Spain 2020: Flight Planning

NOTE -> This trip occurred pre-COVID-19 and feels like 100 years ago

As stated in the previous post, the flight dicated the destination. I had used Google Flights and had happened upon a great price for flights going into Barcelona and returning from Madrid for less than $300 per person.

At that price we’d find a way to get between the cities. We wanted to see both so we now had the forced opportunity to visit them on the same trip.

When it came to booking the tickets, the flight from Boston to Barcelona was on a different airline then the return from Madrid so I would have to book two separate tickets.

The first leg would be booked through Iberia and was a nonstop flight leaving on a Thursday evening and arriving mid-morning on Friday in Barcelona. That would give us enough time to enjoy some activies on our arrival day. I ended up booking the ticket through Travelocity and was even able to book seats for no extra charge. We would have to pay for any checked luggage, but that is expected these days.

For our return flight from Madrid we would be flying Norwegian which would require a 3 hour layover in London. We prefer nonstop flights, but at least we were familiar with Gatwick and Norwegian from our trip to London in 2018. There was plenty of time between flights so it shouldn’t be a problem making our connection and there is a Priority Pass restaurant in Gatwick that Tomatico remembers fondly from the London trip.

Booking the flight via the Norwegian site, I used the same trick I did for the London trip several years ago to save some extra money. I bought the tickets via the Norwegian language version of the Norwegian air site. This has given me lower prices than the US version of the site both times. I made sure to compare before buying them, of course. I used Chrome to navigate to the site and had it translate the pages for me. It wasn’t too hard to figure out how to boy them and it ended up being about 10% cheaper to buy them that way. That just about paid for the seat selection fees when I chose the seats. I also pre-paid for two checked bags as it’s a lot cheaper at booking time than at the ticket counter at checkin.

With that and about $1400 we were set for a week long trip to Spain!