Wayfaring Day 259

March 16, 2026 Monday

We arrived in Frankfort too late for our connection so Lufthansa had automatically rebooked us for a flight at 11:00 which gave us an hour to get to our connection flight to Barcelona. We thought we had plenty of time until we reached the customs area where we had to wait in the non EU passport line. Germany and other EU countries are phasing in their new EES system. The system does not require you to do anything like the UK ETA system but it takes agents longer to get you through the system. It appears that you have to go through this every time you enter an EU country from a non EU country. It is supposed to make travel between Schengen countries easier. Regardless, the line was huge! We were in line over an hour and missed our rebooked connection. Due to missing this connection we had to go to Lufthansa Services to get a new flight.

At this point we had walked a lot. Now we had to walk from A28 back to A50 which is actually further than it sounds. We got in line at Lufthansa Services and waited maybe 10 minutes for an agent to talk to us. The agent took our old boarding passes and scanned them with his pad. The next two flights were completely booked so the first flight to Barcelona was not for 6 hours. He took our boarding passes while we waited in their nice waiting area. He returned with a different plan. He could get us to Barcelona around 5:30 instead of 7:40. So we headed to gate A1 and found a sandwich in the way. After about 40 minutes they loaded us on a bus to take us to our plane that was way out in the airport similarly to the last time we were here. We flew to Munich on a commuter type jet which was much different than riding the 747. We navigated the very modern Munich airport by following the signs to the terminal and riding the train over to our terminal area. It was a short walk to gate K20 where we only waited about 20 minutes before starting to board. This time we were on a typical A320 or similar aircraft.

It was a two hour flight to Barcelona. One perk of doing the two flights to Barcelona was that we flew over and along the Swiss Alps for part of the flight. Visibility was good enough to get some pics and video of the snow covered mountains. We also flew along the Mediterranean coast on our approach to Barcelona which was also interesting. We arrived at the airport right on time and unbelievably our luggage had followed us on every flight and was on the conveyor at baggage claim. That was a relief. Next we went to the taxi stand to get a taxi to take us to our hotel. The taxi costs about $45 with tip. We looked at other options but we decided to spend the money to be dropped off at the hotel. There is an airport by but it would have meant a 10-15 minute walk through the city.

We got checked into our hotel in just a few minutes with the help of the friendly girl operating the front desk. This hotel is one of those city hotels with tight spaces and a very small elevator. This is not unlike those in the states or even other cities around the world. The hotel is clean and modern and the room rate includes breakfast. We didn’t have to pay until arrival. The full bill for 5 nights was $505.45. Our room is a one bed room with bathroom with shower. It is fairly small but really perfect for us. Our room overlooks the street which we find nice. The window even opens. The noise is hardly noticeable unlike our room on Ru Huchette in Paris. We went back down and across the street to pick up some drinks from a little store and get a pizza to go. After eating we were completely worn out from all the travel with little sleep. It was easy to get to sleep even though local time was only about 8:30.