Travelers tales #2

Advice for Guests at The Atlanta

Alice displays her buddist credentials at Bondi by the Chao Praya
A typical Thai Ruin

Here are some of the wonderful people who greeted us in London



Traveller’s tales of Ryan Air’s shenanigans set the stage for our day of departure from London. The requirement that printed boarding passes be downloaded from the net not before or after certain times was our first stumble. The eleventh hour discovery that the ones we had were for the Shannon – Paris leg of our journey sent us scuttling to the Internet Café (I’d always assumed they would serve coffee and snacks with their service) where we preformed this protocol with only moments to spare.

Off to the bus for London Bridge Station our first and only such experience in London on a busy Tuesday morning I got my first feel of that lumbering sensation one has with small but weighty backpack and large wheelie suitcase. The most striking difference between all the cities we visited and Sydney is the scale of population. Some complain that Sydney is gridlocked with cars; London, Paris, Rome and Barcelona are gridlocked with people and they don’t all know where there going. Ask ten people for directions and as many as will proffer them will be the number of different directions given. Indeed only a little later this day Alice was to become a de-facto authority for bewildered French and Americans who could not decipher the contradictory public address announcements about broken down trains that were blocking lines and the need to take other trains to the next station where we could once more join our intended line. All that experience listening to Sydney city rail announcements in their innumerable accents put her in good stead for this chore.

Eventually at Gatwick we queued in line with others in the hope that it was for our Ryan Air flight whilst Ryan Air staff manned desks in front of us doing nothing and offering no assurances even it seemed to those willing to risk their place in line to go and ask. Well aware of luggage restrictions; one piece in hold and one piece on board that should not exceed size and weight restrictions we were almost flummoxed by a new rule that hold baggage was not to exceed 15K per piece and our total was some 6K over. Fortunately the nice lady remembered she was human and gave us the option of moving weight from hold to cabin luggage rather than face a substantial financial penalty. Of course we still had to worry about overweight cabin luggage and what ballast books we might eventually have to jettison but at least this decision was postponed and eventually mattered not a twit.

Proceeding through boarding we lost our water without the forethought to drink any and both discovered we were quite thirsty. Following the procession to a very hot tarmac level room we were relieved to find a dispensing machine that we had just enough coin to operate. Our feeling of relief was crushed however when the machine took our coins and gave us nothing in return. I’ll bet it was a Ryan Air franchise.

Ryan air in flight service is like low brow convenience store run by the Demtel man. I asked for water and was asked would I be having cappuccino with that. They explained that we could not smoke on board and tried to flog us their own smokeless cigarettes and most outrageous of all came down the isle selling Scratchies. People were buying them too and I had to wonder what went on in the heads of people who were thus testing their luck on a Ryan Air flight but more of that later.

Shannon Airport was rural and unpopulated it seemed by any other than those on our flight. After collecting our baggage we went looking for a cash machine and failing in this pursuit found a money changer by which time we were possibly the only ones left in the terminal. She sold us some Euros and in answer to our query about where to catch the coach to Galway she began to point and then said “that’s it there going past, if you hurry you might catch it”. Lucky there were for once no crowds as we two lumbering tanks attempted to run and the driver waited as we dragged luggage on board and clumsily negotiated his price.

Travelling is a chore which is enjoyable in recollection but often quite stressful at the time. It was a great relief to find our hostel only a short walk from the bus terminus and there to be greeted by a friendly young lass from Perth with the prettiest Irish Brogue. That’s Perth Western Australia by the way, obviously the Irish accent is catchy.