The Journey
Whilst not normally the bit to dwell on, our journey from home to Los Juncares was not without incident. From the participants:
William's version
The Official version
My version
We got up at 3.30am so I was quite tired and can’t remember much. It was a rushed start to airport as the plane left a 6.00am. The taxi driver got to our house at about 3.45am and we got to Bristol airport at around 4.50-5.00am. The airport was busy, which was surprising considering it was so early. Getting our suitcases into the suitcase place [baggage drop-off] took a long time as there was a very big queue. As we where going through security we were meant to be boarding our plane! So my mum ran to the plane to get it to not leave with out us. Me, my dad and Alice rushed through security and ran with the pram to the gate and made to the plane 25 minutes after the gate had close. I think if we had been 5 minutes later it would have left. My dad said it was the closest he had been to missing a plane. I was really scared we where going to miss it and have to wait a couple of days for the next plane to take us. Luckily we made it. We had separate seats on the plane so we had to find each other once it landed. The flight took 2-3 hours. We went passport control and got our suitcases and our rental car, and drove to our friend’s house. The last part of the drive was on the edge of a cliff road so that was a little freaky but we got to our house and it was all happy. We were in the pool just after lunchtime!
To some extent, the whole thing was my fault. We had the choice of a flight at 6am or a flight at about 5pm. The wisdom was that the 6am flight meant a) a quiet airport and b) that we’d be in the pool by lunchtime. It’s an hour from home to our local airport; we probably should have been there from about 4.30am but I couldn’t bring myself to get up any earlier than 3.30am. So as it was, we found ourselves in a very long security queue at 5.20am, which is just the time the gate was closing. An adult conference ensued. Liz was to run the departure gate, I was to inspire two tired children to get there as quickly as possible. Organised chaos ensued. The gate had closed by the time Liz arrived. There was pleading, some tears and very sympathetic ground-crew. The rest of the passengers had been on the place for 30mins by the time we took our seats, although we weren’t all that sure where William was on the plane when we took off. We were in the pool by lunchtime.