a wonderful time! Lovely horses, lovely views, and company. Riding with a herd is something special. All of us had three horses each. Now we wanted to do something like that again. Who needs a birthday as reason?

I spent the evening checking the websites for Copenhagen Airport, Transavia and Aena about news. It was said that the Barcelona air-port was closed due to the ash-clouds from the volcanic eruption close to the glacier Eyjafjallajökull (Iceland). I decided to subscribe for the flight SMS (expensive) to get the latest news about our flight. I finally went to bed with no real idea of how the status was.  

Sunday, 9th of May 2010

I met Pia there. She was really stressed since she had left the house with the smaller kids in the care of the older teenagers (Well THAT particularly was not a problem, they are so clever) BUT, her husband had not arrived back to Sweden yet from his business trip to the US. Now, we had to cross our fingers that nothing would stop him from coming home according to plans. At the air-port we could see that the flight still was on… phui. Pia got frequent SMS’ from her oldest daughter telling that all was fine and working out just fine with the “small ones”; Siri and Isak…she is a darling Malin and so is Jens-Ola.

OK, vacation time!!! Breakfast really early at the air-port, and a mini-bottle of Jägermeister.  Then time to board, and “just like that” we landed at Barcelona air-port. My latest memory from Barcelona airport is from when I brought Manuel, our dog home from Spain – now four years ago. We had to fly from Bilbao, via Barcelona to get home. That is nearly four years ago now - time flies!

We arrived really early to an almost empty air-port (not that many companies were flying). Everything went smooth, we managed to directly find a transfer to the other terminal, put our luggage in lockers and headed towards Barcelona city. We walked the La Rambla, went down in the harbor area and into the shopping-center there. I had checked that this was the only place open on a Sunday, and I wanted to get a mobile Internet (USB for my lap-top) but I failed.  One shop only had the ones you buy for a month (minimum) and the other had run out of (!) them.

Such a tough backlash for me

We a so called “small beer” at La Rambla, and it cost 8 Euros…hrm ok – vacation it is. We also found the hotel we will stay at after the riding-tour and ended up at a square, just too tired to do anything more. We sat there for half an hour, before we headed back to the airport terminal. There we were picked up by a bus and the journey towards Can Jou (in La Miana) started. After a change of vehicles (since the roads up to Can Jou where in a too bad condition for a big bus) and driving up steep on serpentine roads in the woods, the trees “opened up” and we were there.

We got to talk to our trail-friends over a nice dinner (with wine) and they seemed very nice, it was a good mix of people and nationalities. There were actually three groups this week, and I got a bit worried of what kind of horse I would get, so I shut my mouth regarding how long it was since I last sat in the horse saddle, when Mick asked us about our experience. In the evening we got the information that Pia's husband was back in Sweden, so now the vacation could really start for Pia.