Emery Travels to Spain

He will be back September 30th. Keep tabs on all the fun as he travels through Spain by following him on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/emerysonger11

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm not sure I'm going to be very responsive to
emails over the next couple of weeks. In fact, I
know I won't be, And the reason I won't be
is because my wife and I are packing up tonight
and early tomorrow and we're going on a vacation. I
don't know if I've told this story, but I'll just
quickly retell it. I grew up in a family that
trips were not a thing. I went on a couple

(00:21):
of school trips that were the best chance I had
to explore parts of the country. Went on a trip
that was for solid academic kids, so it was a
small trip with you know, just like you know, maybe
eighteen or so of my classmates down to Florida went
to the school in southeast Iowa, and you basically had
to be a top ten percenter to be able to
get to you know, I graduated with like three hundred

(00:44):
and fifty people. Only eighteen of us got to go
to the Florida trip that time that we went down there,
so you had to be kind of you had to
earn that trip. I'm glad I got to do that. Unfortunately,
that meant I couldn't do what we called the Great
Western Trip because my family only was able to afford
to go to one of those trips, so I didn't
get a chance to go to like Colorado and some
of the National parks and some of that stuff like

(01:05):
a lot of my other classmates did. I did go
to Washington, d C. The year after that, and of
course school trips. I feel like DC's kind of a
given to go there. And then when I was in
high school, we made a trip over to the New
York City area, which was a lot of fun. Got
to do quite a bit of sight seeing there as well,
which was pretty cool. But we didn't make it. We
didn't go on vacations. It really wasn't a thing. The

(01:27):
biggest trip that we went on it was every year
I did a music camp in South Dakota at the
University of South Dakota, So you drive like six hours
up there and be there for a week, and that
was pretty much the extent of it. My wife and
I decided we wanted to start traveling and seeing some
things and experiencing some things a handful of years ago,
and then the pandemic hit, which really just exacerbated us

(01:48):
being like, you know what, you just never know what
tomorrow is going to bring, we should absolutely, under no
circumstance should we miss this, should we decide not to
make travel a part of what we do. And that
to me was I'm really glad that we've done that.
We've had so many great memories that we've made on
these giant vacations, and we've made a point to do
the vacations. Usually we do a couple of year. This

(02:11):
year we decided right when we got back from Branson,
which was the last vacation that we truly took. I know,
we missed a week we were doing some balloon hot
air ballooning, but we haven't gotten on a trip trip
since we went to Branson last December, and I thought
to myself, Branson was kind of the last minute decision.
Let's really like amp up what we do here to
make as cool of a memory as possible and really

(02:33):
plan out a trip, and so that's what we did.
I also kind of like go into weird places. One
of my favorite trips that we've ever made, and I
think it probably is my favorite, is you know, we've
done Orlando, we've done Cancun, We've done some pretty typical ones,
but we did Williamsburg, Virginia, and we went to Williamsburg,
we did a tour at Jamestown, We went to Yorktown.

(02:54):
We did bush gardens. While we were over there, drove
up to DC and to Baltimore, which was awesome. I
gotta tell you that trip was so fun. We had
to spend some time organizing. We saw a lot of
different things. It's just such a different atmosphere and vibe.
And I gotta tell you, man, like I have such
great nostalgia for just the memories of that, and I
want to make new memories like that. Well, when you

(03:17):
go to Europe for the first time, which is what
I wanted to do, I said, hey, let's actually like
schedule a European vacation. And you're thinking London. I was thinking,
you know, like Paris, you think about Rome, and like Venice.
Maybe in Italy you talk about Athens and some of
the historic stuff that you can see over there. But
I really wanted to think even further outside the box

(03:38):
a little bit. And there's a place I've been fascinated
with for a while and never thought I'd ever go,
but I'm excited to go now. It's Andra and Dora
is a tiny micro nation that is about geographically the
size of Omaha. So think about like the size geographically
Omaha is, that's about the geographical size of Andorra. And
it's located in the middle of the Pyrenees Mountains. Roughly

(03:59):
seventy five to eighty thousand people live there, but it's
a tourist destination because it's got great skiing during the winter,
great hiking during the summer. And it's also a tax
free like no duty taxes on anything, so duty free
tax I guess it's a proper way to say that.
So there's a lot of European people that will find
ways to travel to Endoor to take advantage of the
shopping there. The little catch about Indoorra is you can't

(04:20):
fly into it. There's no airport, and you can't take
one of those high speed trains to it because there's
no train stop. You have to drive there or ride
a bus. So we're gonna rent a car. I've got
my I went to Triple A and got myself that
the permit that you need to be able to drive
in foreign countries these days, and I'm excited to do that.
It's gonna be a lot of fun to rent a

(04:42):
car and then drive myself to Andorra. But you have
to ask yourself, like where do you drive from to
get there, and the easiest answer is about the same
distance to Barcelona and to to lose France. Obviously, no
disrespected to lose France. I'm sure it's a nice place,
but Barcelona is kind of of a much more touristic destination.
So we wanted to maybe fly in there, maybe see

(05:04):
some stuff in Barcelona, and then drive up to Andorra.
But we also put into our you know, we follow
in our members of a couple of different flight websites
that kind of can alert you to some cheap flights
that could be out there that you can buy to
different places, and we put Madrid in there as well.
And Madrid came back like a week later and much
more affordable than usual for a European trip. You're usually

(05:27):
looking at, you know, well over you know, nine hundred thousand,
twelve hundred dollars, depends on the time of the year,
in what kind of length of trip you have going on,
and we found a couple of flights that you know,
together are about that price, so it felt like we
got buy one, get one free. With a flight deal
to Madrid. So now we've added Madrid into that trip.

(05:47):
So we're flying from Omaha to Dallas tomorrow evening and
then later in the evening Dallas all the way to Madrid,
which is going to be the longest flight I've ever
been on. Trying really hard to game plan how I'm
gonna try to fall asleep while I'm there. I'm gonna
try not to use any caffeine tomorrow at all, just

(06:08):
so I have a like my body has a good
chance of, like actually falling asleep. If you have any
tips on how to fall asleep for a long, you know,
nine and a half hour flight, please let me know,
because I need that sleep. We're gonna arrive in Madrid.
We lose about seven hours, so we'll arrive in Madrid
at what will be about two thirty in the afternoon
in the like their time, and that to me is

(06:31):
gonna be It's gonna be a lot of fun to
be there. But that's the biggest challenge of the entire
thing is you get there. Hopefully we get there on time.
We didn't schedule or book anything because we're going from
there and getting on a train going straight to Barcelona,
and I'm excited for that train trip because there's gonna
be like I've never done that before. I've never been
on like a high speed train before, and so I'm
excited to do that. At the same time, I'm scared that,

(06:53):
you know, like I'm gonna get such horrible sleep, and
I'm sure I'm not gonna sleep well, but the jet
lag there, I'm gonna be needing more sleep probably soon
if I don't get good sleep on the plane. And
they don't even eat dinner until like nine pm in Spain,
they do that siesta stuff, and it like a lot
of their stuff is super late, so we're gonna have

(07:13):
to hang on before we actually go to bed in
Barcelona on Wednesday night until you know, nine ten o'clock.
So if you have tips on ways to sleep on
an airplup plane and then try to power through another
seven or eight hours after you after, you know, you
land love to get that information because that's, you know,
I don't want to have our trip completely upended by
the fact that we're so jet lagged those first few

(07:37):
days that it doesn't feel like we're really enjoying ourselves
and we want to take naps during the middle of
the day. Definitely don't want to be doing that. I'll
finish up kind of what our itinerary is and how
you know the excitement and how you can follow along
to our trip, and I'll do that next on news
radio eleven ten kfab you really listening Toye Madison Dinner
on news radio eleven ten KiB works for the trip.

(08:00):
Just to wrap up kind of what the tenerary is.
We're flying in landing in Madrid tomorrow afternoon, well I
guess it would be Wednesday afternoon Madrid time. We leave
tomorrow afternoon from Omaha, but we land in Madrid after
we lose all the time and all that stuff. We'll
land there on Wednesday afternoon their time, and basically we

(08:21):
go right from there. We get on a train and
spend like I think it's two and a half hours
on a train from Madrid over to Barcelona, and we're
there for the first couple of nights at this sweet
hotel that we booked with points. Always good to manage
your credit cards properly kids. That way you can save
yourself some good money when you use your credit card
to you know, either rent a car. I've done that

(08:43):
with points as well as you know, rent a car
for a few days or whatever. It's really nice to
have that as an option. But essentially with those points,
we bought a couple of hotel stays, staying in a
hotel in Barcelona for a couple of days, driving I'm
renting a car and driving from Barcelona up to and Dora,
which is about two two and a half hours. As well,
we'll be in Indoor for a couple of days, right

(09:04):
in the middle of the Pyrenees Mountains. I gotta be honest,
that's the thing I'm most excited about doing is what
kind of those are the genesis of coming up with
this trip in the first place. We'll be there for
a couple of days, drive back to Barcelona, stay in
a different, cool looking hotel for the next couple of nights,
and then get back on that high speed train, head
back to Madrid and be there for the last four
full days of our trip. So we'll be actually doing

(09:26):
stuff in Spain and or for I think nine days
before we fly back home. We're really excited about it.
If you want to follow along with our adventures and
see some photos. I'm not sure how regular I'm going
to be posting. I'm not exactly sure what my internet
situation is going to look like, but I'll try as
best I can to post stuff and keep everybody updated

(09:46):
on our adventures throughout the entire trip. You go to
Emory Songer Radio on Facebook. You can also find Emory
Songer on x or on Instagram, and I'll be posting
pretty much everything I'm doing there as well, So love
to chat with you when I get back. Cannot wait
to do that, recap things, get into the stretch run

(10:08):
of the October football, and get yourself into the election
season as well. But until then audio so there will
be plenty of great coverage here on news Radio eleven
to ten kfab