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I´ve gone on holiday by mistake

Started by 23 Daves, December 23, 2010, 05:46:40 PM

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23 Daves

Right, it´s like this... my wife and I decided back in July that we´d book a holiday to Barcelona over Christmas.  By booking so far in advance we´d save on flight costs, and also my wife felt sure that whilst she was unemployed, she´d at least have a job by December, right?  Well that was our first assumption, and our first mistake. 

Anyway, with the journey already booked long in advance, we boarded the flight at Gatwick yesterday evening, and at some point during the course of the journey, she lost her passport on the plane.  Nobody is sure when, and nobody is sure what happened to it afterwards, but it seems it got handed in to the authorities at Barcelona airport, who then lost it again themselves before they were able to get it back to her.  This is about all I managed to glean from the short, shrugging Spanish officer in front of me, anyway.  Subsequently, she was detained by the police and then deported on the next available flight back to Britain, leaving me here by myself potentially for the whole of Christmas.

Weighing up my options -  and the fact that my wife´s bag had all my reading material in it, leaving me stranded in a practically closed down city by myself for Christmas Day and Boxing Day with only Spanish television for company - I changed my flight to come home by Easyjet tomorrow night.  Seventy quid fee, which a bit eye-watering at the moment, but I´ll just live off cream crackers for the next week or so if that´s what it takes.

I´m sure we´ve had a thread on this already, but have any of you ever had ridiculous holiday experiences?  Or does this one take the biscuit?  (Don´t think there´s much hope of a refund on the accommodation, either...)

hpmons

Its not a horror story, but I'm going on holiday tomorrow to Greece to see my dad...And I'm not really interested in going.  I keep going to Greece to see him just because its something to do.  I could have just chilled with The Boy over Christmas instead...

Famous Mortimer

Just a really bad flight coming back from the USA once. I'd given up my nice window seat so a couple could sit next to each other, and was sat, uncomfortable, from Chicago to Manchester. Or, rather, from Chicago to about a third of the way across the Atlantic. There came over the intercom "is there a doctor on board?" (amazingly, there was) and all we saw was lots of airline stewards milling round a certain area.

After about ten minutes more of this, the pilot said "sorry, we've had a medical emergency and we're going to have to turn round". I'm big and the seats aren't, so three hours in and I'm already struggling...well, I got to see Newfoundland in the middle of the night (it was, surprisingly, not terribly exciting) out of a plane window, and sit in largely the same crappy uncomfortable position for 11 hours. And it turns out the person responsible for the turning-around had just drunk too much, fell over and hit her head. I alleviated my own aches by wondering just what the person in question was going to do the next day when they woke up in a provincial Canadian airport with no luggage.

ThickAndCreamy

Quote from: hpmons on December 23, 2010, 05:59:26 PM
Its not a horror story, but I'm going on holiday tomorrow to Greece to see my dad...And I'm not really interested in going.  I keep going to Greece to see him just because its something to do.  I could have just chilled with The Boy over Christmas instead...
I spent a whole week a month back with family in Bulgaria where no one speaks English and so the only people I can talk to are my parents, whom I generally have very little in common with.

I spent hours at a time staring at walls, at food, at drinks, just trying to think anything but... rural Bulgaria's pretty shitty during winter, isn't it?

It was like a trap, with the only benefit being seeing family I haven't seen in many years. Every night getting drunk in silence in horribly smoky and depressing restaurants, mourning the loss of enjoyment in life. God that shit was bad, we spent 5 hours at a coffee house once, doing absolutely nothing except sporadic games of rummy in which no one cared who won, or what was happening, just that we could pretend we weren't there.

I try and ignore the majority of my family here enough, but when you're with them for 7 days, they don't speak English and you have no escape, it turns horrendously depressing far too quickly.

Johnny Yesno

Shit! That's bad luck, Daves. I like how the thing that swung your decision to come back was a lack of reading material, though. :D

MALCOLM

For "reading material" read "anal dildo's and poppers"

djtrees

I went on holiday to Ireland a few years ago with the ill gotten gains of my dead Grandad. I think I got about £40, just enough for a RyanAir flight to Cork. I then decided that I was going to get a bus round that part of the world and camp wherever I found myself. A great plan. I had been doing some work for the few weeks before hand so had a fair bit of money in the bank, however when I got to stupid Ireland I found out that they had all gone Chip and Pin crazy. I only had a trampy non Chippy or Pinny card as I am terrible with money and therefore couldn't get money out of cash machines, or get cashback or transfer money to myself. This mean that I spent several hours traipsing round Cork attempting to find somewhere that would give me some of my fucking money. In the end I had to phone my Mother to get her to Western Union me some money to a Post Office, I only asked for the bare minimum so that it wouldn't cost loads, and so as not to tap my Mum up for millions of pounds.

It was all eventually sorted out though and I had an odd time wandering around the arse end of Ireland doing very little.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

QuoteI only had a trampy non Chippy or Pinny card as I am terrible with money and therefore couldn't get money out of cash machines, or get cashback or transfer money to myself

They still had pin numbers before chip and pin- did you not know your own pin number?

Oh and if you had your passport and your card you could've accessed the money anywhere (that looked like a bank).

djtrees

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on December 23, 2010, 08:45:05 PM
They still had pin numbers before chip and pin- did you not know your own pin number?

Oh and if you had your passport and your card you could've accessed the money anywhere (that looked like a bank).

Ahh would that I could Shoulders? I did have my pin number but the stupid Oirish banks where one step ahead and had way more advanced technology than I had in my "Babies First Bank Card" that I was wielding. Also tried every bank in Cork with a passport and aforementioned bank card with no joy. I think it was the rubbishness of my bank card that gave me jip.

Tenerife, a lads holiday. Got there, had a night out, realized it wasn't too different to your average boozy Friday Night in the city, felt disenchanted, booked a flight home the next day. Cost me three hundred quid. Got a taxi from Gatwick to home when I arrived back in the UK, cost me another two hundred quid.

ThickAndCreamy

Why didn't you stay and treat it as what it was, surely it would have cost about the same amount?

Although I've never been on a lads holiday like that before, we choose festivals and national parks instead. Surely beforehand you should have realised what it would be like?

Pepotamo1985

Quote from: MALCOLM on December 23, 2010, 06:47:44 PM
For "reading material" read "anal dildo's and poppers"

Are you actually capable of posting anything remotely funny, interesting, clever or pertinent ever, you fucking chump?

My girlfriend's attempted Pre-Xmas get away to New York this very year strikes me as the only palpable example of this, my own have generally been without hitch somewhat uselessly in regard to this thread. In the interests of turning CaB into the Daily Mail Online comments section, it's to do with snow. and there's some bitching about health & safety protocol too.

Anyway, as implied by the preamble, L.Pep was on her way with newly minted extended step family to NYC last Sat. She texted me to say that, although chronic snow fall had grounded BA flights, Virgin was still flying. Logically, that sounded ludicrous, but I said nothing. She boarded the plane roughly on time, and waited. And waited. 8 hours later...the flight was still grounded, with everyone on it. They had not been fed or offered drinks, bar two glasses of water. They were let off, but not before being informed that they would not be let back into the terminal because of health and safety legislation. Oh, and that all local hotels were fully booked. Naturally, all the roads were completely jammed, and fucked by snow anyway. Tubes weren't running either, so they had to wait a further 4 hours before they got home. Naturally, the hotels and tickets for various amusing diversions they'd booked were all a lost cause, but still, their expedia travel insurance should get their flight money refunded, yeah? Well, no actually. Oh, and they're not getting their luggage back until the new year.

23 Daves

Quote from: Johnny Yesno on December 23, 2010, 06:38:46 PM
Shit! That's bad luck, Daves. I like how the thing that swung your decision to come back was a lack of reading material, though. :D

A lie, as it turns out!  Some American tourists had kindly left behind a copy of a book in my room.  Called "Girls in Trucks",  it was a chick-lit novel about the problems gals in the South have with romance.  I actually read the bloody thing, and if nothing else has come out of this trip, I can now quite comfortably say that it is the worst novel I have ever come across - no regard for structure or character development at all, just a winding series of self-obsessed, whiny anecdotes spun out across a few hundred pages.  Characters come and go without explanation, time jumps without warning, boyfriends are lost without any explanations given as to how.  At one point I actually wondered if the author was trying to be experimental it was so poorly written, but the I realised that there aren't many left-field pieces of work out there called "Girls in Trucks".  The badness of it, and the fact that it's supposedly a best-seller in the US, filled me with renewed hope and optimism for my own writing career.

Anyway, I stayed a couple of days and obviously Barcelona is a really nice city to be in at this time of year, and I'd never been before - so I took in the Dali museum (he did create a lot of shit in his later life actually, didn't he?), the coast, the sunshine, a couple of art galleries and admired the fact that Barcelonians seem to have a very fecal obsessed Christmas, with statues of shitting Santas and giant defecating Christmas logs everywhere.  This can only have been where the idea of "Mr Hanky The Christmas Poo" came from. 

My wife, on the other hand, was sent to a cell with some illegal immigrants for the night before being deported the next day.  Not so much fun for her...

falafel

Shame you didn't get to go to the Miró gallery though. What was the reasoning behind the deportation if they found her passport?

23 Daves

Quote from: falafel on December 25, 2010, 02:19:37 PM
Shame you didn't get to go to the Miró gallery though. What was the reasoning behind the deportation if they found her passport?

From the few bits of information we've managed to glean, here's how it worked:

1. Wife lost passport on plane
2. Easyjet cabin crew found the passport, and passed it on to officials at Barcelona airport
3. Officials at Barcelona airport somehow lost the passport again in the process of returning it to her

To be honest, as soon as the customs officer at Barcelona Airport shrugged and said it was "nothing to worry about" and casually began to phone a few people around between periods of staring into the middle distance, that's precisely when I began to worry. 

Quote from: ThickAndCreamy on December 23, 2010, 11:42:28 PM
Why didn't you stay and treat it as what it was, surely it would have cost about the same amount?

Although I've never been on a lads holiday like that before, we choose festivals and national parks instead. Surely beforehand you should have realised what it would be like?

Back then I had a habit of running away from my problems.

I wasn't too sure, I mean I had an idea about lads holidays from watching Prickly Heat and Ibiza Uncovered on Sky One back in the day, but part of me assumed that the mates I went with would like to experience other things that the island had to offer, other then jelly shots and Full English Breakfasts.

falafel

Quote from: 23 Daves on December 25, 2010, 02:40:37 PM
From the few bits of information we've managed to glean, here's how it worked:

1. Wife lost passport on plane
2. Easyjet cabin crew found the passport, and passed it on to officials at Barcelona airport
3. Officials at Barcelona airport somehow lost the passport again in the process of returning it to her

To be honest, as soon as the customs officer at Barcelona Airport shrugged and said it was "nothing to worry about" and casually began to phone a few people around between periods of staring into the middle distance, that's precisely when I began to worry.

What a useless shower of bastards. Still, better luck next time. Worth a reboot just for the Sagrada Familia. Alternatively try Copenhagen next year - it's lovely.

Oh, I once went to the wrong airport en route to the New York Marathon. Taxi from Gatwick to Heathrow was £80. Arrived 10 minutes after gate closed but rode the goodwill of some Virgin Atlantic staff to get on the flight anyway. That was totally ridiculous and entirely my fault.

The Duck Man

Quote from: 23 Daves on December 25, 2010, 01:39:34 PMadmired the fact that Barcelonians seem to have a very fecal obsessed Christmas, with statues of shitting Santas and giant defecating Christmas logs everywhere.  This can only have been where the idea of "Mr Hanky The Christmas Poo" came from.
A Catalan tradition, apparently. The shitting Santas are an example of "caganers", which are often in the form of celebrities, the log "Caga Tios" a log that shits every Christmas for the children.

Some quotes from the article:
Quote
"It's typical of Catalonia. Each house buys one for Christmas," explains Natxo with a smile and a shrug as he shops. "I don't know why (we do it), it's just a tradition."
Quote"Not at all. It was the only thing the little shepherd boy had to give the Baby Jesus. So it's not at all disrespectful, it's a great gift."
Quote"I am not able to answer this question," muses Mr Lliteras, seemingly puzzled.

"But it's something peculiar to here and we are proud of it. It's not a problem."
I love how they can't really account for why they have a 200 year tradition of putting small shitting statues in the back of nativity scenes.


23 Daves

Quote from: falafel on December 26, 2010, 12:02:04 AM
What a useless shower of bastards. Still, better luck next time.

Yes, but... one of the main rules of travelling is "don't lose your passport, and check you've definitely got it before you leave the plane", and without evoking Lucas and Walliams styled national stereotypes, I'd say this becomes especially true if you're heading to countries which are rather more laidback in the way they organise things.  It shouldn't have turned out the way that it did, but I'm not in any great hurry to blame Easyjet or Barcelona Airport completely for it all (especially as Easyjet only have a very small window to clean the plane out and prepare it for the next flight). 

Immigration officials at Gatwick actually had the option to deport my wife back to Canada since she has a Canadian passport attached to a British marriage visa, but they chose not to exercise it... so this could have got a lot worse than it did!  Apparently for most of the flight back, she had to listen to some Easyjet employee waffling on about how she'd "definitely be deported back to Canada".  I'm not too sure why she thought telling her that throughout a two hour flight constituted good customer service, but who knows?  So if I'd like anybody to be poked in the eye with a stick, it's that air hostess for stressing her out needlessly.  The officials at Gatwick gave her tea and biscuits and were apparently really nice about it all.

Quote from: The Duck Man on December 26, 2010, 12:05:36 AM
I love how they can't really account for why they have a 200 year tradition of putting small shitting statues in the back of nativity scenes.

What reasons do you need?  I think anyone who even bothers to ask them why they do it is daft.  While I was there, everyone was laughing away at it, even though it's clearly a very ancient joke there by now.  I bonded with an elderly Spanish man there who couldn't speak a word of English, but wanted me to take a photo of him stood next to the shitting Santa with a proud expression on his face. 


Zetetic

So, to be clear, she's not an EU citizen? I was still under the impression that flying within the Schengen Zone, unless you're an immigrant to the EU at the very least, you only needed Photo ID. Am I utterly wrong?

Edit: Actually what I'm utterly wrong about of course is the UK being in the Schengen Zone...

MALCOLM

Quote from: Pepotamo1985 on December 24, 2010, 01:21:59 AM
Are you actually capable of posting anything remotely funny, interesting, clever or pertinent ever, you fucking chump?

I love how much I've gotten under your skin :)

Quote from: Pepotamo1985 on December 24, 2010, 01:21:59 AM
My girlfriend's attempted Pre-Xmas get away to New York this very year strikes me as the only palpable example of this, my own have generally been without hitch somewhat uselessly in regard to this thread. In the interests of turning CaB into the Daily Mail Online comments section, it's to do with snow. and there's some bitching about health & safety protocol too.

Anyway, as implied by the preamble, L.Pep was on her way with newly minted extended step family to NYC last Sat. She texted me to say that, although chronic snow fall had grounded BA flights, Virgin was still flying. Logically, that sounded ludicrous, but I said nothing. She boarded the plane roughly on time, and waited. And waited. 8 hours later...the flight was still grounded, with everyone on it. They had not been fed or offered drinks, bar two glasses of water. They were let off, but not before being informed that they would not be let back into the terminal because of health and safety legislation. Oh, and that all local hotels were fully booked. Naturally, all the roads were completely jammed, and fucked by snow anyway. Tubes weren't running either, so they had to wait a further 4 hours before they got home. Naturally, the hotels and tickets for various amusing diversions they'd booked were all a lost cause, but still, their expedia travel insurance should get their flight money refunded, yeah? Well, no actually. Oh, and they're not getting their luggage back until the new year.

Boo fucking hoo

Pepotamo1985

Ha, you wish Malcolm. I was just bewildered that you stumbled into a thread to contribute such a wanker missive, but still, you're a massive wanker, so we shouldn't expect anything less I guess.

Seriously Malco, you're a 34 year old Tory...what are you doing desperately trying to ingratiate yourself with a comedy forum?

quadraspazzed

Cyprus. March 2009. Off-Season. Cold. Wet. Empty. Left mobile in my brother's car in Ireland = €220 hotel phone bill. Depressing as hell.

I was supposed to be in Gaza.

Lord Mandrake

One morning in Cancun, evil hangover, we hired power boats , the controls of which were left unexplained. Myself and co-pilot vomiting heavily as I tried to navigate mangroves. Spot of scuba diving, beautiful, 2nd largest reef in the world. Fascinating but when we surface the tropical storm clouds have gathered. Rain that really hurts and visibility zero, my friend panicking the waves tossing the flimsy vessel about, totally clueless. I wrapped a towel around my head and cursed the gods and by the time we eventually reached dry land I was drenched in my own adrenaline. It was a potentially very dangerous situation but I had fucking loved it.

Got into a fight with some locals in Antiquoa near Malaga once and got stabbed in the thumb and a front tooth knocked out. My ex picked me up from the hospital, I had been put in a wheelchair and my white Cuban shirt and linen trousers were caked in my own blood but I was in good spirits quite literally having finished most of a bottle of rum and lost a lot of blood. The nurses had thought that I was quite mad as I cackled whilst they sewed up my thumb but it was something about being in a wheelchair that I found hilarious.

hpmons

I'm still on holiday.  That is, I'm still working my way through Arrested Development (again), but in a different country.  Haven't even got in a fight with anyone, just...sat around.

landsberger

I spent Easter weekend in Bratislava on a promise, and she frakked off on day 2, never to be seen again. Like most places, everything was closed, and indeed so was everything in Vienna, where I spent £20 going there and back to - at least the McDo's at the West station was open. I had further adventures immediately prior to, and after that weekend - a mad dash without tube tickets across Budapest to catch a train to Belgrade - so it wasn't a wholly wasted holiday