Where to start? At the beginning I suppose.
Our journey started about 19.00 Saturday with a night out in Huddersfield. We had beer at the King’s Head
And curry at La Las
And then caught the last train to Manchester AirPort. We had a few hours to kill at the airport but managed to catch a bit of sleep before things got busy.
Once the desks opened we offloaded our hold luggage before heading through security. We were so early that our boarding passes didn’t work at the automated gates and we had to be let through manually.
It was also too early for any of the bars and restaurants so we just took a seat to wait.
Just after 3.00 am I missed a call from Jet2 to tell me that we had left a power pack in the luggage we checked in and they needed to speak to me about this ‘dangerous item’. They asked me to return their call.
Much easier said than done – all the numbers were either the wrong department or were never answered and nearly two and a half hours later I admitted defeat. We headed off to the departure gate to speak to the staff there instead. Eventually we got it sorted and started to board the flight only to find my boarding pass wouldn’t scan as it had been given a red flag because of the issue with the bag. That was also eventually sorted and I boarded the plane, virtually the last on board.
While all that and been going on, Denis has had his own problems to deal with – for some reason all of the books on his Kindle Fire had been removed. Not a good thing when you are just off for four weeks holiday. He tried all sorts to fix it but in the end decided that the only answer was a factory reset. That needed to wait until we were in Naxos though.
We were both a bit fraught by this point but settled into our seats, only to be told we were facing up to an hour delay before take off. Which meant we would almost certainly miss our connecting flight.
With the wonders of modern technology we booked a (much) later flight from Athens to Naxos while we were sat on the runway.
On arrival at Athens I had a quick chat with the Olympic Airlines customer service desk to see whether we had any options for an earlier flight but they were all full so we just had to wait for the later one.
Unfortunately by this point, and with all the shenanigans going on, my phone battery was nearly dead and there was a distinct shortage of charging points. And of course we had no power pack, that having been removed by Jet2 as the ‘dangerous item’ in our luggage. I forwarded my boarding pass to Denis to be on the safe side. And sent a final update by email to Nichos, who was meeting us off the plane.
Eventually we were on our way.
It’s a very short flight – 25 minutes – but we got some great views just before my phone battery finally died.
I took a few photos with my iPad as we came into land
Of course Nichos was waiting for us and before we knew it we were in our room. Denis wasted no time heading out to Soulatso to renew some acquaintances and I joined him a bit later.
By this time we had been on the go for 24 hours although it felt much longer. We ate at Meltemi where we ate the first time we ever came to Naxos.
Then it was off home and to bed. We were soon asleep….
Pearl Blog 3 