Lanzarote was wonderful. Although the weather was cool in an evening, during the day it was mostly fabulous, especially toward the end of the week.
The return journey, however, wasn't.
On our last day of holiday, I always get pissed off. Flying is so fecking boring and uncomfortable, and all we had to look forward to was miserable, cold, dank Manchester. And work.
We booked our flights with an airline that I won't mention called THOMAS COOK. The "fun" started on Monday 15th. Our flights were about 1530, and check-in opened two hours before. Struggling to find the check-in desk, we just looked for the one with the biggest queue - and there it was - the one flying to Manchester (or "hell").
Being British, we obviously love a long queue (no!) so joined it. After what seemed like an eternity, we got to the front. I had a feeling we were slightly over, but hey-ho.
We were 5kg over.
Thomas Cook wanted to charge us €70!!!
WHAT?! That's €14 a KG!! (Just under £14 or $28). How I held my tongue, I don't know. Well, actually, I didn't. I looked away and said, quite loudly, so the gormless bint on the check-in would hear, "That's taking the fucking piss." More than once.
I then turned around to see a man who literally looked like he weighed twice as much as me, and had the body-shape of an orange. My BMI being 23, his looking significantly more than 30. Yet HE PAID THE SAME AIR FARE AS ME!!! HE WEIGHED a HELL of a LOT MORE than 5kg MORE than ME. So WHY do I have to pay an extra €70??!?!?!!
She then asked "Are you going to pay or rearrange?"
I know she's only doing her job, but all I want to do is go home - well actually, I didn't. I wanted to fuck off back to the apartment and waste more time reading and sunbathing.
Needless to say, TC weren't getting any more fecking Euro's, so we rearranged. So we were there, rearranging clothes, threw away a few cheap towels. I zipped up the suitcase - or thought I had - and pulled the thing up, angrily, only to realise I had actually UNzipped the thing - as a cascade of underwear and various other items launched themselves from the suitcase like rats out of a sewer. At this point, I laughed. Although, it was more of an insane cackle.
We re-joined the queue. Luckily, this time, we were under and the cases went on their jolly way.
Going through customs is always fun.
This time was double-fun.
Already in a bad mood, we put our bags on the scanner.
There was a bit of finger-pointing at the screen. The woman opened the suitcase, and suddenly, it dawned: In the confusion of re-arranging, my one saving souvenir, my beautiful bottle of Single Barrel Special Irish Whisky, Jamiesons, had been put into hand luggage instead of hold. Of course, customs do not allow liquids in hand luggage. At this point, a tear actually welled up, if only for a second. I told the gaffer to "enjoy it, it's yours" and we walked away, head-low. As we had spent out holiday money, we didn't have quite enough to buy another bottle in duty-free.
On the plus-side, the flight home was cramped, noisy and uncomfortable. We were far too close to the wining loud brat and the weather in Manchester was cold and miserable.
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