10 December Barcelona - Nelson

We didn't have to check out until midday so had plenty of time to wander around for a bit in the morning, including having coffee and patisserie round the corner from the hotel for breakfast. It was remarkably cold, and we had to be well wrapped up.

With time to burn, we opted to collect our bags just after 11am. It was only a short distance to wheel our bags to the Arc de Triomf subway station, where it was an easy mission to catch the metro, plus change to the onwards one to the airport. It took the best part of an hour and it involved taking endless escalators to descend perhaps 7-8 levels to get to the right trainline. It must have been a staggering effort to construct the subway system.

The trip home went very smoothly. Our bags weighed about 26kg each due to our cheeses and other things we were taking back to NZ, but we had an upper limit of 30kg. We've flown Qatar Airways before, and they've been very good. It was again the case, and given there were spare seats on the flight, the woman at the check-in counter changed our seats so we could have all three of the seats in the middle row. John had a huge amount of legroom, the most ever. The flight only took 5.5hrs to Doha, and we had a minimal 2.5hr wait, just enough to stretch our legs. The onwards flight to Auckland was full, but we both slept well and watched plenty of movies, and the 16.5hrs seemed to go reasonably quickly. We were a little stiff when disembarking, but John's ankles hadn't swollen at all as they often do.

We arrived at about 5am, and had until 9:45am until our flight to Nelson, which allowed plenty of time for us to have a flat white, but more importantly it took quite a while for us to repack our bags so we didn't exceed the 23kg limit. This involved maxing out our hand luggage (a backpack and handbag/laptop each), stuffing cheeses into our sweatshirt pockets, and then donning our rain jackets and putting cheeses and small heavy books in those pockets as well. It made for rather laboured and bulky walking when boarding but we got through with no questions asked. It seemed that most people were boarding with two cabin bags anyway, even though only one is allowed and the constant broadcasts over the loudspeaker system in the airport categorically stated that only one item would be allowed and that could weigh no more than 7kg. We took the safe route anyway. It's only because we were bringing back quite a few books, plus other bulky items, that we had so much luggage this time around.

Sally met us at the airport and dropped us at home. It was lovely to open the front door. Our renters had left it in immaculate condition, even with newly washed sheets on the bed. It was very welcome.

Needless to say, the next 3-4 days were spent adjusting our body clocks, unpacking our bags and all our stored gear, and heading into town at regular intervals to indulge in flat whites, something that definitely can not be found in Ceret, or France. It was lovely to be home, but we are already looking forward to heading back to Ceret again next year...