Blob[p]Eefje's online sketchpad

Hola! We just came back from our holiday in Barcelona yesterday. We spent 6 nights in BCN to be exact, from Sunday 02/10 to Saturday 08/10. We experience nice and less nice things during our stay. Altogether, it was quite a unique experience. Besides going to Barcelona, we had a chance to visit the monastery on top of the mountain in Montserrat. During these visits I made sketches of what I saw, what I experienced, what I ate… a bit of everything. I will post them in several parts, since they are a bit much to be in one post. Stay tuned!

Day 1 – 02.10.05: the flight
I ‘arranged’ our holiday myself, so we skipped travel agencies. I found out that this way we saved a bit of money (on services, etc), which we could better spend on other things. It certainly needed some patient, but I think it paid off. I booked us a flight with Transavia airline(www.transavia.com), which claimed to offer the best airfare in Holland (at least for flights from Amsterdam). True, it was and is. One drawback to get this airfare was either we flew very early or very late. We chose to fly very early and our neighbor lady kindly offered for her husband to take us to the airport. That was before the husband knew at what time he had to get up the morning we flew to BCN.

The night before the flight we got really nervous about the check-in process. One thing that made Transavia very economical is that passanger can check in via internet, choose their own seat, and print their own boarding pass at home 24 hours before the flight. I think this system is fantastic and I think now that it works really great. It was just our first time to check in this way without going through anybody at the check-in counter in the airport.

That Sunday we had to get up at 3.30 a.m. (including our neighbor too).We left at 4 a.m. and our flight was at 6.20 a.m. I didn’t get much sleep, because I was too excited. It was a bit surreal. At the airport, our fear about the check-in was in the end for nothing. It all went smoothly and we went directly to the gate with our print-out of boarding passes. We passed by queues of people, who had to go through the traditional check-in process, and thought wow, lucky us! We got on the plane, found our seats and enjoy the flight to Barcelona. It took only a bit less than 2 hours from Schiphol airport/Amsterdam. While on the Transavia plane, I made this sketch of the interior. It is slightly different than my usual sketches of public transport (train, tram, or metro).
Click to enlarge.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 9th, 2005 at 19:40 and is filed under Europe, Moleskine, Pen & Ink, Travel, Watercolored pencils. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.