Finally here
Well, we have finally arrived to Jeddah after a hectic few days. Last wednesday, on 27th of May, I worked my last day at Tango. Hopefully not the last day forever, but for now it was. I was rather sad to leave as I made some great connections and felt very comfortable there even after only a short few months. It was a great experience to work there and I learnt a lot. Both in terms of the subject at hand and about myself.
After leaving Tango I met Flor on the train so we could both go all the way to the airport to pick up a rental car. We needed a car to finish up a lot of stuff, both in Barcelona and to drop off some stuff in storage in Madrid. We had booked the car the day prior at some low budget rental. They weren't at the airport itself but in a rather run down neighbourhood close by. Once at the rental we handed over the credit card. That is where our problems began. Turns out they didn't accept American Express. Urgghhh. After arguing with them for nearly an hour, with no success, we headed back out to the airport and started going between rentals there to find the best price. At the same time we were going crazy as we were missing an important Barcelona game. Once we had all the quotes in hand we headed to the airport bar and watched the second half of the game. Not quite what we had planned but the best we could do. After the game we headed to Avis and reluctantly paid almost double the price we had originally planned to pay the low budget rental. In the end, I wasn't too miffed though as we were forced to take a bigger car (the only one available) which was a huge advantage once we had packed all our stuff together.
We drove back to the apartment and starting packing like crazy people (well, Flor did, as usual I was my lazy self). Our plan was to drive off to Madrid in the afternoon of Thursday, 28th of May, just after picking up some jeans of mine from the tailer (yes, I have abnormally short feet for a man of my size). Unfortunately we did not make it to the tailor before closing, we were only about four minutes late! We had also planned for some people to come over on Saturday evening to pick up stuff we were trying to sell but since we were delayed into Madrid we had to call everyone up and ask them to come Friday morning before we'd go to Madrid.
Finally on Friday morning, after waking up way too early we sold off almost everything except our beloved sofa and semi-functional TV, picked up the jeans and drove off to Madrid. A six hour drive ahead with a car literally stuffed full of stuff (it is amazing how much one can accumulate in a very short time). We stayed with Flor's sister once there, saw her nephew play some football and had great food. On Saturday afternoon we then drove off back to Barcelona. 12 hours in the car in less than 48 hours. The drive back went well and amazingly, we managed it all without the use of a GPS.
Once back in the apartment we finished packing up our suitcases, had some dinner and crashed for the long day ahead of us.
On Sunday morning we woke up on time, carried our suitcases to our car and with tears in our eyes said goodbye to our home in Sabadell. I have to admit, it was hard to leave. We were carrying a lot of luggage so the worry was that we'd be charged quite a lot for overweight. Once we dropped off the rental car, we put on our sad and poor faces and proceeded to beg and plead at the check in desk to avoid the excess baggage charge. Sure enough, after some of the troubles in the days prior, we struck luck. One of the girls at the check in desk had once worked as a cabin attendant in Saudi Arabia and fully understood the need to carry all that stuff. So, nice as they were, they let us through with all the stuff. We were leaving Barcelona.
We landed in Brussels a few hours later and got ourselves to the Hilton hotel where the crews normally stay. We had about 8 hours to go until the transport to the Cargo area at the Ostend airport (quite far from Brussels) so we stored our luggage and enjoyed a nice meal at the Hilton restaurant. The hours couldn't pass quickly enough however. Hanging out in a hotel lobby for that amount of time simply ain't nice.
After the long drive to Ostend we got onto the biiiiig 747-400 freighter in the most comfortable seats I've ever used on a flight. We had about 10 hours ahead of us in that aircraft so it was very welcome to be dead tired after the hassles and rush in the past days.
Early morning on Monday we finally arrived here in Jeddah, "ready" to start the next chapter.

Labels: day2day, Saudi-Arabia, travel, work

as written by Tobbi G. at 3:05 PM GMT