The Missing "S"

This is going to be a new experience I thought as I started booking our flights to Ibiza using RyanAir from Stansted.  The booking process was easy and the availability of flights more than adequate but then it is the middle of winter and not many people will be heading off to the White Island at this time of year.  The main advantages of using RyanAir are that principally the flight we can get is FREE!! Secondly and almost as importantly its DIRECT! We won't have to go to Madrid or Barcelona to sit for an hour twiddling our thumbs.  It's no surprise at all that it soon becomes apparent though that your "free" flight is not really "free" at all once you have added the RyanAir "handling charge", the charge for each item of baggage and the travel insurance. So "free" is in reality about £190 return for two which is actually not bad compared to the main and indirect carriers who wanted over £600 each!!  The next step, book some car parking at Stansted which again was a piece of cake to do with us being able to park only a two minute walk from the Departures area which is very convenient on the return journey.  We arrive in Ibzia only 3 hours later where good old Manel's man will be waiting with a hire car and off we go to our old haunt the Hotel Lux Isla for five days.  The weather check shows the temperature to be about twice that of here at present which will feel almost tropical when we get there!  

So off we set to Stansted for the next stage of our RyanAir experience and our first face to face visit with little Neo.. so much like his dad but with a tiny hint of me, although I am not entirely sure about that as he has more hair than I do.  Getting the the airport was not as much the ordeal I expected and we found the place to be remarkably stress free and relaxed, until we go to security!

The "Rubber glove" 

Having negotiated obtaining boarding passes electronically and then check-in we passed on to Security which was, I am sad to say, the beginning of my misfortunes and the snapping sound as the muscular security man slipped in his rubber gloves.  "are you wearing boots sir, oh dear.  Better slip them off as they usually set off the alarm" said the first security man. Having done as I was told and having emptied my pockets of all but tissue I stepped through the metal detector which dutifully buzzed. "step over here sir please and raise your arms" at this point I was intimately searched by a skillful and very large black  man with a close crop and a mean look on his face. or perhaps it was a grin?  Then, having eventually left him without any apparent reason for my setting off the metal detector I then found I could only recover my boots and jacket as a rather po faced female security officer was waving at me to come to her to explain the contents of my rucksack.  OK, it did contain a tube of toothpaste and some talc, there was no strange device or mysterious liquids and I was clearly a white, grey haired,  smartly (if casual) dressed middle aged (or would I be described as "elderly now?) gentleman.  Well, she went through every single item with her explosives detector, mine detector, nose and fingers before asking me, no sorry.. telling me that it all had to be passed back through the X-Ray machine for another test!  Now I know that security is essential but I would have thought that the days of the inept bomber are far gone these days and that using pillars of the community like me to transport some sort of device are about as likely as me flying the space shuttle!  I think the logic of what has to be done is fine but the implementation is mindless and flawed.

A reception Committee

Having calmed down after two hours in the air and no sympathy from Mrs H we landed in Ibiza expecting only to see young Pepe with our car but no, there was Alix, Amancio and new baby Neo to meet us! What a lovely surprise that was too.... and then, no Pepe but his bosses wife Bus with our car.  To be honest it was a very nice and pleasant welcome after all our bad luck and misfortune there in the previous 12 months.

We soon slipped into our "old Ibiza routine" of coffee each day in Cafe Montesol on the Vara de Rey people watching and chatting the waiters we have go to know so well.  Did I say chatting? Well, speaking in disjointed pigeon Spanish is more like the level of conversation really.

I have to say that the Island is now so expensive and the pound so weak that it is now cheaper to buy all booze in the UK and take it with you ti Ibiza.  In fact they could organise "booze trips" to Tesco's like the Brits used to go to France to come back with a truck load of beers and wines.  Property is now far higher in price than the UK and probably even less saleable as a result now that the bottom has fallen out of the property market there.

How long this can go on I don't know but it's not the place for people to holiday now where they may well end up getting less euros for their pounds even to the extent where a Euro costs MORE than a pound!

The Wrong loo!

Sitting in the restaurant having lunch I had to go to the gents and not being familiar with the layout of the place I asked V if she knew where they were and she duly pointed in the general direction of the rather convenient Stannar Stairlift that is installed in this particular Establishment.   off I went and for some reason best known only to other sixty odd year old men I plain forgot the International symbol for "men and women" , you know the one a circle with a plus sign and one with an arrow.  Well, I stepped boldly into the gents and for some reason did not think it odd that there were no urinals, well it is Ibiza.  I finished what I had to do and was just washing my hands when a lady stepped in and with a gasped apology left and went to the ladies, or did she?

In an instant I realised that I had gone to the WRONG LOO!!  So now a lady was standing in the gents wondering why there was a row of urinals (or were they some sort of new fangled wash hand basins).  I fled downstairs to the restaurant where I found her husband who was French and in a mixture of pigeon Spanish and English (not pigeon) I indicated to him that his wife may have had a bit if a shock when she went into the toilet to discover me there washing my hands.  He seemed to take it all in his stride and simply shrugged it off with a grin whilst I tried in vain to shrug of my embarrassment with a similar grin or perhaps better described as a grimace.  Eventually the French lady appeared and seemed completely unfazed by the whole episode presumably because she found the experience quite normal I thought or perhaps.... I will not think too much about that!