This cruise has had a bit of a chequered start. Our original flights were scheduled to travel from London City Airport to Barcelona, which was ideal for us, LCY is a fantastic little airport and only thirty minutes away from us by taxi, so ideal. That wasn’t to be and about three weeks ago BA cancelled our flight from there and offered a replacement, two hours later and from London Heathrow, not ideal and an extra £100 in taxi fares to get there. Then a couple of days ago there was piece on BBC news about overbooking flights and people starting to get bumped again and BA business class was in the frame for doing this, I’d been checking our seat availability but being a bit of a tightwad I wasn’t going to pay £60 to pre-book. I made the mistake of checking again the morning that check-in opened and there was only a single business class seat available to be pre-booked, so I spent the next 6 hours catastrophising until check-in actually opened and saw we had been allocated 6D and 6F – Phew!
The following day our cab arrived on time, a nice big VW Sharan MPV, and we managed to squeeze all of Jane’s shoes into the back. The journey itself was fine and we arrived at LHR in good time, whizzed through check-in and security to plonk ourselves in the lounge while Jane went hunting a glass of Champagne
Well my stress levels are not getting any better, we had a nice walk around Barcelona this morning mainly to get some walking around cash. Google lied to me about free to use ATMs pointing me at BBVA after trying a few that weren’t working, their idea of free was €7 to take out €300. After getting fleeced we did the tourist bit with a walk around the market and then out in the back streets to find a coffee.
After coffee we headed back to the hotel to check out, we’d asked reception to book us a cab which arrived on time, and we managed to squeeze Jane’s shoes into the boot before setting off in the wrong direction. I asked the cabbie, why? and apparently there was a protest blocking off our route. Well traffic was awful and the driver was getting more agitated the longer we were stuck in a queue to turn around onto the other carriageway to take the tunnel back to the port. Eventually we were on our way and it was a lot quicker heading back into the city than out of it. We arrived at the port just as the heavens opened which wasn’t too bad as Jane has some cover as I made multiple trips to drop off the shoes with the stevedores. We were only 15 mins late getting there but the queues were already huge with no indication of priority boarding at all and when I queried it I was told to sit in a holding area. We did that for a while and when the queue started moving again I asked the same person again why is there no priority boarding and this time he sent me around the corner where I collared another person and this time I got sent to what should have been the priority line. If looks could have killed I’d be dead a hundred times over as we bypassed all the people patiently queuing for boarding. It was only after we had passed muster and we finally on our way that I heard announcements for Grills passengers to make their way to a waving Chloe who would direct them to the correct queue.
Typically for this trip when we arrived at lunch the requested large table wasn’t available and we ended up being allocated our worst nightmare table, the middle table of a set of 3 two tops, but it seems that my worry about this are unfounded as our companions all seem very nice.
Lunch was OK, Jane had the expected quesadilla, there always seems to be a quesadilla on the lunch menu and I had the Italian sausage pappadrelle (a bit too al dente for me, but not so much that I didn’t enjoy it). There was one change to service and that was a bottle of the spa water on the table rather than being offered a glass from a jug of iced water.
Once lunch was over we headed back to the room for the chore of unpacking. The cases had arrived and my unpacking was done tout suite, Janes however was a little more convoluted and two hours later it was time for our first Commodore O’clock of the cruise. It seems like QV has a competent mixologist on board as Jane was more than satisfied with the Mai Thai he dished up, apparently it was a “good ‘un” My Doombar was as expected.
Dinner was not going to be special or off menu as it was the first evening and I was very happy with my Game terrine starter, and pork fillet main followed up with a splendid slice of Bakewell tart.
We were fairly late getting away from dinner, too much chatting, and after all the excitement it was time for bed for old ones.
What a Marvellous account of the first day Signor Burrows. Did you manage to get Jane’s Shoes all packed away? Do they have a generous offering of shoe racks in the cabin or did you request additional supplies? What’s the weather forecast for the next destination?
Good morning Tim, that is a very good series of questions. We did manage to get Jane’s shoes packed away, it was a long but successful process and took no longer than two hours. There is generous provision for shoe storage but some invariably had to reside on the floor of her dressing room. The weather forecast for Heraklion on Thursday is a balmy 23°C with a smattering of cloud.