Family history across the seas

My 2025 A to Z theme is Airports, Airstrips, Aircraft, and Airlines I’ve known and flown with. I’ll be using IATA codes where they’re available. My inner travel agent emerges at this point as I’m the FTO (family travel organiser) and now, the online travel agent.

MAD   Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport, Madrid, Spain

I’ve decided to use my Facebook posts to illustrate the joys of travel from Down Under to Europe in 2018. I don’t have any photos of Madrid Airport, nor really any recollection of getting from the airport to the city though I think it was by metro. I claim jet lag.

28 March 2018                      Checked in for Wednesday’s flight with Emirates. Seat allocations in cattle class booked and paid for. Ugh the flights…14hrs to Dubai, 7.5 transit (in lounge!) and 8 to Madrid.

29 March 2018                     Peaceful break in the lounge at Dubai. Not long until Madrid departure. 14 hrs in cattle class is tedious…only time I rue my height.

30 March 2018         (Good Friday) Happy Easter one and all.

We have arrived in Madrid and had a good sleep so any minute now we’ll get our act together and go out sight-seeing. It’s drizzly so a good excuse to take it slowly.

Our B&B is good and very convenient too…weird to see people shopping in stores at 11pm last night when we went hunting something to eat. Starbucks it was, for a Sanger each and coffee for Peter. At least we could be forgiven for not having a word of Spanish at Starbucks. I always feel lost when I don’t know the language.

It’s still cool here so pleased I rejigged my packing and brought some warm clothes. Locals dressed in boots, big jackets and scarves. Peter, as always, in short sleeved shirt.

Despite the 36 hour journey from home to the BnB we appreciated the long layover in Dubai Emirates lounge….quiet and peaceful and a chance to stretch. Arriving here late meant we could reset our body clocks…touch wood. (Not entirely since we missed the Good Friday procession we intended to see, or it wasn’t at the location we were told.)

Note: scheduled arrival at airport was 18:20 local time. I’m surprised I didn’t take a photo of the airport given its magnificent roof design. The one below is from Wikimedia under Creative Commons licence.

MRS    Marseille Provence Airport, Marseille, France

I remember two things about Marseille Airport in 2010 – the scary drive down from Aix-en-Provence to get there and the mayhem, Rafferty’s Rules, of the departure scrum. However, I can’t yet retrieve where we were heading to: back to Paris or Dubai …? Even my photobooks provide no enlightenment.

MNL    Ninoy Aquino International Airport, Manila, Philippines

Manila was our first international airport on our trip to Europe in 1974, but unfortunately I have no recollection of any details. I may have written them in an aerogramme to my parents, which I don’t have (the letter that is). The reason for our stopover was to visit a priest who had been a friend in PNG. What I do remember was him being rather vocal about the Marcos family over dinner at a restaurant – his frankness made me quite nervous.

On our second trip in 1978, Manila was only a transit stop, and my notes say we landed at 4:20pm local time and went through to the waiting lounge where we had a 3 hours wait as daylight saving had started that day. We spent the time with another PNG friend while our children played with his. I must have been irritated by the toilet procedures as I note “I do not like having people hover around my toilet or flush it”.

MAG   Madang Airport, Papua New Guinea

Madang was usually a transit stop for us en route to see my husband’s family but on one occasion I visited with some Australian friends and stayed a night or two. By sheer chance we ran into another of our friends from Goroka. We also saw the neighbouring volcano, Manam Motu, having a bit of a blow.

MEL     Melbourne (Tullamarine) Airport, Melbourne, Australia

How did I miss this on my initial A to Z posting? I have travelled through Melbourne Airport many times, though not as often as Sydney. Most recently we were transiting to Tasmania but needed an overnight because of timing. For a couple of years our peripatetic daughter lived in Melbourne, so it was another excuse for travel, <smile>. On other occasions it’s been for my family history interests: visiting an exhibition on my husband’s family, researching at the Public Records Office of Victoria, and attending the 2003 AFFHO Family History Congress. In earlier years my trips were for work liaison and a management course. I have an idea I also arrived at Avalon Airport (AVV) in Melbourne once.

In the joys of travelling from Darwin, one of our overseas trips took us via Melbourne – go figure. We usually avoided this type of routing, if at all possible.

Have been to any airports that especially annoyed you for lack of organisation? Does any airport stand out in your memory for its architecture? Have you kept organised notes and photos of your trips? Any more tips? I thought I’d been organised with photobooks, some notes and file folders but they’re really not standing up to the test of this challenge.