We Managed to Get There Without Any Extra Charges

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We didn’t know until we were at the final point of booking the holiday (as a package) that the flights were actually with Ryan Air. We weren’t happy and even less so after each of the emails badgering us about the baggage allowance, badgering us about the cabin allowance, badgering us about the online check-in and badgering us about printing the boarding pass. Failure on any of these would result in horrendous additional costs. I guess it’s fair dos in some ways, as by reminding you so much, it’s actually lowering the risk that they’d get more money out of you.

We got to the airport with plenty of time, after dropping our son off at his school as he was off on a school jolly with all his mates – hence our reason for going on this break ourselves. It was good job as we had to queue for the check-in or baggage drop or whatever it was. I, of course, had the same moan that I’ve had on every holiday in recent years on how pointless online check-in is when you have to queue at the check-in desks anyway once you arrive at the airport.

We were 0.3kg over on one of the bags, which got us worrying, but the lady on the check-in didn’t say anything.

It was a free-for-all to get on the flight, but we luckily managed to get all our seats together, which was a relief as we had a vision of us all sitting on our own, including our daughter.

During the flight various things were being sold, including food and drink as there were obviously no free meals on this flight. They were also selling smokeless cigarettes (whatever they are), which are apparently ok to smoke on Ryan Air flights.

There was a recorded fanfare played over the speakers when we landed announcing yet another Ryan Air on-time flight. It was all quite similar to the Americans all cheering when the planes landed on every flight we’ve been on to the States.

There was another long queue at the immigration and then we had to play guess-the-reclaim-area as there was no mention of our flight on any of the conveyer-belts. There was a taxi waiting for us (one of the advantages of getting a package for a change) and it only took about 20 minutes to get to our hotel. This is in an area of modern hotels about a mile away from the old city. I understand that that’s a good call, as the more central ones can get very noisy and a lot of the others are too far out to walk.

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