September 24, 2023 Santander to Dallas

September 24, 2023 Santander to Dallas 

This was the last day of our trip in Spain.  We started getting ready at 5:30 and drove to the airport and took a 9:15 flight to Madrid.

We ate a good breakfast in the Santander airport restaurant of orange juice, a croissant, two of the weird packaged chocolate croissants I bought in Orvieto, and cup of yogurt with granola and two cafes con Leches.

We had a 4 hour lay over in Madrid, so we drank beers to cool down and rehydrate.

Then we ate a wonderful light lunch of a hot pastrami sandwich that tasted like cecina and two hot lamb empanadas that were wonderful with glasses of Tempranillo rosado wine from Rioja.

We then went to our departure gate and waited for the ten hour flight from Madrid to Dallas at 3:55.

Here is our last photo for this trip to Spain.

The food on the flight was not good by any Spanish restaurant standard, but perhaps exceeded the current standard for airplane food. 

There is never a menu. You are offered cryptic offerings such as, beef or chicken or pasta.  Iberia was better than most.  It offered beef or gnocchi.  Suzette loves gnocchi, so she ordered gnocchi only to be told there was no more gnocchi.  I guess everyone in first class ordered gnocchi. So she was given pasta, which was a plate of rigatoni in a light tomato sauce, much  of which had been compressed until hardened by the weight of the twenty plates above it.  Entrees are served in shallow heated metal plates covered with aluminum foil.  I ordered beefI and got a stew of beef, mushrooms and cherry tomatoes resembling a Spanish style of Boeuf Bourguignon served with dry coucous.  The flavor and consistency of the beef stew was excellent and reminded me just a little bit of the Beouf Bourguignon we make, with fresh cherry tomatoes instead of pearl onions. We were also given bottles of red Tempranillo that were quite acceptable, but far less wonderful that the Marques de Vargas we drank for the last two days.

There were other good things about the meal. We were served a fresh hot dinner roll that was kept in a warming pouch and there was a wedge of Camembert and an interesting dessert of pudding, brandied cherries, some cake and a small medallion of chocolate in a small bowl.

Suzette refused to eat the pasta.  I put all the remaining butter after we buttered our rolls on the couscous and that loosened it enough to mix with the beef stew.  I enjoyed my dinner and pieces of Suzette’s pasta that were not crushed hard. I rated my meal as a first rate transatlantic flight meal in the current environment.

But i was reminded of my first transatlantic flight in 1968 at the age of 21. It was New York to London on Alitalia. I had bought a ticket from a consolidator in the gray market.  These were guys who booked groups of tickets on major carriers at a discount and then sold them. I think I paid $250.00. I was first surprised that I got a ticket. I recall going to his apartment in the East 30’s in NYC to fetch it..Then I was surprised that it was on Italy’s major carrier, Alitalia. But the most amazing thing of all was the food service. We were served Entrecôte Rossini, small filets with a delicious demiglace sauce on an artichoke heart.  It was the best airplane food I ever have eaten.

On this Iberia return flight we were served a snack about half way through the flight, sort of a tapa. A small bag of bread sticks in the shape of miniature loaves of bread and a small cup of flavored cream cheese for dipping the bread sticks into and a small bag of marinated pitted green olives.

Then about two hours before landing we were served a box with a tuna salad on slices of good brown bread and a kit-kat bar, not unlike what many Spaniards eat for a snack.

It was a daylight flight leaving in sunlight and arriving at sunset at 7:30 in Dallas, so there was no diurnal shift, so a late lunch/early dinner and two tapas made sense.

As I recall that our outbound flight to Spain when there was a diurnal shift that we were served dinner and then breakfast and arrived in Madrid at about Spanish lunch time at 2:30.

When we we arrived in Dallas we in the higher grade of economy with the bigger sears and more leg room were unloaded after first class.  It is a long walk to passport control, but once there they took our picture and by the time we walked to the line reserved for global entry folks we walked through as soon as the DHS officer looked at the picture in our passport.

We then went to Carousel 3 to pick up our luggage. It took about 45 minutes for us to retrieve our luggage.  I marvel that we even got our luggage with 330 passengers and over a 1000 pieces of luggage and the fact that we had checked four bags in Santander through to Dallas.

The next big surprise was Customs.  There was none. We saw two Customs officers as we pushed through standing talking on the side of Customs but were not even asked if we have anything to declare.

We rolled our five bags out to the taxi stand and took a taxi to Elaine and Billy’s house. They are vacationing in La Veta, Colorado, but gave us a house key.

By 10:30 we were settled in and had a drink of Martin Codax Liquor that I drank with a cup of Earl Grey tea and we went to bed.

I woke up at 5:30 to finish this blog.

It was good to go and good to return.

Perhaps after a replacement of my left hip in early 2024, we shall be able to return to Europe next year without the restraint of walking with a cane and a bad hip.

Thank you for reading about our trip.

If you are inspired to replicate some of our trip, we would be pleased to discuss it in further detail with you.

If you want to avoid the American tourist traps, we suggest Northern and Western Spain.  We saw almost no Americans and few Dutch, German, and British tourists. But we avoided the large deluxe hotels except for one Parador in a remote valley in Asturias. 

What proved elusive, was the original premise of the trip; to go to the source of natural oysters.  We found oysters only  in Cambados and they were too salty to enjoy.  The two good restaurants where we ate oysters, served French oysters of the deep bowled variety raised in Cancale on the north coast of Brittany for $8.00 each with special sauces and salmon caviar.

Bon Appetit