My husband and I recently returned from Spain, where we finished walking El Camino del Norte to celebrate our wedding anniversary. The trail is hundreds of miles long, so we’ve been hiking it in sections. This particular leg started in Ribadeo, a small coastal town in northwestern Spain, so my first task was to figure out how to get there.

The cheapest flights from Boston to Spain are to Barcelona on Level Airlines, so I nabbed one of those, then found a connecting flight to A Coruña, the second-largest city in Galicia, figuring we could find a bus to Ribadeo from there.

Our problems began when the Barcelona flight was delayed due to the weather. I’ve experienced many flight delays, so this wasn’t particularly upsetting, because Barcelona’s airport is one of the few where you can GO OUTSIDE while you’re waiting for a flight, into a walled-off courtyard with a decent café. (The only issue is that this is also where smokers congregate, so you’ll feel like you’re hanging out in a bar in the 1990s.)

When we finally arrived in A Coruña, our luggage didn’t get off the plane with us. We filled out the usual tedious forms with a lovely but harried desk agent, who repeated our cell phone numbers multiple times.

“We will text you when we locate your luggage,” she promised.

We took a cab to the hotel, ate dinner at midnight, then showered and fell into a coma induced by traveling overnight in cheap seats, many hours of waiting in the smoky Barcelona airport, and jet lag.

The next morning, I wrapped a hotel blanket around me and went to sit on the balcony to watch the teal blue sea frill white against the sand, thinking, “None of yesterday matters. We’re lucky to be here.”  

“Did you get a text from the airline?” Dan asked, clearly worried. “Should we call them?”

“Let’s go to breakfast,” I said. “The luggage will come, don’t worry.” Secretly, I suspected the airline wouldn’t bother texting us; the suitcases would simply materialize, because why make more work for yourself by texting? I’ve spent a lot of time in Spain, and that’s not the Spanish way.

Without having to choose which clothes to wear, we were out the door in minutes. After breakfast, we wandered through the winding streets of A Coruña, admiring the architecture while listing various things we wished we’d been clever enough to carry in our backpacks.

Around 1 pm, with still no text from the airline, we headed back to the hotel, where we found our roller bags standing at attention in the lobby like a pair of loyal dogs. “Sus maletas!” the receptionist announced joyfully.

 The trip went smoothly from there, with many days of meditative walking through stone hamlets tucked into gorgeous Galician farmland and forests.  We reached our destination, Santiago de Compostela, and were scheduled to fly out a few days later to Barcelona, then home to Boston. Unfortunately, we arrived at the airport to find that our flight had been cancelled because of severe weather.

“We can get you on another plane from Santiago in three days,” the desk agent said after much clicking and clacking on his computer. He brightened. “But I can give you a meal voucher for lunch.”

By then, we’d been in the Santiago airport for two hours; now we hunkered down in a row of plastic chairs to sit on the phone with Expedia for another hour, until the agent managed to route us from Santiago to Boston with a layover in Madrid. Still a long haul, but better than waiting three days. We checked our luggage through to Boston and arrived at the Madrid airport hotel with only our backpacks—this time carrying what we needed for an overnight. Lesson learned: The joy of travel comes from new adventures, and sometimes those adventures require carrying a toothbrush and a lot of patience, and wrapping yourself in a blanket to enjoy the view.

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