Madrid - The Best Stopover

After our decision about honeymoon destination was made up, I went to a travel agent. In the end, I didn’t work with them but she gave me a great idea. “Havana is long way away, it might me a good idea to stopover somewhere on the way there, like Madrid.” Now, that is new but I am sure we enjoy the break after wedding.” So we did, for 2 days. Madrid was hot, interesting and so much fun. We stayed in a hotel that my brother stayed before and liked it. It was a nice hotel indeed, a city hotel.. Central, clean and fit-to-purpose but no one mentioned 2 double separate bed in the room for honeymoon couple. We just couldn’t make up our minds in between get annoyed or laugh!! We pushed the beds together and slept just like that after we asked for another room and got a response as “your room is much better than the other one that we can give to you” When we arrived to Madrid, we were feeling very tired. The wedding drained us. We had fun, we helped people to have fun and a good time in Istanbul. All those came back to us “being tired” So we walked around the streets first day, explored places, went to Museo de Jamon, ate delicious ham and drank the tastiest Fanta ever. Please don’t ask me how or why. It was cold, it was orangey, it was served in a nice glass and it was simple. Once we were back in the game, we sat near a hotel on one of the busiest streets of Madrid. Of course to drink Sangria. I -couldn’t kill the tourist bug in me- was determined to walk around more and more, came to myself when Chris told me that we are on our honeymoon and don’t need to rush into anything. We didn’t have to go anywhere; we just have a chance to be just wherever we want to be. There was one more thing about going to Cuba (Spain too) on our honeymoon. I was decisive that I wouldn’t leave Cuba without smoking cigars. Now, people who know me, they also know that I hate smoking. So, it was maybe strange why I was so keen on smoking cigars. I just was.. I thought cigar is a symbol for Cuba and you have to try it. Actually, I tried a lot. I started to try!!! in Madrid when Chris got Cohiba cigarillos. They were thin and small but was a good start for a non-smoker. Later on Cohiba became my favourite. We have got several sizes and brands from Cuba. When we were ready to leave the country, it was exciting. Because we were going to go through US and didn’t know if they would care about us having Cuban cigars in our bags or not. We spreaded them out in our luggages and hoped for not losing them on US Customs. We did not!! I smoked Cubans long after our honeymoon and stopped when I got pregnant. I didn’t go back to them. Madrid was a fantastic start for our honeymoon.

Honeymoon in Cuba

It was fantastic. Great time of our lives, great way of starting to married life… When people decide to get married, there are few things that they need to think about: Wedding, where to live and honeymoon destination. Well, we spent 10 minutes to think about our honeymoon destination! We were working in Indonesia, so had been to Bali and other islands several times. We didn’t want to be in Turkey or in Australia or in Europe and didn’t want to go on a hectic tourist routes, walking into museums, visiting “tourist-must-be-places”. We wanted to lay back, enjoy our drinks and swim!!! I said “I always wanted to go to Cuba before Fidel goes away” and Chris said “OK then.” That was it. I started to look into flights, places and dates. As you might know it is not that easy to go to Cuba. Lucky, we were going to be in Turkey, lucky Istanbul is close to Europe (himmm, it is Europe) and lucky Chris had “One World” frequent flyer program membership. Because one of my managers once mentioned that they have “Round the World” tickets. You don’t have to get return tickets, you start from one point make a round the world and come to the starting point. That sounded well. Another challenge, no one wanted to book our tickets. Every airline told me to go to another one for their sensible!!! reasons. Till British Airlines… The guy booked our flights for us starting from Jakarta. Then Hong Kong, London, Istanbul, Madrid, Havana. On the way back Havana, Cancun, LA, Hong Kong and Jakarta. We understood that I had to tell that guy to book our seats as well when we went to the lounge in Madrid and officer there told us that we cannot sit together on the plane. As you can imagine someone got grumpy!! The officer told me “Lady, I cannot do what you want. So, please stop asking me” First kindly, then sharply and then angrily. I had to stop. Thanks to the kind man on plane he went back and Chris came next to me. I called the BA guy and told him to arrange our seats for the remaining flights and make us sit together. He “generously” “for only one time, against their policy in BA” didn’t make me pay that service and arranged the seats. Then we arrived HAVANA.