EZ Honeymoon: Spain – First Things First

First things first, our perfect wedding (more to come on that later) was a tough act to follow, but even with our last-minute preparation, the honeymoon was every bit as amazing. Initially, we thought about heading to Peru or somewhere else in South America, but it turns out October is peak rain season in that part of the world. Since we both speak a little Spanish, Spain was an excellent alternative for our Luna de Miel.

We landed in Madrid around 8:00am local time, and with no checked luggage, we quickly passed through customs. Our first stop was the Sixt rental car counter. We chose them based on my positive experience in Germany last year. Once again it was a pleasant transaction, and we were satisfied with the pricing.

After loading up the car, we confirmed the use of the cell phone and setup our GPS navigation. For navigation, I opted for the Bad Elf GPS attachment paired with the Navigon Europe app. The Bad Elf receiver gets incredible signal, but the connection is rather temperamental and bumping the iPad or iPhone caused a rather bothersome interruption in service. In the future, I would go with one of the bluetooth GPS receivers. However, it was nice having the large iPad screen to clearly see the map when the streets were practically on top of themselves.  The iPhone was never as useful.

For the phone service, we bought a prepaid SIM card from Keep Go, which got great signal, but was a terrible pain to use. I didn’t realize that it gave us a USA number and it made calls by hanging up and then calling back. Additionally, we did not receive one text message sent to me by anyone in Spain. KeepGo has excellent support and customer service, but it is not the service for us. The phone was absolutely necessary to coordinate with our Airbnb hosts, and we were glad to have it available, despite the limited functionality. In the future, however, we will stick with grabbing a SIM card from a local carrier upon arrival.

As we mentioned, we used Airbnb for our lodging, and all three places we stayed were absolutely amazing. We really like the immersion aspect of using Airbnb, and while you have to do a little extra research on the host as well as the usual research regarding location and lodging, the payoff is worth it.

Armed with our gadgets, rental car, Airbnb reservations, and “Maribel’s Guides to Spain”, we were ready to set off from the airport to Toledo.