A short break – extended
What a better way to beat the Irish winter blues (which extended into April) than a short break to sunny Portugal! Packing was light with a focus on swimwear, sun cream, shorts and a longboard. My companion (wife) was in jolly humour having been out late the night before and went straight for the LK Bennett shop in the Airport, when I rescued her the sales assistant was handing her a receipt saying “not even 7 AM and a pair of shoes purchased” Should these airport shops not have breathalysers?
Dont take up a parking space with that!
Upon arrival we located our hire car, the meeting point was at the Ice cream kiosk in Lisbon and set off in our Fiat Punto (we are nothing if not flash). My nervous passenger, whose hangover was kicking in, ensured that there was no reckless driving, although I had to protest when a Smart Car overtook us. Smart Cars are treated with little respect in Portugal, see what happened when a driver found a smart car taking up a full parking space!
Following two days of glorious sunshine we got worried when we heard reports of sunshine in Ireland, it’s a known fact that on the rare occasions when high pressure lingers over Ireland, southern Europe gets a deluge and sure enough it arrived. A little bit of cultural sight seeing (Sintra is amazing) and some good food kept spirits up. We also got some work done in anticipation of taking a few hours to enjoy the sunshine when we returned to Ireland. Unfortunately Abigail came down with a stomach bug on our last night and spent most of the night conversing with porcelain.
Thursday morning – airport, check in, boarding gate, wife asleep and the texts came through, informing us of the volcanic ash event. We boarded the plane a little late and thought that we would be able to get in to Dublin before the airport closed. We sat on the runway for an hour and a half being well looked after by the cabin crew and thankful that we flying with civilised Aer Lingus. Suddenly we were being ejected with very few instructions, we’re not leaving today, we don’t know when we are – go out to fend for yourselves, clearly someone had left the Ryanair customer service manual lying around.
Abigail’s condition was not improving and it was going to be a dogfight to get on the next plane. I raced out to try to find the customer service counter, no Aer Lingus desk but a service counter operated by PortWay acting on behalf of most of the Airlines. Complete chaos, credit card details were being entered into laptops for broadband services (in Portuguese) which never materialised, panic ringing of phone numbers. A phone number for Aer Lingus gold circle was found and after a little persuasion about my lack of membership our booking was quickly changed. Then I tried to find wife who had been left picking up the longboard from oversize baggage, and located her at the lost and found section.
Flight booked for tomorrow (Friday), the sun was shining we found a fabulous gothic apart-hotel near the airport with a pool overlooking the city. We entered the hotel in sunshine, checked in, but by the time I reached the pool the afternoon rain was set in and continued. Flight cancelled for tomorrow (Friday) and the realisation that we were not going to make it back for the Dental Hygienists Conference in Dublin on Saturday where Abigail was due to give a lecture and Happythreads had a trade stand.
In these situations there is always a positive to be gained….to be continued…