Are you sitting comfortably, then I'll begin:
Trip Report for 23/3/2011
Result: FAIL
Left Dublin on time, although somehow I failed to meet up with the others before departure. Instead we met up as we were getting off the plane. Hadn't realised that when I booked my seat I'd opted for Priority Boarding which meant I was 5th one on so grabbed one of the emergency exit seats
. On arrival we had to circle Barajas for about 15 mins due to congestion at the airport.
Can't believe how dire the weather was, the weather forecast understated the conditions, as usual. The only sunshine we saw for the entire day was at 30,000 feet on the flight down. Madrid was solid cloud and frequent rain.
Getting to the 'mound' turned out to be a more complicated than Dave and Woody were expecting as the route they used last time was now occupied by a construction site. Instead we had to loop round before crossing the main road. We found an alternative route but more on 'that' later.
Aircraft on display was a mixed bag. Didn't see a single American carrier the entire day. The bulk of the aircraft were from Iberia, Easyjet, Ryanair, Spanair, and Air Europa. But we also saw representatives from Germanwings, Swiss Air, Air France, TAP, BA, PGA and Turkish Airlines, to name a few. Just one 747 (Aerolineas Argentinas) and one 777 (Korea Air). We spotted a 707, but only at a distance although Dave might have gotten some close-ups.
We decided to take a break for lunch around 2 o'clock and walked up to Burger King, where a good meal was had by all. Woody especially liked the coffee
Back to the mound, this time we tried a different route. For those familiar with the area instead of turning left off the main road and crossing the white bridge we instead went straight down the road towards the roundabout located beneath the mound. Getting to the roundabout required us to cross the 'bridge of death' but we all made it safely.
Once back on the mound we discovered that, if anything, conditions were worse than before. It was now considerably darker than earlier and also the rain seemed to start almost as soon as we arrived. As a result we only took a handful of pics before we all decided to call it a day. We headed back across the 'bridge of death', again everyone made it in one piece, and parted company at the Metro station. Dave and Woody were staying overnight and flying back today (I will be extremely annoyed if they got a better day weatherwise today than yesterday).
Kingsavo and I retraced our route back to T1. We thought we were getting a deal on the Metro as the return ticket only cost €1 (the outbound trip had cost €2). However it turned out that the ticket didn't get you into the airport and instead you had to buy another ticket (€1) and use that to get through the turnstile. Once in the airport we headed to our gate where we hung about until departure time (8:15pm) only to find that the flight was delayed. We finally took off at around 9:30pm (Madrid time) and got into Dublin around 10:30pm local. While the Ryanair flight had been full, the Aer Lingus flight wasn't.
Didn't get much of a look at T2 as the arrivals area is pretty sparse, before we knew it we were outside.
Didn't make it back to Crossgar until 2am this morning
Total number of pics taken: 188
Summary: while it was good to meet up with Dave, Woody and Kingsavo we learnt that if you're thinking of going to Madrid in March for photography, don't (and to think I had been seriously considering wearing shorts and a t-shirt).
Next up Dublin in May
