Thursday, April 22, 2010
What an ordeal!!
Finally back on Scottish turf!
We were in Marseille when we found out about the Volcanic activity affecting flights.
We were staying in a fantastic hotel (The Ibis) (it was a huge room and had Internet through the TV..awesome!). We were booked to fly home originally on Saturday.
When we visited the Ryanair website, it told us our flight was cancelled. Their website though, did not let us rebook on the next available flight. It was giving a message stating we needed to click on a link on the left hand side of the machine that did not exist. We tried on a couple of machines but had the same issue. I am pretty sure Ryanair would have been pushing for folk to just go with a refund instead of re-booking the flight..that way they could free up seats and sell those at a higher rate.
So, we naturally tried to contact a human being at Ryan air. Impossible.
Their customer services line was closed for the weekend! Can you believe that at a time where unprecedented levels of customers were needing to talk to representatives that they would not put on any staff over the weekend!
So, that left only one option and that was to go to the airport and wait in line to see a Ryan air staff member. That meant having to pay £16 to catch the airport bus.
They re booked us for Wednesday 21st but in Bordeaux as the next scheduled flights from Marseille were on Saturday 17th.
As we were paying £100 a night for the Ibis, we though we would head to Bordeaux. We loved it there. A nice city and the countryside was jaw dropping. Beautiful place..scenery, vineyards, chateaus etc. It cost us £150 on the train to get there.
We kept checking Ryan airs website and found that again, all flights were suspended.
At this stage, a friend of mine (Gordon Brown) said that if we went to Calais, he would get us back. He forgot to mention that it would cost us £205 on the train (s).
We got up on Wednesday (from now on known as wodwomwbb Wednesday of Doom where our money went bye byes) caught a TGV high speed train to Paris, a metro to another station £3.20), a TGV to Lillle, then another to Calais, got on a bus (£4)to the Ferry terminal where we waited in queue for 4 hours!
Finally got on the SeaFrance ferry and i must say the staff were outstanding. Outstandingly terrible. They had no idea what was going on. They even had trouble getting foot passengers off the ship and that process took another 40 minutes! There was no help or information on what to do when you get to the ferry terminal at the other end. You would think they would have announcements or signs advising folk of what their options were once they reached Dover.
Once we got to the terminal, guess what? No rental cars. No buses and no trains to take us home. Of course there were many taxis and a few limousines! And where was Gordon? I couldn't see him anywhere but he may have been on break.
We paid another £4 to get a bus to the St Pancras train station and then another £63 to catch a train to London.
We asked at the railway station if we could book in on the Edinburgh over-nighter. The girl told us we had to go to Euston station for that as she couldn't look it up on her computer (maybe they dont have networked computers in London town).
Euston was only 6 minutes walk away and we enjoyed the walk as wodwomwbb had been such a nice day.
When we got there and asked at customer services, we were told we would need to come back must before 11:50 p.m and talk to the station manager on the off chance that someone had cancelled on that train.
So, we then thought we would find some cheap accommodation. The first place we tried was solidly booked out. Then we tried a Premiere Inn and couldn't believe that they wanted to charge £150 a night.
For a Premiere Inn!!! We ended up staying at a youth hostel. Even that was £70 and it was very basic. A huge contrast between that and the Ibis in Marseille.
Anyway, we used their Internet cafe and booked in on the 6:15a.m train to Edinburgh this morning. The cost a mere £270!
But we are back now. Such a relief. There were many folk who did it harder than us. We heard stories of folk having huge 4 day journey's to get back. Coach after train after coach etc.
We heard stories of some folk being robbed by the rental car companies to the tune of £1500 for one days rental (heard two instances of this).
Felt really sorry for some heavily pregnant women waiting in that 4 hour queue at Calais for the ferry. Disgusting that they did not give them priority and left them to bake in the hot sun.
Well, that is the saga of our trip back from the South of France.
The holiday itself was fantastic though. The food was mediocre but the baked goods were amazing! The wine was great and the people were quite friendly. We had nice accommodation and did a heap of exploring (photos to follow).
We were in Marseille when we found out about the Volcanic activity affecting flights.
We were staying in a fantastic hotel (The Ibis) (it was a huge room and had Internet through the TV..awesome!). We were booked to fly home originally on Saturday.
When we visited the Ryanair website, it told us our flight was cancelled. Their website though, did not let us rebook on the next available flight. It was giving a message stating we needed to click on a link on the left hand side of the machine that did not exist. We tried on a couple of machines but had the same issue. I am pretty sure Ryanair would have been pushing for folk to just go with a refund instead of re-booking the flight..that way they could free up seats and sell those at a higher rate.
So, we naturally tried to contact a human being at Ryan air. Impossible.
Their customer services line was closed for the weekend! Can you believe that at a time where unprecedented levels of customers were needing to talk to representatives that they would not put on any staff over the weekend!
So, that left only one option and that was to go to the airport and wait in line to see a Ryan air staff member. That meant having to pay £16 to catch the airport bus.
They re booked us for Wednesday 21st but in Bordeaux as the next scheduled flights from Marseille were on Saturday 17th.
As we were paying £100 a night for the Ibis, we though we would head to Bordeaux. We loved it there. A nice city and the countryside was jaw dropping. Beautiful place..scenery, vineyards, chateaus etc. It cost us £150 on the train to get there.
We kept checking Ryan airs website and found that again, all flights were suspended.
At this stage, a friend of mine (Gordon Brown) said that if we went to Calais, he would get us back. He forgot to mention that it would cost us £205 on the train (s).
We got up on Wednesday (from now on known as wodwomwbb Wednesday of Doom where our money went bye byes) caught a TGV high speed train to Paris, a metro to another station £3.20), a TGV to Lillle, then another to Calais, got on a bus (£4)to the Ferry terminal where we waited in queue for 4 hours!
Finally got on the SeaFrance ferry and i must say the staff were outstanding. Outstandingly terrible. They had no idea what was going on. They even had trouble getting foot passengers off the ship and that process took another 40 minutes! There was no help or information on what to do when you get to the ferry terminal at the other end. You would think they would have announcements or signs advising folk of what their options were once they reached Dover.
Once we got to the terminal, guess what? No rental cars. No buses and no trains to take us home. Of course there were many taxis and a few limousines! And where was Gordon? I couldn't see him anywhere but he may have been on break.
We paid another £4 to get a bus to the St Pancras train station and then another £63 to catch a train to London.
We asked at the railway station if we could book in on the Edinburgh over-nighter. The girl told us we had to go to Euston station for that as she couldn't look it up on her computer (maybe they dont have networked computers in London town).
Euston was only 6 minutes walk away and we enjoyed the walk as wodwomwbb had been such a nice day.
When we got there and asked at customer services, we were told we would need to come back must before 11:50 p.m and talk to the station manager on the off chance that someone had cancelled on that train.
So, we then thought we would find some cheap accommodation. The first place we tried was solidly booked out. Then we tried a Premiere Inn and couldn't believe that they wanted to charge £150 a night.
For a Premiere Inn!!! We ended up staying at a youth hostel. Even that was £70 and it was very basic. A huge contrast between that and the Ibis in Marseille.
Anyway, we used their Internet cafe and booked in on the 6:15a.m train to Edinburgh this morning. The cost a mere £270!
But we are back now. Such a relief. There were many folk who did it harder than us. We heard stories of folk having huge 4 day journey's to get back. Coach after train after coach etc.
We heard stories of some folk being robbed by the rental car companies to the tune of £1500 for one days rental (heard two instances of this).
Felt really sorry for some heavily pregnant women waiting in that 4 hour queue at Calais for the ferry. Disgusting that they did not give them priority and left them to bake in the hot sun.
Well, that is the saga of our trip back from the South of France.
The holiday itself was fantastic though. The food was mediocre but the baked goods were amazing! The wine was great and the people were quite friendly. We had nice accommodation and did a heap of exploring (photos to follow).
Monday, January 4, 2010
Sweden - Uppsala
Uppsala is famous for its university as well. In the Octagonal roof of this building is a famous octagonal theatre room in which they used to cut up bodies for study.
Uppsala Cathedral
Uppsala Castle. It has burnt down two times and has never been fully completed.
Believe it or not, this is meant to be the botanical gardens.
Sweden - Boxing Day 2 Animals
A large part of Skansen was showing the animals that lived in Sweden. Clearly they must all like snow...
Wolves
Bison
Moose
Reindeer (resting after a hard night helping Santa!!)
Sweden Boxing Day 2009
This is Stockholm on Boxing Day after heavy snow the night before.
We spent most of the day at Skansen, an open air museum. Built over 100 years ago, they transported buildings from around Sweden to the site, to show what Swedish living was like. It looked pretty good in all the snow.
The church at Skansen
This is downtown Sweden.
Sweden Xmas Day 2009
We spent Xmas Day in Stockholm, Sweden. It is the coldest place that we have ever been too, and didn't stop snowing. It also has very limited hours of daylight between 9 and 3 during winter. However, it was still a beautiful city.
The Royal Church
The Royal Palace in the Old Town - until recently, this was the largest lived in royal palace in the world with over 600 rooms...then they moved out.
View looking down from the palace.
This is in Gamla Stan, the old town, with tight narrow strees. The warning sign (which were on nearly every street) was to warn off the risk of snow and icicles falling falling from the rooftops above - we saw one man get hit by falling snow. The drainpipes on the buildings were all frozen as well.
This is the smallest street in Stockholm, its less then a metre wide. Bit scary to walk down given there was large amounts of snow above ready to fall on your head.
This is the town hall, described in the 1920's as a beautiful building reminiscent of Italian renaissance architecture. Just looked like a brick building to us.
Looking from a bridge across to Gamla Stan
London - more sights
Trafalgar Square and the sickest looking Xmas Tree ever
The 02 Arena
Canary Wharf (it was a Saturday no no bankers thankfully)
St Pauls
The Gherkin
London - Rugby at Twickenham
London Christmas
Above are photos from London at the beginning of December, of all the Christmas lights and decorations, and the Christmas Market.
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