The long goodbye (to Sangria)

Going home day. The kind of day where your body wakes up before your alarm, before the sun, and possibly before the hotel staff have finished dreaming about breakfast service. After a night of restless tossing — apparently my subconscious was already packing — we were up, dressed, and loitering outside the breakfast room like overeager fans at a stage door. When the gates finally opened at 8am, we walked in as Guests Number One. Croissant supremacy achieved.

By 8:30 we’d checked out, said our silent goodbyes to the hotel, and pointed the car south toward Palma, the airport, and the dreaded Enterprise return desk — that final boss of every rental car saga, where you brace yourself for an inspector to find a scratch you’re fairly sure existed when you picked it up.

Except today, nothing dared to go wrong. The drive was smooth, traffic behaved itself, and security — usually the place where holidays go to die a slow, shoeless death — let us through in record time. No laptops out, no liquids surrendered, no drama. Ninety minutes after leaving the hotel we were airside, blinking in disbelief at our own efficiency.

Which left us with the classic post-security dilemma: over two hours to kill and absolutely nothing that needs doing. Five minutes in duty free confirmed what we already suspected — we don’t need perfume, whisky, or a 2kg tin of biscuits shaped like a windmill. So we did what all seasoned travelers eventually do: found a comfortable seat in a bar, ordered a coffee, and accepted our fate.

A real drink was tempting, obviously — it’s a bar, it’s basically the point of bars — but there was driving to be done on French soil later, and looming over the horizon, the not-so-fun reunion with strict diets and zero alcohol. Holidays are, officially, over for the next few weeks.

Final episode to follow once we’re actually, properly, unmistakably home.