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

With our hotel situations changing almost until the last minutes, there were a lot of things up in the air as our first travel day approached. We’ve been on our share of trips, so getting things packed is not a big deal anymore. We rarely have to get something new for a trip outside of snacks for the plane.

Power Adapter

This time I did need to buy a new travel power adapter, though. I had lent mine to my dad for a trip he went on last summer but mysteriously never got it back. It was time to see what there were for new models that may work better for us.

I wanted one that would work not just in Spain but in other countries. I was looking for one with at least 2 built in USB charging adapters since most of what we need the adapters for is for charging our electronics. I also wanted one that was compact and portable. The idea is that we could also use this domestically in our trips and on airplanes where the US prongs rarely stay attached but UK adapters will be more secure in the outlet.

I ended up buying one with 4 USB ports and 1 USB-C port. The 4 ports seems excessive, but we often have 3-5 devices that need charging at one time depending on the trip. The USB-C port will support our growing number of USB-C devices (headphones, phones, backup batteries). I even tested it at home and it was charging my 15 inch MacBook Pro. It was VERY slow and the battery would drain if I was doing anything computationally expensive not he laptop, but if it was idle or off it would eventually charge the battery to full. You never know when it could come in useful.

Flight Times

From the time we purchased our flights, the times for both legs had changed. The leg from Boston to Barcelona had changed from leaving at 10:30pm to leaving at 6:30pm. This was slightly annoying since it meant we needed to leave immediately when the kids got home from school, but it also meant we’d have a full first day in Barcelona due to a 7:30am arrival instead of an 11:30am arrival.

Our return flight on Norwegian also changed. The leg from Madrid to London left about 30 minutes earlier than when we had bought the tickets so it was a minor change that didn’t really affect the vacation planning. We’d just end up with a longer layover in London. Our London to Boston leg was unchanged.

The week before checkin I updated the passport information online for Iberia in order to allow us to checkin online. I entered my Global Entry data but knew we wouldn’t get to go through PreCheck because the airline doesn’t participate in it in Boston. I also noticed our seat assignments weren’t showing up. I double checked my original itinerary and it definitely had the seats there, so I ended up calling Iberia to confirm.

Flight Information

Calling Iberia was more of a challenge than expected. Initially, when I was prompted to “describe what I needed” it told me I had to make seat assignments online and promptly hung up on me. Unfortunately, that’s how I got the number to call. The website directed me to that number when I tried doing it there. I called the number again and purposefully said something relatively unintelligible and it eventually got me to a live operator. I had a tough time understanding the agent, but eventually figured out that we did have the correct seat assignments. It just wasn’t showing online for some reason.

Before I hung up I also asked about our baggage allowance for checked bags. I knew we would have 2 bags to check and he said I could pre-pay for them for $44 each or pay $60 at the ticket counter so I decided to pre-pay for them. He took my credit card information and I was all set for bags.

I then filled in all the passport information again for the Norwegian Air tickets. Normally I only have to do this once because I’m flying one airline round trip, but this one only took a few minutes. The Norwegian website was much easier to use than the one for Iberia. I was able to confirm online that I had already paid for two bags on that flight when I booked.

Credit Card Travel Notices

The morning we left I also updated our credit cards with travel notices so we wouldn’t have to worry about the cards getting shut off on us unexpectedly. We’d also be using Apple Pay to charge as much as we could as it works wonderfully in Europe. Using a regular chip card usually requires a signature which is not a common thing in Europe. Vendors are often left struggling to find a pen. With Apple Pay it’s the same as contactless payments and no signature is required a majority of the time. Make your life easy and get Apple/Google/Android Pay set up on your phone! I also updated my debit card with a travel notice as I planned to get some Euros from an ATM to have some cash for whatever we were unable to put on a credit card.

Cellular Data

Finally, we need to have cellular data access on nether trip in order to find out way around. We have two prepaid SIM cards from KeepGo that we’ve used a few times. One card had a few hundred megabytes of data remaining while the other had less than one hundred. I hoped we could use most of the rest of the data on the smaller card, using that phone as a backup in case we needed to split up while using most of the data on the one with more data left. We could buy extra data if we ran low. My plan was to change out the SIM cards in the airport before heading off on our flights so it would be all ready to go by the time we landed.

Everything was in order and we were ready for our trip!