For John’s birthday on the 20th of May I had planned a surprise weekend trip to Berlin – flights bought, hotel booked, dinner reservations made, you name it, it was planned. Then, at around lunch time the day of his birthday, and about eight hours before we were due to depart, I came down with a flu of almost 40 and a chest infection that had us waiting at the emergency room and canceling our trip. Poor John…birthday dinner consisted of take-out Indian, delivered at 12am after we got back from hospital, and then he had the luck of sleeping on the air mattress for the next three nights. As someone pointed out, luckily I have another 75 birthdays in which to make it up to him. Phew!
With us missing our Berlin flight, we are putting a claim in against our travel insurance and needed a letter from Ryanair, confirming that we did, in fact, not make the flight. After ten minutes (at 10pence per minute, of course) of holding on the phone, Victor the friendly call center helper informed me that he would be delighted to send me this letter, but, wait for it, I would have to pay £17 to receive this. What a laugh we had about that, I tell you. After I stopped laughing out loud, I kindly asked Victor to please make a note on his system to confirm that I would NEVER be flying Ryanair again. I hate Ryanair.
Fast forward a couple of weeks and I am finally on an Easyjet flight on my way back to London from Ibiza (more about that later…Oh My Word…). I say finally, because we were meant to take off last night at 01:55am, yet here I am at 21:12, the next day, on my way back home. Turns out cabin crew aren’t allowed to fly longer than a specific number of hours and if earlier delays are messing that up for you, that’s your problem. We waited for our ‘delayed’ flight until about 02:00am before the ‘delayed’ sign turned to ‘canceled’. Ugh. We had to line up to get our checked in bags back and then about 200 passengers were bussed out to various corners of the island and put up in crummy three-star hotels for the night.
In all fairness, the process was quite a bit more painless than it could have been (I didn’t have to sleep in an airport), but still, it sucked. The upside was that we were forced to spend our sixth day in Ibiza and it was glorious. I guess having your flight canceled from Ibiza back to rainy London is waaaay better than the other way around. It’s the small things that make me happy these days…So I’m not complaining too much. But still. I am more of a five star kind of girl.