Warm and Dry

We are back from Paris. I cannot believe we have been married for 10 years already. It was a fabulous holiday. Arthur particularly enjoyed the stay at Disney, though he enjoyed the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame.

The best bit was to come back and find our new cloakroom. It is fantastic to have it. I wish I did it sooner. Makes me wonder about the conservatory but at £20k… it feels far too much. I want to decorate the cloakroom, so I have been thinking of a couple of Village candles, a plant and perhaps an enlarged photo of a flower.

We are currently doing some updates to the rest of the house like the kitchen… watch this space for more details!!

We are back from Butlins and had a wonderful time. Arthur in particular was completely enthralled. He met Bob the Builder, Angelina Ballerina, Fireman Sam, Barney, Billy the Bear and even Barney (who strangely he did not want to have a photograph taken with him). I must write more about it… Owen took some great photos too, so I must add them to my blog.

We are off to Butlins tomorrow morning. It is so nice to get away for a nice long weekend. Hopefully it will be really great fun!

Jo missed her Flybe flight as a result of a delay with her Easyjet flight. Easyjet don’t seem to want to take much responsibilty despite their having a 6 hour delay!! C’est la vie. The only issue was that flybe was on time or she might have been able to make her connecting flight! She will have to overnight in Staines!

We arrived back home today. Owen went straight to work but Arthur & I headed home. Arthur was exhausted. Mind you, I guess we all were. It is nice to be home.

As a treat we made our Christmas cake.  Yeah!

We are in a lovely place in Edinburgh. We are literally 1 minute walk from the castle! We even have a turret to climb to our flat. The place is so authentic and warm. I cannot find any fault bar one tiny one. They wanted us to take our own baby bedding to the place for health and safety reasons. Isn’t that absolutely bizarre? At least they told us in advance but carrying them with all the weight limitations was not nice to say the least!

We are off to Edinburgh today. I must say I am looking forward to seeing Owen graduate.

I cannot wait to try Haggis, check out Arthur‘s Seat and hit the shops. And don’t worry Owen, I won’t go buying unique wedding favors just a fridge magnet or two!

As you know we tend to travel a lot, particularly to Malta so that we can see family, attend family occasions etc. However, as with everything it always costs money! So we always try to go with the cheapest we find. You hear of people getting flights for £25 and so on. I have never travelled that cheaply. I have never paid so little not even with Ryan Air and the likes. You can say, but I though you said you travelled for free on Ryan Air last time. Well, technically, yes! My flight was free but I still had to pay

• Taxes
• Airport charges
• Credit / Debit card charges
• Bag charges
• Preboarding charges if preboarding was required
• Food / Drinks on board*
• Insurance if required (we have annual travel insurance)
• and who knows what other charges!

So it leaves me amazed when people say they flew for peanuts. Our next flights to Malta cost us nearly £300. And you might think they are good prices… however I should point out that we do not have priority boarding, our luggage is limited, it does not include food, drinks etc, and our travel insurance was paid separately. We paid far more than that for our IOM flights!!

So the question is why did we choose Ryan Air and Flybe? I suppose the reality is they probably paid a Full Service Advertising Agency to get them to the forefront of the travel industry and they were among the top 5 we checked out prices for. The truth is you go with what you know. If you try to search every option, you would be there for days (and none the wiser). So what we do is we check the main names that come to mind eg British Airway, Air Malta, Ryan Air, Bargain Holidays and Easyjet and choose the cheapest (in the case of Malta). The question is who do we check out and why those 5 not another 5 names? Personally, I put it down to good advertising because in reality… I bought a flight with Ryan Air… and well let us say my opinion of Ryan Air and Maltese Buses are not too far apart!!

*You do end up spending because it is not just a 3 hour flight, you also have 2 hours at the airport and in our case flights from the IOM and time in IOM airport too! It is a day’s travelling!

I guess I should learn that travelling will no longer ever go smoothly for me again!!

Arthur & I missed our train by a couple of minutes. Fine. Waited an hour. Went to board the next train but they refused us because a scan of our family rail card was not sufficient. It did not matter that royal mail have it in their hands and no I am not entitled to a replacement card and no they cannot verify it. I had to buy another family rail card or a new ticket. They made me miss the train. To add insult to injury I was NEVER requested to see the new damn card!! So now I own 2 cards for the same service. Not happy.

Glad my mum was with me until Euston as it made it alot easier than it would have otherwise been.

But at least we caught the boat, and bar a lounge that felt like the Sahhara and the food we bought on board, it went well. And we are finally home!!