We like to think of ourselves as extremely savvy, well seasoned travellers so we don’t quite understand what happed that day back in January when we wandered into the Travel Agents to book a holiday. ‘We want to go to Greece’ we said. ‘In May’ we said ‘but not the beginning of May like we did last year where we absolutely froze but at the end of May when hopefully the weather will be much warmer’. After perusing through some lovely Greek island holiday options we plumped for Kos, travelling out on 27 May for ten days. Last year we did a week which wasn’t long enough so decided ten days would be fine but my, how prices have sky rocketed since last year. Can you believe this….for an extra three days it was costing us practically double what we paid last year. No kidding! I suppose if that’s the price one has to pay for a holiday nowadays then so be it so we very begrudgingly paid the deposit. However, as the week progressed we began to wonder if it would be any cheaper if we went one week earlier. Well can you believe this. It turns out it was over £400 pound cheaper to go on 17 May and do you know why it was £400 cheaper? Because unbeknownst to us we’d only gone and booked our holiday during the schools half-term week! I wouldn’t mind but the travel agent didn’t exactly alert us to the fact that it was half-term week and kept quiet when we were discussing how the prices had risen so much!! We were not amused. I mean, let’s face it, can you imagine M&A on holiday in Greece with a load of kids? No we couldn’t either so we changed the date and were charged a £100 admin fee! Ok, it was worth paying the fee because at least we’d be saving over £300…..or so we thought. TUI, the thieving so-and-so’s only increased the price of the holiday by over £200 within the time of giving us the new price to providing us with a new invoice. Not impressed….TUI, are you listening. We are NOT amused! We…..okay, I, have had to park this little incident in the ‘control dartboard’ under ‘things outside of our control’ but we’ve also given ourselves a good talking to in that we need to be more vigilant and question everything when booking our future holidays. Yes indeedy, a very expensive lesson has been learnt!
Now, as you know from previous holidays we hate packing. Our usual ritual is that it goes in the case, it comes out, some major repacking goes on until eventually we’re happy with what we’ve packed. Well, this time round it was totally different. Due to me having my whole house decorated whilst I’m away and having got rid of all my furniture, including sofas, drawers and wardrobes I now have no storage facilities so when my holiday clothes went into the suitcase three days before we travelled, they stayed there until that is I went to pick up Maice on our travel day. Maice on the other hand had ironed all her clothes in advance of them being placed in the suitcase although I’m surprised she even knows what an iron is….. and had hung them up, waiting to be packed on travel day! So, no hokey-cokey packing for us this time round!
Finally, departure day arrived and we were up with the lark. Me at 4am due to having to squeeze items of household paraphernalia into very small places so they wouldn’t hinder Adrian, the decorator and Maice at 5am to start to pack not only her own but Winston’s bag. Milly had been dispatched two days earlier to Purrfect Cattery and Sir Winston was being transported that morning to his holiday home in Wool where Jane and Mike would be catering and pampering to his every need. Just as well Geordie, their Labrador is tolerant of Winston and totally ignores him whereas Winston is always vying for Geordies attention!
I arrived to pick up Maice at 10.15am only to find her sat at the kitchen table nursing the onset of a migraine and drugged up to the eyeballs in an attempt to stop it from getting any worse. She hadn’t even packed her suitcase! An urgent regroup was required. It was still early, our flight wasn’t until 5.15pm later that afternoon so it was a unanimous decision……we headed off to the Costa Coffee drive thru in Weymouth where we purchased two ‘wake-me-up-and-give-us-a-boost’ coffees which we enjoyed with a croissant when we returned to Maices. It did the trick. Maice perked up, packed her bag and I unpacked my bag due to Maice’s packing tip……pack a Day 1 outfit in your hand luggage just in case your luggage decides to go to a different destination than the one you’re going t
Finally at 11.30am we set off, took the usual selfie and drove the scenic route to Bristol airport arriving just as the check-in desks were opening. We did well to check-in at the self-service desk without the need to call for assistance and gave ourselves a well deserved Hi-5 until we realised we’d only gone and put our labels on the wrong handles so our cases wouldn’t scan on the bag-drop converyor belt and a supervisor had to be called to override the system. Ah well, one day we’ll get the hang of these things in time for our next holiday!
We had three hours to kill before our flight so before we had lunch our first stop was the Accessorize shop where I purchased a beach bag to replace the new beach bag I’d bought a week ago which I must say was not fit for purpose. It was too big, it was too floppy, I couldn’t find anything in it, I was getting in a right muddle with it and it was driving me mad. I ended up giving it to the restaurant staff where we had our lunch in the hope that they’d find it a good home!
Before we knew it we’d boarded the plane, which at the time of boarding was ‘on time’ but then we were advised by the Captain that there had been issues with ‘locating’ and then loading the luggage and not wanting to leave anyone’s luggage behind we’d subsequently missed our slot. Forty minutes later we were finally in the air on this 3hour 40minute flight. Great, we could now relax as we’d soon be there. Unfortunately for Maice however she was sat next to a guy who didn’t like flying and whom we nick-named Mr Fidget. Before we’d even taken off he would fall asleep, breathe heavily, snore loudly then he’d wake himself up, fiddle with his belt, open it, close it, rummage through his big bag, fall asleep, breathe heavily, snore, wake himself up, fiddle with his belt, open it, close it and then ask Maice to move so he could go to the loo. This behaviour process continued throughout the flight. At one point Maice thought he was going to have a heart attack his breathing was so erratic.
After what can only be classed as the longest short haul flight we’ve ever been on we touched down on Greek soil at 11.45pm where bus 87 was waiting for us, although there was a delay getting on the bus….but hey, that’s for another day!
We are done in, we are tired, we’ve now got a one hour transfer and we’re still waiting for people to board the bus. Yes folks, we think we’re suffering from Greek jet-lag!
Καληνύχτα ……
M&A xx
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