2 Idiots abroad...

DAY ONE:

At a drunken New Years Eve party Laura and I discussed going on holiday, gushing what a wonderful idea it would be thanks in part to all of the alcohol in our system. The idea was actually a good one, I could do with a holiday, my last one had been last year and my amazing trip to see Molly in New Orleans then Jared in New Jersey. However the more excited Laura got the more filled with trepidation I became, because I wasn’t sure I was even going to be in England, I was offered a job in Connecticut for the summer, and seeing as that is where Jared lives and the job was a dream job, I thought I was going to go for it. But then real life and responsibilities got I the way and I decided to, for once, do the responsible thing and not be flighty. However in doing that, I took away an entire summer of being together with Jared and that was a bit of a kick in the teeth. So instead I thought that I would take a holiday to go and see him, we already had plans for later in the year, but I didn’t want to wait so long and was planning for 2 trips. And then I thought about how excited Laura had been and thought, no, I need a girls holiday, a chance to get away from it all, have some quality girlie time and relax, no stress. So I went and told Laura, and three weeks before we jetted off, we went and booked a holiday.







** I swear, I packed like 20 pairs of knickers **






We left England and it was a gorgeous sunshine filled day, Laura came to my house and we were both dressed like the jet-set girls that we are. I said my goodbyes to my family and Lau and I cheered and hugged on my front garden (I’m almost positive that my neighbours think I am a basket case) excited that our holiday was here at last. Lau drove us just down the road to her Dads house, he and his girlfriend were going to drive us to the airport, as we were climbing out of her car, I was telling Lau about the trouble I had packing. “I have no control over how much I pack. I swear I packed like 20 pairs of knickers!”


“20 pairs?!” A male voice exclaimed and my head whipped up, standing in the doorway was Lau’s bemused looking father, who I was just now meeting for the very first time. Now because I often make a complete fool of myself I don’t get embarrassed too easily, so I just laughed it off the best that I could, thankfully Lau’s dad has a great sense of humour so a potentially humiliating moment was defused.


Whilst at her house Lau’s dad wondered at my packing prowess, my suitcase was bigger than Lau’s and also much, much lighter. (We later found out this was because I apparently hadn’t packed anything that I needed).


The drive to the airport was fine, thankfully we didn’t get stuck in any traffic and the journey was filled with pleasant chatter and excitement from Lau and I.


And then our holiday officially began. Now I love airports, but I absolutely loathe planes, it’s quite the contradiction. The last couple of times I have flown, I have flown alone so checking in and going through security with someone was a novel experience.


The trouble here is that I am quite sarcastic and a smartass at the best of times, and like a naughty child when I have an audience I only become more precocious, you have to be really careful with what you say when you go through security you aren’t allowed to say certain words like ‘terrorist’ ‘bomb’ or ‘drugs’ and when I know that I can’t say something I have the compulsion to say it all the more, it’s like a form of tourettes.


I must look so suspicious because I make such a concentrated effort not to say something inappropriate or something that will get me either arrested or banned from flying.


Lau went through the scanner first and it went off and the security woman called her over – this woman was tiny, I wondered why someone so little would want a security officer job. She asked Lau how old she was (possibly because baby faced Laura looks under 18 and the woman didn’t want to face a lawsuit for feeling up a minor) Lau promptly forgot that she was 21 and attracted more suspicion and I did what any good friend would do, I laughed.


As I walked through the scanner towards the absolutely lush security man the alarm went off. I realised too late that my headband was made of metal and instead of getting me to take off the headband and walk through again, I had to be felt up. I must say I was quite looking forward to it, the man was absolutely gorgeous. However I had to wait for the pixie woman. As I said earlier, I travel a lot by myself, so I often get patted down at the airport, apparently I have the look of a drug mule, despite this fact this was the most thorough public exam I have ever had, I would have appreciated her buying me dinner first. I was half expecting her to snap on some latex gloves. And I was sad to realise that was the most action I was going to see all holiday.


After our ordeal we headed straight to the food court because it was 3 o’clock and I hadn’t eaten all day, as we sit in ‘Spoons I peruse the menu and am horrified by the markup I see in prices, at the end of the day it is still a dirty Wetherspoons and they charged us £1.60 for cheese on our chips!!


As we are sitting waiting for our stupidly expensive bowl of chips (I was expecting caviar to arrive on the side for those prices) I look down at our knife and fork and am transported back to a time when I served up plastic food, because our cutlery was the metal version of the little plastic utensils I served my plastic food up with. I understand that they don’t want dangerous weapons to be taken on to a plane, but I am pretty confident I could do more harm with my mascara wand than with a butter knife.


After a few hours of wandering around we finally get a gate number and make our way to the plane, I’m not a fan of flying but being with Lau made me much less scared, as did the fact that we were sitting next to each other (I refused to pay money just so they’d seat us together). As we are waiting at the gate for them to take our boarding passes and check our passports a man picks up his phone and asks “Are you doing the fuel for the Thomson 4778?” And Lau turns to me and says “I hope so.” That then prompted me to do my surprised loud laugh and stood giggling whilst everyone else looked at us in bewilderment.


We take some pictures and finally get on the plane, I have a window seat (and it has to be said, despite the fact that I hate, hate, hate flying, I do indeed love having the window seat) and we’re sitting over the wing, which Lau tells me is the safest part of plane, I’ll believe her because it sounds reassuring to me.


The flight is only 4 hours and we declined the option of getting a meal because we weren’t prepared to pay £12 for a meal that is just terrible. We’d gotten snacks at the airport instead, Lau had gone into a little restaurant to get a roll for the plane and a man just ahead of us, had purchased some hot food and managed to drop it all down himself. His lovely white shirt was covered in gravy. My karma is terrible right now because I will admit it, I laughed. I laughed, hard. I had to turn my back as I tried desperately to stifle my giggles and Lau was the same. She kept gasping “gravy on his shirt!” over and over again and I seriously thought I may asphyxiate from lack of oxygen.


Back on the plane, I was by the window with Lau next to me, and she had a nice young woman around my age next to her, so she was pleased that it wasn’t some freak. Lau turns to the woman “just to let you know we’ve got Wotsits” and the woman replied with “That’s ok, I like Wotsits.” I hope she realises we were just being polite and letting her know we had stinky crisps and we weren’t offering to share. I don’t share Wotsits.


About halfway through the journey Laura stirs and is starting to feel a little nauseous, she gets travel sick and I’m worried, I tell her to drink some water and maybe eat something, so reaches her bag and pulls out her Wotsits which currently are inflated and look like they’re about to explode. We laugh again for a long time, but then I get to thinking, if a pressurised cabin does that to a pack of Wotsits what the hell is it doing to our bodies?


I am used to flying long-haul, I’ve only ever really travelled long-haul and so I expect a little more leg room, a television in the back of the headrest, multiple channels, complimentary drinks and meal. However in a package holiday you get crammed in seats, rude pushy airline staff, overpriced beverages, a few small screens placed on the aisle. I wouldn’t recommend it, but it comes as part of the deal, you just have to suck it up.


Before too long we arrive in Tenerife, it’s night time by this point and I loved looking out of the window to see the twinkling lights below. The landing is relatively smooth and before we know it we’re all shuffling off the plane like drunken zombies. I have 35 inch legs, having them crammed into what feels like a 10 inch gap is not pleasant for four hours, and I have lost most of the feeling in my legs. As we get off the plane we spot a girl who we first noticed back in Gatwick, we named her ‘socks’ she was a larger young lady in her mid-twenties who had decided her comfortable flight wear was to be a t-shirt, the shortest shorts I have ever seen (and they were tie-dye *shudder*) and knee high socks. Now my sister often wears knee high socks and looks just adorable but for starters this girl was too chubby for knee high socks, they were cutting into the soft flesh of her legs (the reason I don’t wear knee high socks) and secondly, they weren’t even cute socks, they looked like flight socks to me, so they were tight and they were dirty. The whole look was just like one giant no-no. This was the start of a game we played all holiday where people were given nicknames – none to flattering nicknames.


No-one checked our passports in Tenerife – I dread to think the amount of criminals that probably hideout there. We made our way to baggage reclaim, I was tired and excited and I was hoping they hadn’t lost our luggage. Really hoping.


They hadn’t ours came out relatively quickly too, and we walked out to get our taxi transfer, we were really excited that we would have someone standing there with a card with our name on it, but when we got out, there wasn’t anyone with a card. There was however a Thomson rep, so we went over to her. She checked our names, gave us a welcome pack, and grabbed a taxi driver to take us to our hotel.


We were staying in El Médano which is roughly ten minutes away from the airport, we didn’t want to have to get the mini-bus that would probably take us all around the houses, so we opted for a taxi, our taxi driver took us over to a minibus and Lau and I looked at one another and sighed, guess he didn’t get the memo and we would be waiting for other passengers after all.


We sat down and he put our bags in, and then we were off! We had an entire mini-bus to ourselves, it seemed a little bit excessive, but Lau and I were happy again.


The area we were driving into was beautiful, it reminded me of the harbour near our house, all new looking houses and apartments, all typical Spanish architecture, really beautiful. We arrive at our hotel in no time at all, and climb from the cab, there are two gentleman standing outside awaiting our arrival, it was gone midnight but no-one looked tired or put upon, they booked us in, checked our passports and put our all-inclusive bands on (they’re like hospital bracelets) they were a bronze and gold colour, Lau hated the colour I liked it, it was subtle I’d have hated a garish yellow or orange.


We were told we were in room 526 and away we went.


Our room was on the top floor and we had a junior suite – it was gorgeous, utterly gorgeous we had a huge bathroom, a double bed (2 singles pushed together) a wardrobe which separated the bedroom from the living area. A television, mini fridge, coffee table, chair and sofa, leading out onto a balcony, the balcony was beautiful a view of the stars, the mountains and the sea. Absolutely glorious.


Lau and I ran around ooh-ing and ahh-ing and taking pictures, then we got into bed and crashed out after a long day of travelling.