Someone shoot Iberia!

At the airport... Our second home.
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So - here begins our journey, and what a start it was.  After a very tearful good-bye at Naples airport (we´ll never forget little Zach running through security to say a final good-bye to us), we boarded the plane to Madrid a little subdued, but also very excited about what lay ahead.

A couple of hours later, we landed in Madrid airport - sadly, thanks to Iberia, my backpack didn´t. Fortunately for the Iberia staff behind the customer services desk I was pretty tired, and so we didn´t make too much of a fuss, but we were assured that the luggage would be located and sent to our hotel the next day. Why we believed them, I´m not sure....

It doesn´t end there...  On arrival at the very expensive hotel we had booked for the two nights in Madrid, we were told they had issues with our room and so have to transfer us to their other hotel down the road for the first night, in Soho....!  Again, too tired to argue, we wandered over to the other hotel and checked in.  The room was amazing! The next night we moved to the original hotel, and we were upgraded, after Yaz dropped some not very subtle hints about it being our honeymoon - how were we going to stay in hostals after that!?!

Madrid is an amazing place, although finding good bars was a bit of a struggle.  We ended up in Hard Rock Cafe for the England match...! Most of the remainder of the time was spent shopping for new clothes for me as Iberia still had no clue where my backpack was.

After a couple of nights in Mardid, we once again packed up (although I had practically nothing to pack), and headed for the airport for our flight to Lima, giving ourselves a couple of hours at the airport before the flight.  We got there and the queues were huge.  We finally made it to the front of the queue to check-in, and were were told check-in for our IBERIA flight closed - 1 minute ago!!!!! They refused to let us on, and after much arguing, and a lot of stress, we agreed to return the next day on Stand-by.  In the spirit of travelling, we booked a cheap hostal near the airport for the night... hmmmm...

Stand-by the next day was pointless, and so we made a few calls and decided to re-route to Quito in Ecuador, and then make our own way to Lima from there.  Our flight was the following day, so another night in Madrid, and still no clothes for me....