This entry was more wry the first time I wrote it, but it appears to have vanished without a trace so I’m not feeling wry anymore. Probably not a bad summary of the whole trip, actually!!
That said, the trip started off ok, really – in as much as “starting” means “getting to the airport in time to check-in”. I had a taxi booked for 04.30 in order to get to Leeds /Bradford for 5am, in order to get the 7am flight to Amsterdam. Taxi duly arrived, very easy journey to the airport. “Good,” thought I. “Plenty of time to check-in and grab breakfast.”
Actually there had been one complication by this point. The youth group had set the date for their 24 hour sponsored stay-awake to be that night/day. I seriously toyed with the idea of just staying up until 4.30, but then decided that even 6 hours sleep was worth it, so I went along to the start of the evening, and was tucked up in bed by 10. I suppose I should have been more worried about the 1cm of snow that fell on Friday night – but I managed to drive ok along an ungritted road, so I figured the planes would be ok. There was a worrying slew of cancellations shown on the airport website, but my flight was listed as fine and dandy, so I thought all was well.
There was a huge queue at the airport to check-in. Lots of people going off skiing. Anyway I got to the check-in desk, gave over my passport and tickets, and got my bags all tagged up. Nice lady gave me my boarding pass, and I was about to walk away when she hands me a letter.
“I’m afraid the aeroplane diverted to Robin Hood airport last night with the snow. Please take your bag and just wait at the front of the terminal building for the coach to take you there. It will be about an hour and a half late into Amsterdam.”
“But I’ve got a connecting flight….”
“Sorry Sir, but we are a budget airline. NEXT”.
Straight on the phone to Delta for the “Houston, we have a problem” phonecall:
“Sorry sir, you have a very restricted ticket. It can’t be changed, and it has no refund value less than 24 hours before travel.”
“What are my options?”
“… Well, we don’t have any availability for returning on Friday, so it will have to be
Saturday and Sunday .. Ah yes, and I can get you on a KLM flight from Amsterdam to Boston this afternoon. That will be £4,000 please.”
I’m pondering whether or not to explain that I don’t think 4k is a realistic option for me, and indeed that coming back on Saturday/Sunday isn’t either (see Madeira), when the coach arrives to take me to Doncaster. Actually there was one minor flurry of excitement in the meantime, when I noticed a KLM flight going to Amsterdam a few minutes after my original flight was due to depart… but then it turned out that plane had diverted to Manchester, and everyone was getting on a coach there. Sigh.
Pleasant enough journey to Robin Hood airport (nowhere need Nottingham, incidentally), lots of hanging around there (although this did mean there was time to arrange a second mortgage in order to buy breakfast). I think by the time we took off it was about half an hour before the Delta flight was due to take off. Since it’s an hour’s flight to Amsterdam, this meant I could relax, really.
Sure enough, I get to Schipol – departure boards aren’t even listing my flight it’s that long gone. So I do the 10 minute hike to the baggage reclaim, wander out to my first ever time in Holland (been to the airport before, but only to transfer), and groove on up to the Delta desk.
Only everyone’s packed up and gone home from the Delta desk, so I’m left all alone in Schipol airport, with a ticket for a flight that’s halfway across the Atlantic, and a mobile phone that doesn’t work.
Did I mention my mobile didn’t have International roaming set up on it? (despite them telling me it was provisioned for roaming). It happened last time too – why don’t I learn? Still, 10 minutes on an airport payphone was enough to sort me out, and it’s back on the phone to good old Delta.
Actually in the meantime I’d set my boss on a mission to try and find an alternative flight from Amsterdam to Boston. There were one or two options (although one that was Amsterdam -> Dublin -> Paris -> Atlanta -> Boston or something, which I passed on)
“Ok – so I missed my connection because of the snow, but I have made it as far as Amsterdam. I know my outward ticket is worthless now, but if I make my own way to Boston can I still use the return leg on Friday?”
“You got held up getting to the airport in the UK by the snow?”
“No, when I got to the UK airport my plane had been diverted because of snow, so I had to get a coach to another airport, and by the time I arrived in Amsterdam I’d missed the flight”
“… You’re in Amsterdam at the moment?”
“Yes!”
“Oh. Please hold the line.”
“… It’s your lucky day sir! We’ll let you change your outward travel date to tomorrow morning instead for £100.00, if you’d like?”
Well – it wasn’t the question I’d asked, but I thought I was probably unlikely to get a flight to Boston for that day or the next day for less than £100 + the cost of a hotel room, so I went for it.
Next job – find a hotel room, then settle down to an unexpected day in Amsterdam. Well, half-day really.
One thing I forgot to mention was that we were there for the start of Lent, which of course meant Shrove Tuesday – Mardi Gras! To mark this event, there was a carnival in Funchal which we all went to.
It was actually quite fun – lots of people walked by, or came by on floats, and they were all dressed up in costumes. These seemed to split between general sex/horror (men in drag, Grim reaper), society references we didn’t understand (the tramps’ parade, and lots of scarecrows), and political messages, particularly a lot of stuff to do with health and money. We couldn’t understand the slogans, as there were in Portuguese, but could get enough of a grasp to get the basic message…
Had to swiftly distract my little boy a couple of times – first when a gallows came by that had someone being strung up ready to be hung (just pretend, but looked real), and second when a car came by with a sex orgy going on – again just pretend, but nevertheless with two men in drag standing on the roof gyrating and performing oral sex on a dildo. I looked a bit like there was a young lady in the back with her legs in the air, but – perhaps fortunately – the crowd got in the way.
To be fair, in the space of over an hour of people passing by, these were the only two I felt were inappropriate for a three year old – the rest was all either based on imagery that would pass him by, or good clean fun.
We also got a free DVD from the Ministry of Tourism (or something), that was a review of all the attractions on the island, including the 2006/7 New Year fireworks, which looked absolutely breath-taking. While I wasn’t there, it looked by far the most impressive and sustained display I’ve ever seen (this record was previously for me held by the Sydney 2000 fireworks, which again I didn’t see live, but looked pretty good on the telly).
Oh the life of an international jet-setter (as if).
Just got back from a lurvely holiday in Funchal, Madeira (as in Madeira wine) – part of an Portuguese archipelago of islands off the coast of Morroco (like 1000km) in the mid Atlantic.
Lovely island – friendly people, beautiful scenery, that sort of thing. Not that we were too adventurous as the purpose of the trip was for us to chill out, and spends lots of time with granny. We did wander a lot through Funchal, did a walk along a levada, and peered over the highest cliff in Europe.
I clearly have a jinx on flying though – we got stuck in traffic on the way to the airport, and had to run through the terminal to the sounds of a “final boarding call for passengers…”, and on the way back we arrived an Funchal airport to discover our plane hadn’t left Manchester yet (and it’s about a 4 hour flight!). This wasn’t so bad, as Funchal airport has a great children’s play area which kept the little ‘un happy for most of our 6 hour wait (having got to the airport 2 hours early, like good bunnies).
The best bet was yet to come though – after the plane finally arrived from Manchester, we boarded and sat happily in our seats, only for them to ‘pop the hood’ on the port engine and start tinkering. Joy of joys – 90 minutes sitting on the tarmac while they search for a hydraulic leak that I don’t think existed in the end.
So we landed some point after midnight, and finally got home at 2.30 am – a good 6 hours after we should have got back.Perhaps I should give up flying?
Just had the pleasure of a last-minute work trip to the US – Boston to be exact – that, while I didn’t really get to see very much except the hotel and the people I was visiting, did afford half a day in downtime Boston, and of course the joys of international air travel.
I haven’t got time to put all my anecdotes down right now; got lots to do today and won’t be on the computer again for a week, but I will record them for posterity right here just as soon as I have a mo. I should have done it while I was out there, but somehow couldn’t really find inspiration.
So stay tuned (or more realistically tune in again in a few weeks) and you find out all about the joys of Schipol airport and an unscheduled visit to central Amsterdam, wading through icy sludge on the way to Harvard, and sleeping at Gate 12 of Kennedy airport while they fix the plane.
And all that’s before we talk about Lobsters, nachos, and George Bush Snr!
You hardly ever see hitch-hickers these days, do you? I remember about 15 or 20 years ago, it seemed you could never drive down a motorway slip road without seeing a chap with his thumb sticking out… But now I can’t remember the last time I saw someone trying to hitch a ride.
Until just now, that is. Leeds RAG is apparently doing a sponsored hitch to Hull, so the roads around the University are a-wash with students holding out cardboard signs saying “HULL” and generally cluttering up the roads.
I don’t know why hitching is out of vogue. Maybe more drivers have posh cars that they don’t want to share with smelly hitchers? Maybe drivers are more cautious of stopping for strangers? Maybe people generally are more affluent, so can afford to run their own car or hop on a bus or a train rather than getting soaked and freezing standing by the side of the road? Or perhaps it’s the advent of budget travel, with easyBus doing 99p seats to Glasgow or whatever, and of course all the budget airlines.
Probably a combination of all of the above. On balance it’s probably a bit of a shame – one day I just might need to hitch a ride, and I’ll be out of luck!
Oh yes, and do you think I should tell them that the centre of Leeds is probably not a great place to try and cadge a lift to Hull? 🙂
Just made a scary discovery – I first signed up to It’s Your Turn nearly six years ago! Since then I have lost 62% of the games of Chess I have played on the site, and most of those to my friend penguin.
Ho hum – but then it’s the taking part that counts!
If anyone fancies beating me at chess, send an invite – I’m “jhandley” over there. Probably best to set a 30 day limit for moves.
Hooray – my alarm has gone off for the last time until next Friday! 🙂
Well, actually, we’ll probably need it in order to to make it to the 8am service on Monday morning, which will probably mean leaving the house at the same time. Come to that, I’m sure our little human alarm clock is going to work his magic most mornings. Bosh var.
But ANYWAY, the point is no more work, after today, for a week (and even then it’s only a day). Yippee!!
Came across a term in the Metro yesterday that I’d not heard before; Google-stalker. Isn’t that a fantastic neologism; you instantly know exactly what it means, but then after a few minutes you think “Hey – I wonder if I’m a Google-stalker when I search for random friends/colleagues.” I quite often try to see if any of my friends from PGL or from uni are evident in cyberspace (usually with no success). I guess Friends Reunited and MySpace are other sites which promote this stalkeresque behaviour – at what point does looking up an old friend become an obsession?
The other term was wikipediholics, which again absolutely hits the nail on the head. Had the wikipedia been around when I was younger, I’m absolutely certain I would have absolutely addicted to it, and spent a lot of time and energy creating/correcting entries!
After a pretty slow start, I actually ended up really enjoying this film. The basic premise is that Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan are mother and daughter, who magically swap bodies on the eve of the mother’s wedding (following the death of the husband/father 3 years previously). That said this is firmly aimed at the young teen market, and has it’s humour and tone pitched accordingly. Nothing too heavy here, everyone!
It must be said that Jamie Lee absolutely blew the socks of LiLo in terms of acting, although I guess it’s an easier ask for a 40/50 year old to believably act like a teenager than the other way round.
All the usual stuff about the importance of seeing the other person’s point of view and listening to one another was there – possibly laid on a little bit thick. On balane I enjoyed it though. The whole step-dad thing wasn’t done brilliantly – his character seem to drastically change in the last 5 minutes in a way that reeked of deus ex-machina, but that might just be me.
High point of the film was definitely when LiLo came home after getting 2 detentions to disover her bedroom door had been removed. “Privacy is a priviledge, not a right” says her mum. 🙂
