I’m awakened when Rachael quietly slips back into bed after a trip to the bathroom.  I reach for the iPad to check the time, hoping that it might be as late as five and almost late enough to get up and head over to the nearest coffee shop, a new place just around the corner that opens at six.  I’m very groggy of course, but coffee will help with that.  Hopes are dashed though as I see that it’s only 1:15, and it’s only been just over an hour since I the last time woke up around midnight.

I try getting back to sleep, but it doesn’t come.  What comes instead are snippets from the past 34 hours, the time between this ridiculous hour and when we woke up at 2:35 back in Valencia and rushed ourselves to make it down to the street by 3 where our taxi was waiting.  So many odd, disjointed little memories surface and I try to place them correctly, not remembering where all of them occurred.  It’s rather like waking from a complex, surreal dream and trying to pull together enough threads into a narrative before they all vaporize and disappear.  Finally I decide I might as well get up and go to the bathroom myself and try writing them down, hoping that will put me back to sleep.

Was it in Frankfurt that I was startled to realize I was hearing the voice of Stacey Kent singing that wonderful bittersweet romance written for her by Kazou Ishiguro, I Wish I Could Go Traveling Again?  So appropriate.  We’re both ready to travel again actually, and would probably rather have been back in Spain than in the horrible Seattle airport, disgusted to be paying six dollars for a plain croissant at a Caribou Coffee(!) stand so I’d have some food to push my meds down with when we get to our apartment.

And Rocky’s ready for it, if we were going back to Spain now.  Primed by our three months in Italy this spring she spent most of the fall automatically saying Grazie to servers and attendants.  She’s made the transition now though, and I think it was when deplaning in Seattle that she said Gracias to the customs agent that checked our passports when we arrived - or maybe it was to our German-speaking Lufthansa flight attendants when we stepped off the plane.

And where was it that I heard that exotic and mysterious piano background music that I at first thought must be a work I didn’t recognize by Erik Satie, but then gradually decided it must be one by Alan Hohvaness, the American-born composer whose many works often reflected his Armenian heritage.  I haven’t thought of or heard a work by Hohvaness for a long time, but he was one of my favorites - Carol Jo and I picked our son’s middle name Alan after him.  No, that’s not right - we named him after our best friend Alan, who introduced us to Hovhaness - I think he took a class from him at the University of Washington?  I can’t remember now.

In any case, I can’t place where that tune came in last night but I think it was while we were still sitting on the plane waiting to deboard in Seattle.  Maybe someone in the Lufthansa organization is a Hohvaness fan too and knows that he lived his final years in Seattle.

I should find some of Hovaness music and share it with Rachael.  It might work well as the video sound track for a moody day, if we ever get to go traveling again.

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So coffee definitely helps, as well as a few more hours of sleep.  Some heat would help too though!   I’m testing out a new to me coffee shop and so far it gets a lukewarm review.  It scores high for opening at six and the blueberry peach scone is excellent, but it’s cold!  I’ll either need to dress for winter the next time I show up or look elsewhere.  It’s a pretty rude adjustment after sunny Spain.

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With that in mind, plus the fact that I’ve got a laundry list of chores to start in on, I’d better wrap this up before my hands start shaking too much from the cold.  Just the essentials, with minimal embellishment.

Our taxi driver to the Valencia airport was outstanding.  Alert, helpful, prompt, funny, and even offered us brownies when he dropped us off.  Rachael tried one, but in principal I don’t accept brownies from strangers - even good humor men like this guy.

Our hotel in Valencia gets pretty low marks for domain knowledge.  On their recommendation we booked a taxi to pick us up at 3 and then arrived at the airport at 3:20.  The airport was open at that hour, but lifeless.  No one showed up at the check-in counter until 3:45, and almost no other travelers arrived until 4.  I think we could have made better use of that wasted half hour somehow.

The Valencia airport on the other hand gets a rave review from us.  The agent who checked us in was fast, courteous, fluent in our language, and most amazingly of all didn’t charge us an excess baggage fee for our third piece of checked luggage.  They turned on the lights at 3:45, we were checked in not much than five minutes later, and promptly at 4 the first coffee shop opened up.  And they had heat, unlike this silly place.

Oh, and the security screening was efficient and painless (I’m sure it helped being early in the day though), which we’ll think back on later when we arrive in Portland.

Our flight to Frankfurt was uneventful and on time, which is just how we like them.  We had almost a five hour layover there before our flight to Seattle, which we filled once we made the long trek to our departure wing by having a pretty unappealing but expensive lunch at one of the few dining choices available and then finding comfortable chairs with outlets we could recharge our devices from.  All in all, we give Frankfurt a so-so rating.  We wouldn’t seek it out specifically, but we wouldn’t avoid it if the price was right.

Condor Airlines are a different story though.  Them, I really would avoid unless the price is really right.  As it often is unfortunately; that’s the whole point.  I hate Condor.    Ten hours is a pretty long time to be cooped up like that, but to be fair really it only felt like about twenty.

Rachael watched four films, while I went through all the photos from the tour, separating them into folders for backup and tossing out ones not worth keeping.  It’s a satisfying and even shocking exercise going through the whole tour this way.  There is so much I’d forgotten about already.

Back on the subject of things to avoid, add the Seattle airport to the list.  My god, what a horrible experience.  Their security screening for transferring customers is a nightmare, the worst either of us has seen anywhere.  It’s hard to imagine anyone designed the mindlessly inefficient system they’re running there.  Fortunately we arrive on time and had an almost three hour layover, and even with that we arrived at our next departure gate only fifteen minutes before boarding started.  Unreal.

Rachael slept for the 45 minute flight down to Portland, but I stayed awake and took advantage of my window seat on the right (meaning, the left) side of the plane to take a zillion photos.  Full moon!  It’s too bad the flight didn’t leave fifteen or twenty minutes earlier when the light would have been better, but it was still pretty great.

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We’re staying in a condo in the Pearl District, just a few blocks from Elizabeth’s place.  We’ll be here for a month so we’ll say more about it later, so for now we’ll limit ourselves to remembering the Type 2 fun we enjoyed getting here.  Through a mixup, our cab dropped us off at the wrong spot, a block from the entrance to our condo; so we lugged our two bike suitcases, our huge duffel bag, Rachael’s two panniers and two rucksacks down the street for a block.  Fortunately it was dry, not cold, and not impeded by homeless loiterers lining our paths.

Once we got to the right door, it took us another interminable amount of time to figure out all the access instructions and squeeze ourselves and all our junk though the door.  Sounds pretty straight forward, right?  Suffice it to say that almost anything at all complicated is hard if you’re exhausted and jet lagged enough.  It wasn’t Team Anderson’s finest hour.  We looked like clowns.  It would have made a fine comedy sketch.

No matter.  We’ve arrived!