Meet Me In Valencia

I had to be at Manchester Airport no later than 6am, so I'd agreed with Brian that we would rise at 5. I set the alarm on my mobile phone for that time, and jumped out of bed as soon as it went off. Made myself a cup of tea, and was getting a little bit worried that I wasn't hearing sounds of anyone else stirring. I was about to go and wake Brian when I noticed that the kitchen wall-clock was saying 0210. Damn! I'd forgotten to change the time on my phone!. So I went back to bed for another couple of hours, but didn't really sleep well. Hey ho.

Anyhoo, the appointed time came and off we went. No problems at all, until I was at the Jet2 check-in desk. They have about six desks and were open for passengers for all of their destinations except Valencia. Valencia passengers got the message 'wait in lounge'. The queue was enormous and it got to about forty five minutes before we were due to depart. I asked at the info desk what was going on and they told me to get in the queue. I did, and it crawled along. After twenty mnutes of not moving very much, a Jet2 staffer arrived and pulled all Valencia passengers out of the queue and sent us to a different desk where we were processed in a hurry. I was mighty pissed off because I really needed some caffeine and a little bit of food. No chance, no time. Straight on the plane and off we go. This being a budget airline, there's no actual food, but I did buy a small bottle of water and a miniscule pack of Pringles for about 98 million quid.



I had called Offspring to make sure he'd met his Mamá: he had, but she'd gone off to try to sort out some accomodation for us. By the way, my Vodafone chip from last year that still had ten quid of credit on it, no longer works. So I got me a Virgin Mobile one instead.

The flight to Valencia only takes a couple of hours, and after I'd picked up my suitcase (yeehaa!), I got a bus into town. As it happened, this bus terminated at the Railway Station, which was where I'd agreed to meet the fambly. And there they were! Marvlious. Slightly less marvlious was that the hostal we'd stayed at last year (39 Euros a night for the three of us) were now asking for 75 Euros - claiming this to be a special rate because we had now become regulars. But BetterArf had found another place. Very centrally located, air-conditioned, 45 Euros per night. And as a bonus for our get-skinny campaign, up four flights of stairs and no lift.

Gifts were exchanged. Offspring seemed less than thrilled to recieve a cuddly Modhesh ('I wanted a mosque alarm clock'). BetterArf had got me the Espanol version of Pterry Pratchett's Feet Of Clay- Pies De Barro, on the basis that I know all of his books word for word, and it would be easy for me to understand. Sadly Feet Of Clay is one that I had read once or twice, but do not actually own a copy of. Well, I do now.