20261104 Wednesday, November 4, 2026; Heading Home Santiago de Compostela to Seattle via Vigo, Madrid, and Philadelphia
We ended up purchasing enough souvenirs that our single large suitcase was well over the 50# limit for domestic luggage, so we did have to reconfigure our luggage by pulling out a gym bag to use as a carry-on and expand one of our carry-on rollers to fit all our stuff into.
The hotel had a breakfast waiting for us in a library room adjacent to the lobby with bananas, apples, yogurt (pre-packaged single-serve spoonable and also drinkable), potato chips, and sandwiches (ham and cheese with lettuce and tomato). It is interesting that these European hotels pack us ham and cheese with lettuce and tomato instead of a sausage and egg McMuffin or croissant sandwich for breakfast.
This hotel also had Nespresso machines that use a drop-in foil disk to make espresso that can then be diluted to an Americano with hot water. This was the case in the restaurant where we had breakfast yesterday and in the library where we had our take-out breakfast. In our room, all we had was an electric kettle with packets of instant coffee and tea bags.
There were only four of us headed to the airport in Vigo this morning. We left the hotel at 5:30 a.m. in a large Sprinter-based minibus that could have seated 20, so we were comfortable. The airport had a nice business class lounge that we nearly had to ourselves. We could have had second breakfast there, but were content to just raid the candy jars.
The flight from Vigo to Madrid was on a small CRJ that was basically an extended business jet with single-class seating. The business class cabin was just the first 4 rows and a curtain behind the seat top, and the only service differential was a glass of champagne or orange juice. The entire jet was 4-across seating.
We had a 2-hour layover in Madrid, which we spent chasing all over the airport to figure out how to get our VAT refund on souvenir purchases. Earlier in the trip, a Viking guide made it sound easy where you just scanned your receipts and the VAT would get refunded to the same credit card used to make the purchase. However, that only worked if the shops gave you a special export VAT form with a bar code, which none of the shops we bought at did. So we just had a pile of credit card receipts that were no use, and made a voluntary donation to the EU’s social programs paid for via the VAT.
After running around in the terminal chasing after the VAT refund, we had about a half hour to kill in the lounge which was still very nice, but much busier than Vigo’s.
Our flight from Madrid to Philadelphia spent over a half hour sitting at the gate with the door closed before it started its roll towards the runways. There never was much of an explanation for the delay. Fortunately, we had a 3-hour layover in Philadelphia, which could absorb the delay without problems.
The American Airlines flight was on a 787 Dreamliner. Our business class seats were individual pods that fully reclined into beds, but we were surprised by how little accommodation there had been made by Boeing on this particular plane variant for storage within the pods. For example, there was no place to put your shoes that wasn’t in the way of getting in or out of the pods, and no place to store the blanket, pillow, and noise-reducing headset case other than in a messy pile at your feet. The business class pods on Delta’s and Emirates 777’s were much better thought out and functional.
The pods were also arranged in an odd way so that some pods faced backwards. Our pods were adjacent in the middle of the fuselage, and we had to lean way forward to see each other to talk or pass things between us. On Delta’s pods, with a movable privacy barrier lowered, it was just like sitting next to each other. But across the aisle from Ben’s pod, there was a backwards-facing pod with an odd woman seated in it, and the way the pods were oriented, both passengers were in direct line of sight the entire duration of the flight. It was awkward because this woman appeared to be an Instagram influencer who was recording on her iPhone modeling her flight attire (athletic bra and sweatpants) and extreme Mara-Lago plastic surgery face.
Ben ended up watching “Bad Apple” starring Saoirse Ronan and “Hades Town”, a Broadway musical to keep distracted before sleeping for a few hours. Both movies earned a thumbs up from Ben.
Sleeping on the westward-bound flight was a bit forced because the plane is basically keeping pace with the Earth’s rotation as it flies westward, so it was like mid-morning daylight the majority of the trip. The Dreamliner did its best to simulate an accelerated nightfall and dawn. When we touched down in Philadelphia at 3:30 p.m., it was 9:30 p.m. Madrid time, so sleeping on the 8-1/2-hour flight was taking an afternoon nap.
Our 6-1/2-hour Philadelphia to Seattle flight would have been the natural time to sleep for us because it left Philadelphia at 6:30 p.m., which was 12:30 a.m. Madrid time, but this domestic business class flight had seats that only reclined 10 degrees but were only 4 across, so they had more hip and shoulder room.
When we arrived in Seattle at 9:30 p.m., it was 6:30 a.m. the next day in Madrid. It’s too bad we didn’t have the planes switched around so we could have slept properly from Philadelphia to Seattle when our bodies really wanted to be sleeping.
We did luck out in our Philadelphia to Seattle flight, which arrived a little early, so we were able to make our schedule last Whidbey shuttle for the day. If the flight had been delayed, we would have been stuck for the night and arranged for a hotel room or rescue driver. We got home at 1:15am November 5, so it took a bit over 25 hrs to make it home.
Traveling to and from trip destinations is always the price to be paid for the experiences the destinations provide. We had remarkably nice weather during our entire time in Spain and Portugal, and it was a terrific trip which we would recommend highly. We met some very enjoyable fellow travelers during the course of this trip that made it all the more enjoyable and memorable.
Now we’ll have to do some laundry and get our gears reset for our next trip, which will begin in December.
We booked a Rhine River Christmas Markets cruise on Viking to start our long winter adventure, but just received notification from Viking that record low water levels have forced Viking to substitute our voyage for one of identical duration but on the lowland waterways of Belgium and the Netherlands. Instead of sailing from Basel to Amsterdam, we will sail from Brussels to Amsterdam. This will avoid the necessity of ship swapping and extensive bus touring off stranded ships on the Rhine. We will get to unpack once and remain on the same ship throughout the sailing. They are offering 25% future cruise credit and $125 onboard spending as consolation for the altered itinerary. Fortunately, it still ends in Amsterdam, so the rest of our onwards travels will remain unaffected by the cruise substitution. It will remain to be seen if Christmas in the lowlands can be an adequate substitute for the Rhine Christmas markets.
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