Beer at 3am?
Sure why not, we are on holiday!
Scott had stepped up, picked us up and driven all the way from Macclesfield to Oakamoor, to Derby, to Gatwick for our flights. It was a 3 hour drive from Derby alone so when we picked up Angus, we stopped for dinner in a specialist burger joint where we were basically ignored. But the burgers were good, something a bit special compared to the standard.
We had thought to fly from Manchester or Birmingham, one of the airport’s closer to us, but the tickets were an extra £65, or something, each. Even with fuel and parking costs, it was cheaper to go to Gatwick… but it meant we basically drove thru the night to arrive at the airport at 3am… hence the beer. I mean technically… TECHNICALLY… 3am is still a night out, is the justification I’m going for…
Looking up at the departures board, checking for Verona, we see it saying delayed… Angus checks his app and its saying delayed till 8am. We are meant to depart at 5:40am… another round?
Then all of a sudden the board says “Go To Gate” and we start looking sideways at eachother, taking larger gulps of our beers. Now it says “Boarding”, just as Aimi has gone to the toilet!
We reach the gate and everyone is just lounging around on worn out airport seats in jumpers. The heating clearly hasn’t been turned on down this corridor and there isn’t an EasyJet rep in sight. The app still says 8am, but it might not be correct, so we nap and shiver till we are allowed to board… near 8am. Over 2 hours after we are meant to have left.
The plane takes off and we all conk out for an hour or so to Verona. Zero problems getting thru security and collecting our bags and we excitedly head off to collect our hire car to start our adventure.
And the hire car booking had been cancelled because we are over 2 hours late…
There is a huge crush of people, all wanting cars and basic economics will tell you that low availability and high demand, coupled with a captive market equals sky high prices… All the lady days she has for me is a severely banged up Astra, which is about 3 car sizes smaller than we booked, but it’s all there is. Oh and she wants to charge us more. AND I’m not convinced the insurance from my cancelled booking, will cover this car, so I’ve got to fork out even more for that…
I’m really not impressed, I’m knackered and now i feel like I’m being ripped off. This is the second time I’ve been to Italy and immediately had a bad experience. Not a great way to start the holiday, but we are off on the adventure and I’m not willing to let it ruin the holiday.
We (read: I ) had a 3 and half hour drive up to the chalet in a little town called Pocol. It was a bit hard to concentrate on the motorway, but soon we started climbing up into the mountains. They just got bigger and bigger and more rugged with every mile we covered, right up until the hair pin bends made Scott vomit. Giving us a great photo break.
We are all knackered tonight, so bunged down some pasta and sauce, finished our drinks and went to bed.
Gotta be ready for Via Ferrata tomorrow!