Back from Barcelona

8/1/2023 8:48 pm | : 3 mins. | Share to:

Yesterday, I left Barcelona around noon local time (Central European Summer Time, UTC +7) and at 7:37 pm Pacific, I messaged Katie that I had touched down in Seattle. That is nearly fifteen hours, with a two hour layover in Chicago. And it brought to an end my first international trip since COVID.

I was in Spain for work, Wizards ran their first European MagicCon event. It was a fantastic event and a lot of fun. But man am I glad to be home and sleeping in my own bed.

I took today off work to re-acclimate to the timezone, and I'll be back at work tomorrow.

The photo above is a snap from my hotel. It's a fascinating building with a vertical garden for half of the building, which is also open air. They air condition the bedrooms and the elevator shafts aside from the lobby and the hotel restaurant.

With the summer heat, I had actually packed two desk fans in hopes of helping ensure I slept well, but thankfully they weren't needed. I'm thankful the AC worked very well in our rooms, but also I'm thankful because these are American fans and I hadn't considered the differences between American and European voltages. When I plugged one of the fans in, it immediately spun up faster than normal such that I immediately understood my mistake.

Oops.

All that said, I loved traveling overseas and look forward to my next trip overseas for work. This year though I've only got one more trip on the books: Las Vegas in September.