The Spanish adventure actually began before I had even reached Spain. Boarding the Ryanair flight, I was once again assigned rear boarding, something I have unexpectedly grown to appreciate. There is a certain logic to it: fewer queues, less shuffling and, if fortune smiles, you’re among the first off the aircraft. Curious whether the same would happen in Madrid, I asked one of the cabin crew if we would also disembark from the rear once we landed.
The answer was wonderfully, unmistakably Spanish. “We never know. There is a fifty-fifty chance that it will happen.”
As it turned out, he was absolutely right. We did indeed disembark from the rear door and, as I stepped onto the stairs, I couldn’t resist thanking the crew in the same delightfully vague spirit. “¡Buenos días… y buenas noches!” At half past midnight, it seemed entirely appropriate.
The next stop was Terminal 1, where I waited for the shuttle bus to Terminal 4. One thing I had forgotten about Madrid in July was that it remains an absolute furnace long after sunset. At one-thirty in the morning, the heat still wrapped itself around me as though someone had left the oven door open. Stepping onto the blissfully over-air-conditioned shuttle felt less like boarding a bus and more like entering a refrigerated sanctuary.
Terminal 4 greeted me with an unexpected luxury: an entirely empty bathroom. With no queue in sight, it became the perfect opportunity to reorganise my backpack, freshen up after the flight and prepare for the long-haul coach journey still ahead. Mission accomplished, the next priority was obvious: food.
The twenty-four-hour café was doing a brisk trade with fellow travellers who, like me, had unexpectedly found themselves with time to spare. Several weary passengers clutched airline meal vouchers while waiting out delayed or disrupted journeys. There was an odd sense of camaraderie among complete strangers, everyone simply making the best of an inconvenient night. I managed to claim what every airport traveller secretly dreams of: a table with a power socket. The cheerful fellow behind the counter wandered over and I asked him for the coldest Coca-Cola he had.
As I settled into my little corner of the café, I couldn’t help thinking about how much travel has changed over the years. I grew up in a generation that believed travelling was an occasion. Men wore suits, women dressed in their Sunday best, and stepping onto an aircraft was almost a social event. That worked perfectly well for the two or three-hour flights that were common at the time. Then the world became smaller, flights became longer and comfort quietly overtook elegance.
These days my travel uniform is decidedly more practical: leggings, an oversized knitted shirt, sensible shoes and a backpack containing everything I might need for the next twenty-four hours. Well… almost everything. I still insist on travelling with pearls. Some traditions are simply worth keeping, even if nowadays the pearls share space with a packet of ibuprofen. Experience has taught me that both can be essential travelling companions.
Having secured both my table and my Coke, I made myself at home, kicked off my shoes and propped my feet up on the chair opposite. At that point, I couldn’t have cared less that I was wearing mismatched Halloween socks featuring grinning black cats. Pearls above the table, Halloween below it; comfort had officially won the fashion debate. Judging by the number of equally exhausted travellers around me, nobody seemed remotely interested in conducting a sock inspection.
The first icy sip immediately transported me back to another Spanish adventure, my Camino Ignaciano. After hours of walking beneath the relentless summer sun, arriving in a town was never about sightseeing first. It was about finding the nearest café, collapsing onto a bar stool and ordering a tall glass packed with ice… and three Cokes. The bartender’s expression was often priceless, but seasoned pilgrims understand there are moments when hydration becomes serious business. That first mouthful was always pure bliss after another stretch of dusty roads and baking heat.
Sitting in Madrid once again, cradling another gloriously cold Coke in the middle of the night, those Camino memories came flooding back. Different journey, different backpack, different destination, yet somehow exactly the same feeling. Spain has a remarkable way of making an ice-cold Coca-Cola taste like the greatest luxury on earth.
Another unexpected adjustment after four days in England wasn’t the weather or the airport, it was switching linguistic gears. My brain had become comfortably settled in English and now had to be gently reminded that we were back on the Iberian Peninsula, where Spanish once again made far more sense. Fortunately, there was no shortage of reminders. The terminal was filled with stranded passengers from across Latin America, their conversations creating a familiar soundtrack that made the transition surprisingly easy. Before long, the English airport autopilot had been switched off, Spanish had taken over and Madrid already felt reassuringly familiar.
Since I had claimed the table as my temporary home, I decided it deserved proper occupation. My feet remained firmly up, the backpack rested beside me and I ordered what turned out to be the most expensive mortadella sandwich on the peninsula, apparently justified by the presence of mozzarella and pistachio cream. It was, I have to admit, worth every cent.
For a few hours, this little corner of Terminal 4 became home: a gloriously cold Coke, an outrageously luxurious sandwich, a power socket and a front-row seat to the quiet theatre of an international airport. England was already slipping into memory. Spain had quietly taken over. Somewhere beyond the departure boards, another chapter of the journey was waiting to begin.
The adventure continues.
The complete A Frog in England series:
A Frog in England – Day 4 Part I
FrogDiva Thoughts 