A Mid Winter Cruise…
I don’t
know what it is, but flying just gets to be more and more of a pain in the butt!
I am sure that part of it is because I fly into and out of Alicante, the nearest
airport to my home, but it’s a little more than that… no, it’s a LOT more than
that! I have touched on this before and I could go on about it.…….. but I
will. If you fly with one of the so-called low-cost airlines, you can
expect to pay less for your ticket but, after that, watch out…. from the minute
you arrive at the airport you will pay for everything. Some even charge
you a "check-in" fee which is actually a penalty for not checking in on line
which is something you can’t do if you are checking a bag! Are you
following me here? It’s all so absurd. Checking a bag? (sharp intake
of breath through pursed lips). The limit’s 15 kilos and after that it
will cost you €8.00 per kilo. €8.00??? Can you believe that?
An empty suitcase weighs close to 6 kilos….. well, mine does anyway. In
this case I was given a ticket to fly with Ryanair to Stockholm. I will
not fly with them again under any circumstances.
"May I have
a window seat please"?
"Sorry sir,
this company doesn’t assign seats at check-in".
"So what am
I supposed to do, assuming there actually are seats on the aeroplane"?
"Oh, it’s
actually quite fun sir (he was Spanish, bored, old and completely uninterested
so he probably didn’t use the word "sir" or any polite equivalent), what you do
is go to the departure area, wait for ever to know what gate the flight may
leave from and, when it’s finally posted, engage in a free-for-all with a bunch
of Scandinavian pensioners that’s equivalent to a full blown WWF contest… isn’t
flying fun"?
So I did…..
I joyfully paid my €64.00 excess baggage charge and got to the gate with only
about 15 people ahead of me. I had youthful speed on my side! The
line behind me was long and fairly orderly except that some of the late-comers
decided that this line was too long and that they would simply ignore it and
form a new one…. one that was shorter! They are so ignorant!! But I
had watched enough NFL games so I knew exactly what to do and I ended up in seat
8A, a window seat, so I could grab a nap on the almost 4 hour flight to
Stockholm.
AAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH….. the seats don’t recline!! 3 hours and 50 minutes
in the same position….. Never again…. never, ever again!! 3 euros
for a cup of stale coffee and 8 euros for a "mature" sandwich? Never again!!
And all of
this came after I had navigated morons wandering sideways through the concourses
glued to the screens of their mobile phones and oblivious to the fact that there
were actually other, living, breathing humans in their vicinity, not to mention
kids who just didn’t want to be there and demonstrated this by rolling around on
the floor, not afraid to risk being crushed by obese British tourists trying to
find the gate for the flight to Coventry. Coventry??? Who the heck
flies to Coventry? It’s an obscure little village in the middle of England
for crying out loud!!
But I
digress……
