Why Spain

Of the plethora of options as to which country to visit we chose Spain. Majorly it me pushing D :). She wants to go to North Britain, Norway (for Auroras), Kenya (for Safaris) etc. 

Weird girl, D. :P

I have been insisting on going to Spain due to multiple reasons 

1. We have never been in this country. Previously we have been to Italy, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany and Singapore. Although that sounds like a handful, we have been to many of these places only for 2-3 days. Spain is a big European country and we have not been to the Iberian peninsula. 

2. As a previous British colony we have lot of exposure to the English way of doing things. Spain at one time was a big colonizer and thus Spain I believe must have been influenced quite a bit with the American and African cultures, and vice versa. I have never been to the Americas or to the African continent. I believe Spain will give us a completely different perspective. 

3. Due the colonies, Spainsh is one of the most spoken languages in the world. I have been trying to learn a bit of Spanish through Duolingo. I landed on the app after watching a TED talk. With this curiosity to learn I even tried watching a couple of Spanish movies on Netflix. 

All this pushed me to insist on Spain. 

D insisted on keeping it easy going so we are staying only in 2 cities. D insisted on booking AirBNBs instead of hotels. I gave in.

Planning and Visa Application

For 2024, we narrowed down for Spain. We planned for second week of April. It will be pleasant in Europe while it will be quite hot in Mumbai. I have been toying the idea to visit Spain for a few years now. 

We did deliberate a bit as to where to go this year. But we have now learnt the lesson that we need to swiftly move from planning to execution else we are just wasting time and effort. 

Flight ticket prices have doubled relative to pre-pandemic. A 2-way ticket to Europe used to cost 35-40k in 2019 (we had been to Italy then) but the same is now 65-70k.

Once travel is booked, we discussed as to how much hectic or easy going the trip should be. After spending a lit of time thinking we will visit 3 cities, we brought it down to just 2 main cities - Barcelona and Madrid. We planned day excursions from these cities to nearby places through Viator.

Spain visa process is a very simple and unlike other European visas you don't need a leave letter from your employer etc. We submitted our passports on 26th Feb. Within 3 days of submission of documents out passports were ready with the Visa stamps.