Well we’re back. All in one piece, whatever that means. It’s not like we were likely to lose limbs. It was cold and long but it was never really raining large sharpened razor blades. I toyed with the idea of just doing a quick synopsis of the 12 days, but I felt that would do an injustice to the prolonged suffering we went through. Also there was a free Alfred Hitchcock DVD with one of the papers yesterday, so it would appear suspense is in!!! For people who’ve been told to avoid this exact type of stressful situation, change doctors is the only advice I can give you! Naturally scrolling to day 5/6 will alleviate any worries but will spoil what could be (but isn’t) a fascinating story.
So on we go…. We met up at some ungodly hour (4.40am) at Cork Airport. Why the hours between 3am and 8am are ungodly I’ve got no idea. Lets just park that one with the rest of the intellectual mess that is the general mish mash of god questions. For now anyway….. After a little bit of repacking, and the first of many appearances by Ash ‘Mcgyver’ Mcrae, we checked in and went straight through security. Well obviously they gave Conor a thorough searching, but we had allowed for this when planning what time we needed to meet up. We swanned through duty free, passing the vast array of playing cards on offer, and headed to grab a coffee. It was at this exact moment we noticed that all the food seemed to be located quite safely on the other side of a glass screen!!! We found a muffin/coffee kiosk which stubbornly refused to open until exactly 5.30am, while the bar was happily serving beer to whoever needed it. It was a good thing we only had a ten minute wait for the coffee dock is all I’ll say on that.
We were left running for our connection to Kilimanjaro so once again we passed up the opportunity to purchase playing cards. Only to find that the security queue was 12 miles long, so we would have had plenty of time to not only buy them, but also to fit in a few games of Chinese Patience!! We passed the time in the queue munching on Ash’s pre-packed steak sandwiches. The flight itself was uneventful; bar of course Ash’s near death staring match with a member of the Israeli Secret Service over a little back of chair bumping incident. The only thing that saved him was the agent was obviously on a more important role that involved hovering (and staring of course) outside the toilets!!! We arrived on time, spent a while in the visa queue (its twice the price for an Irish Citizen to get a visa as it is for a New Zealander, no idea why, feel free to offer suggestions) and then spent an even longer while waiting for our luggage. Conor’s arrived, and a guy with a list informed us that the remaining bags were in Amsterdam. We spent ages looking for the ‘Just dumped off the plane baggage claims’ to no avail and eventually had to settle for the inaccurately named ‘Lost Baggage’ counter.
An hour later we were at our ‘hotel’. An hour and 5 minutes later we had a tab set up and had ordered steak and chips. We sat around for a bit, pretending not to be panicking about our bags. Conor looked the most nervous as he could see his lovely kit slowly getting divided 3 ways!!! We eventually went to bed, turned on the power shower just to test it out, discovered that both the words power and shower were blatantly false advertising, and spent a further half hour trying to work out the bloody mosquito nets. After all this hardship, we then, and only then, discovered that Conor snored like a train…..
So on we go…. We met up at some ungodly hour (4.40am) at Cork Airport. Why the hours between 3am and 8am are ungodly I’ve got no idea. Lets just park that one with the rest of the intellectual mess that is the general mish mash of god questions. For now anyway….. After a little bit of repacking, and the first of many appearances by Ash ‘Mcgyver’ Mcrae, we checked in and went straight through security. Well obviously they gave Conor a thorough searching, but we had allowed for this when planning what time we needed to meet up. We swanned through duty free, passing the vast array of playing cards on offer, and headed to grab a coffee. It was at this exact moment we noticed that all the food seemed to be located quite safely on the other side of a glass screen!!! We found a muffin/coffee kiosk which stubbornly refused to open until exactly 5.30am, while the bar was happily serving beer to whoever needed it. It was a good thing we only had a ten minute wait for the coffee dock is all I’ll say on that.
We were left running for our connection to Kilimanjaro so once again we passed up the opportunity to purchase playing cards. Only to find that the security queue was 12 miles long, so we would have had plenty of time to not only buy them, but also to fit in a few games of Chinese Patience!! We passed the time in the queue munching on Ash’s pre-packed steak sandwiches. The flight itself was uneventful; bar of course Ash’s near death staring match with a member of the Israeli Secret Service over a little back of chair bumping incident. The only thing that saved him was the agent was obviously on a more important role that involved hovering (and staring of course) outside the toilets!!! We arrived on time, spent a while in the visa queue (its twice the price for an Irish Citizen to get a visa as it is for a New Zealander, no idea why, feel free to offer suggestions) and then spent an even longer while waiting for our luggage. Conor’s arrived, and a guy with a list informed us that the remaining bags were in Amsterdam. We spent ages looking for the ‘Just dumped off the plane baggage claims’ to no avail and eventually had to settle for the inaccurately named ‘Lost Baggage’ counter.
An hour later we were at our ‘hotel’. An hour and 5 minutes later we had a tab set up and had ordered steak and chips. We sat around for a bit, pretending not to be panicking about our bags. Conor looked the most nervous as he could see his lovely kit slowly getting divided 3 ways!!! We eventually went to bed, turned on the power shower just to test it out, discovered that both the words power and shower were blatantly false advertising, and spent a further half hour trying to work out the bloody mosquito nets. After all this hardship, we then, and only then, discovered that Conor snored like a train…..
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Welcome back!
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