On Tuesday, May 16, 2023, we me at O'Hare airport for our direct flight to Madrid, Spain.
My suitcase was annoyingly organized for the longest trip I have ever taken. SIXTEEN days felt eternal to me. In the past when I traveled there were time limits, which I was grateful for. The kids were in school, vacation was only 10 days. Great, our trip would be ten days long. Unfortunately for me, I was traveling with people who felt that a trip to Spain needed to be longer than ten days, even though I had already been to Spain twice within this restriction and enjoyed it immensely, I had to let go of that opinion or be seen as rigid.
When I travel, the contents of my suitcase are organized by day. Each day of the trip has an outfit assigned to it for half of the entire time. For this trip there was eight days of clothing. Laundry would be done on the seventh day. Planning in this manner forces me to analyze every item that goes into the suitcase. It also forces me to analyze each day, and where I will be on the seventh day. Are there self-serve laundry facilities in the area? On this trip I changed one of the locations because the city we stayed in for two nights had several laundry locations. There were eight people in our group. Seven of us were travelling together on the same flight. At this time, I will not go into all the anxiety I suffered from all of us being on the same flight. It was a direct flight and that calmed my nerves.