The time has come, the walrus said... to depart the Schengen Zone (3 months out of every six might have seemed reasonable when the borderless Schengen zone was five countries... now that it's 26 and the vast majority of Europe... 3 months seems miserly). But depart it we must, in order to have a month up our sleeve for our "Northern Lights etc" jaunt prior to returning to Australia. We did the last of the packing, cleaning, laundry, making up the house today. We bid a fond farewell to Claude (pictured) which brought a tear to the eyes. We jumped on the bus with our wheely-packs covered in country patches from all over the world and then the train to the airport (one wonders if it's actually Swiss... such a great service every 20 minutes and it literally runs like clockwork. And at 2.70 euro for a 33 minute airport train ride, we're pretty sure it's the cheapest in Europe). We are blessed with our travel generally and tend to be in the right place at the right time, we also leave ridiculous amounts of time "just in case". We were second in the queue to check-in when it opened at 5.40 pm and had our allocated seats moved up from row 23 to row 7 (big win!) Even took an aisle each and the kindly gent behind the counter blocked the middle seat next to each of us - so our first flight on Blue Air was actually pretty comfy. Remember - Blue Air is one of Romania's low cost airlines and the flight from Malaga to Bucharest was only 60 euros (A$90). (If we'd skipped the bus/train combo to the airport and grabbed a cab, that would have been 40 euros instead of 7.70...). We bought a checked bag each for another 40 euros (and a whopping 32kg limit per bag) and also a hot dinner for something to do on the flight... another 19 euros. So 119 euros in total or A$180 for a 3 hour 40 minute international flight. That left on time at 7.40 pm and landed 20 minutes early. What a great way to finish our 2 months in Spain and start our next adventure - 6 weeks exploring Romania. That be Transylvania and Count Dracula country (and yes... we plan on visiting his castle!)


iPad. iTypos. iSorry.