Tag Archive for 'flying'
Flying is fun. Dublin is fun. Fairs are fun. Catching a quick flight from Bristol to Dublin to go to the fair should be fun.
So here we are cruising at 60mph at an altitude of 6ft along the M4. In a coach. Towards Heathrow. Totally the opposite direction to Dublin.
You see Bristol airport have been spending their Christmas money (�17m of it) resurfacing their runway. With slippery tarmac.
easyJet cancelled their flights out of Bristol saying they were concerned about safety. Now the other airlines have followed suit.
It’s a nice coach though. The driver’s said he’ll put it on autopilot and come around with the duty-free soon. I half suspect he might be serious. But for now he remains safely in the front seat driving us through the fog towards Heathrow.
Fog. Heathrow. Oh crap.
And don’t anybody dare mention luggage mountain.
Ireland is known for a lot of things: leprechauns, green objects and friendly people to name just tree (plus, as we discovered this weekend, it’s the land where lifts on the lowest floor of buildings only have down buttons and the ground floor is labelled �-1� instead of �G�). But say Ireland to most people and thrill rides and rollercoasters will not immediately spring to mind. Why then, in the first few days of the new year, would 18 coaster enthusiasts congregate in Dublin? Well two of them live there, 15 were there to laugh at my driving skills and one was me. Q.E.D.
Then of course there is Funderland, a fair held annually at the RDS in Dublin. That was the principal excuse for the trip, but it was more about having an out-of-season meetup.
The weekend started for me on Friday afternoon at Heathrow Terminal 1 waiting for my flight to Dublin. Having found out the gates Air Lingus flights leave from, I now realise why my tickets were so cheap: Gates 80-90 are about the longest walk you can have from the departures hall. We left from Gate 88 - one short of Gate 90 (who stole Gate 89?).
A nice view of the sunset at 32,000ftAfter arriving at the hotel and Tom trying to convince the receptionist that he really did exist and that his name wasn’t Adrianne, we met up with the majority of the group for a meal at
Luigi Malones.
Huge pizzas … 
… and a small snack 
Look: George is wearing glasses We spent Saturday morning karting before moving onto the fair in the afternoon. I could perhaps say I didn’t do particularly well at that, but at least I didn’t come last in the quarters, semi-finals or final. It seems that if you manage to come last out of 18, you don’t make it past the first round. I think I’ve done a great service to you lot though - just read everybody else’s trip reports and you’ll never be short of any slow driver jokes or cheeky comments about picking up some groceries on the way round the track.
Look at those maniacs! I bet they aren’t even looking in their mirrors. After a quick shower, we all headed off to the fair. Funderland was much more impressive than I’d thought it would be. In addition to a host of rides inside the RDS, four lurked outside too: an observation wheel, a
spinning wild mouse, a log flume (yes in January, yes cold, yes bizarre choice) and Star Flyer.Star Flyer is the equivalent of a tiny portion of spaghetti on Ecstasy: thin and stringy, quickly finished, very high, and generally a very strange concept. Everybody’s seen wave swingers (nee chair-o-planes). Everybody’s seen drop towers. With Star Flyer, both can be seen without the need to adjust your field of view.
Star Flyer Star Flyer provided
Richard,
Tom and
Malcolm with an opportunity to play their new favourite game which they learnt
last year called
find a ride that keeps riders high up for a nice long time that you don’t think James will like and then stick him on it regardless of any protestations that he tries to issue forth. You can guess where I ended up.Oddly, I found I did actually enjoy the ride (I even relaxed my grip for all of 1 1/2 seconds), and was disappointed when we returned from the lofty heights. As everybody else has said, the ride cycle was far too short - even for me. Would I ride Star Flyer again? Yes, but don’t tell anybody or I’ll end up on something worse.
Outside the fair in the cool Dublin air 
A blurry combination of Richard’s fingers, Andrew and Richard 
I don’t think this even needs a caption More entertainment was waiting inside with a mixture of Irish-owned rides and rides that had been brought over especially from Germany, home of the legendary fairground thrill machines. A highlight among all of them was a Huss Booster which Tom was very keen on getting everybody to ride. It’s quite difficult to explain the ride, but luckily master-of-the-household-appliance-analogy Mr Marr managed to come up with the amazingly accurate comparison of sitting inside a washing machine attached to the end of a bungee chord. All I can add is that the washing machine was on the fast spin cycle.Other rides on offer included an insanely fast Matterhorn (but I’d have liked a longer ride cycle like the one I rode
in Greece), a massively fun Polyps called Power Wave, and a smooth but ugly Mr Blobby-esque coloured Pinfari ZL42 looping coaster named
Speed Loop.
Speed Loop barely fitted into the building 
We enjoyed the matterhorn … 
… even if somebody else didn’t The final ride of the day was on Take Off. If you’ve never seen one think spinning plus more spinning vertically. Basically, a G-machine. Those in the know said how much more intensely it was being run than on the German fair circuit. Extremely intense, extremely extreme. Extremely fun. Maybe not something I could ride many times in a day, but definitely something I want to ride again.
Expecting Johnny Vaughn to appear at any minute We spent the early part of Saturday evening at an Asian restaurant with a difference: Yes, not every restaurant has the likes of Taz (see below). The other, only slightly less remarkable difference was the cooking. Rather than meals appearing from the back kitchen, the food was prepared right on our table by a chef-come-entertainer-come-magician. It’s a unique experience and I don’t think you can get your food more freshly cooked!
Dining experience 
Cooking with fire 
Andy ordered ice cream for grown-ups The karting and fair, together with a couple of excellent meals and a lot of miscellaneous fun made this a great weekend away. A lot of thanks must go to Richard for organising the whole thing (and organising us lot cannot be particularly easy!) and also to the marketing manager at Funderland who generously provided us all with enough free ride tickets to cover everything we wanted to do. Even if it wasn’t for riding for free, I’d still be talking highly of Funderland. The fair was very well organised with a good atmosphere inside and some great rides mostly being run on long programs.
An unusual name for an airport cafe
Leaving on a jet plane… If
Aer Lingus would let me, I’d already be buying my plane ticket to return back next year.
This morning’s checkout was awful. Remember how we’d been assured that everything was fine and the university had sent through credit card details to the hotel to pay in advance? Well, sure enough they’d sent through the details, but the hotel had not taken the money in advance (purely guessing, but the finance people probably never told them to). Anyway, after much deliberation, they agree to process the payment using those card details, but the credit card machine was having none of it. They tried several times, but it kept coming back saying that the payment was not authorised. After all the hassle of organising for the hotel payment and all the forms we had to fill in, the end result was we ended up having to pay with our own credit cards. Lucky I brought mine with me, or I’d probably be stuck at the hotel right now. At the moment I’m so annoyed. Anyway, we won’t let it spoil the rest of our trip…
We left the hotel at about midday and took a taxi to the airport for our 1335 flight. We probably shouldn’t have been surprised that the plane was late, considering it was an Olympic Airlines flight, and didn’t take off until 1410. This had a knock-on effect when we reached Athens, meaning we had to wait ages for our baggage.
Nick’s father Panos met us at the airport and drove us to their house a few kilometres outside Athens. Nick’s mum Katerina was waiting to greet us with some very welcome and delicious mousaka. Time for a bit of a rest now, in preparation for what promises to be an interesting evening.
We arrived on the beautiful island of Samos a few hours ago (you’d have thought the “beautiful island of” prefix was actually part of the island’s name it’s used so much). Was the flight over simple? Of course not!
I met Nick, Ann and Panos at Athens airport as planned, and we checked in and arrived at the gate with plenty of time to spare (I had to leave my wonderful luggage trolley behind - boo hoo - it had been a good friend to me overnight :p). We boarded an airport bus ready to be taken to the plane.One of the women who had checked our boarding passes jumped on the bus and started shouting something in Greek. Of course I was none the wiser, but it seemed to really annoy the Greek-speakers. One old man went especially crazy, ranting and raving at the staff. A quick translation from Nick revealed our aircraft had “minor technical difficulties”.After waiting ages back in the airport, we finally flew over to the island. Not in the plane we were supposed to, but in a rather ancient Focker 50. This seemed much less stable in the air than the 767 from yesterday: it was much more fun. The landing was awesome, dropping hundreds of feet in what felt like a nose dive.
We arrived at the Doryssa Bay resort via a taxi ride from the tiny Samos airport. It was very quick to collect our luggage, although there was a moment of confusion: Luggage Belt 1 started up, so everybody went towards it. Greeks, I am discovering, love to be first. It doesn’t matter what they’re waiting for, just as long as they are first. Therefore, they all huddle around the beginning of the belt, eager to pounce on their suitcases before anybody else even realised they were there. The confusion ensued when Belt 1 stopped, creating a mad dash towards Belt 2 as that started. Of course, after a few seconds, that stopped and Belt 1 started again.
My hotel room is very nice, especially now I’ve figured out the air conditioning controls. Its room 218 on the first floor and quite large for one person. There’s a balcony with a fantastic view across to a big hill.
After dropping off our stuff, we had a quick meal at the poolside bar. Being awake for the last day and a half, I wasn’t exactly feeling a lot like eating or trying new experiences, so I settled for a hot dog. We popped into the resort’s mini shop for some bottles of water, then I retired to my room for a shower and some rest.
At 6pm I met Nick to go and get our conference registration sorted out. Along with the usual conference bag and book of proceedings, we were given a Pythagora’s Cup. This was designed by Pythagoras to ensure that everybody drank an equal amount. As long as you only fill you cup to the line, everything is fine. However, if you’re greedy and try to fill it further, the whole of your drink disappears through a hole in the bottom of the cup.
Briefly exploring the resort, we found a small coffee shop where we stopped for a Frappe. Luckily, that came in a standard glass rather than a Pythagora’s Cup, so I didn’t end up with wet legs.
Overall, the resort is very nice, set around a small Greek village. Unfortunately, while it’s nicely done, it’s all fake. A weird mix of theme park and Club 18-30. I imagine some people spend their entire holiday inside the resort without ever getting any feeling of true Samian life. We’re in no danger of that though, and we’re starting as we mean to go on. In a few minutes we’re going to the local town of Pythag�rio to find a nice taverna for dinner.
Well I managed to survive the night in the airport. Sometime between 6 and 7 Athens time, I realised the black wall I’d been sitting near wasn’t a black wall at all, but a huge window. It gave a great view of the sun rising, on what looks like quite a cloudy day.
Now its proper daylight I can see a huge mountain to the left. I’d take a picture, but I don’t fancy being arrested today.
Athens airport may have the most unpronounceable name of any airport in the world, but its bright and spotlessly clean. The only real downside is the air con: its coooollllddd!
A couple of hours ago I managed to grab a luggage trolley that I’m being very protective of: you’re supposed to pay 1 Euro to take one from a big rack, so I think I was lucky to find this one.
Flight to Samos in 3 hours!
Athens airport. Wow! Why didn’t anybody tell me about flying? I love it!
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Got to Heathrow, checked in and went through security with at least an hour and a half before the flight was due to take off. I sat around in the small waiting area and browsed in WH Smith until the gate was announced. I hadn’t realised there were far more shops and seats around the corner. Oh well, next time.
To gate 39 I went. 15 mins to get there? Pah! 5 mins more like! We then heard the flight was going to be delayed 20 mins to allow fifty passengers arriving on a late Edinburgh flight to join us.
It was then I looked out of the window at the plane and it dawned on me that I was actually going to fly! No more dreams. This time it was for real.
Take off was amazing! All I could think was “I’m flying - wow!” We quickly ascended and unfortunately the plane banked so all I could see were clouds. Still, at least I was flying.
Soon after came a bit of turbulence. Wow! How cool is that? Shaking about and dropping through the clouds. I think its like riding an old wooden rollercoaster. I swear I got a couple of pops of airtime!Mealtime next, and I was once again impressed. Childish I know, but how cool is it to have everything in little pots and bags? As for content, a bread roll (in a bag - yeah baby!), smoked salmon, some tomatoey meaty stewy thing with potatoes green beans and carrots, and a pudding which reminded me of those tarts we used to have at school dinner.I had a good chat with the guy sitting next to me (Hi Jimmy - keep in touch!) He’s Canadian, part Italian and has just finished a degree in finance at Cambridge. Jimmy very kindly let me swap seats for landing so I could see out of the window properly. Athens looked spectacular, all lit up with its lights twinkling in the dark. If the city is this beautiful in the daytime, it will be awe-inspiring. I’m not sure whether I prefer taking off or landing. It was great!
Exiting the plane, my first smell of Greece was … cigarette smoke! With the number of Greeks I know, I should have guessed.
After a bloke in a glass box (David Blaine?) gave my passport a seemingly uninterested cursory glance, we were at the luggage belt. I’d been led to believe this would be a nightmare, being infamous even to non-flyers. Actually it was quite mesmerising watching the bags drift past. I had to laugh at some of my fellow passengers displaying the typical Greek temperament, impatient to the highest degree.
After bidding farewell to Jimmy I headed out of the exit, then right back inside to the departures lounge. I’d wondered whether to sit outside for a bit - the air was beautifully warm - but decided against it, not sure how safe it would be falling asleep outside with all my luggage in tow.
So here I am, sitting on the floor in Athens airport. Apologies if this isn’t as lucid as normal, but I’m writing this using predictive text on my mobile at 3:50am Greek time (1:50am BST). A very friendly security guard just walked past waking everybody up. Apparently they don’t like you sleeping in the airport. Nobody seemed to mind though, probably helped by her being very pretty. Yep, attractive female security guards - I’m loving Greece!
Oh, and for safety reasons baggage trolleys are not allowed on the escalators, you are not permitted to park outside the terminal, illegally parked vehicles will be removed, and you can only smoke in the designated areas. (The announcements are very loud, very regular and very repetitive!)