*Disclaimer: I only got 4 hours of sleep last night, so I’m
very crabby, hence a very rant-y blog post for today J
Boy, when Easy Jet wants to screw you over, they do one hell
of a good job! Before I get to that, how about I start from my last blog post.
Yesterday, Tuesday, Zoe, her dad, and myself drove the 4.5 hours from Wigan to
London. Her dad had to work today in Carby, which I am told is near here, and
he was nice enough to drop me off at my hotel before Zoe and him went to their
hotel and to work this morning. I stayed at the Best Western, which was nothing
special, just like any Best Western that you would find in the United States.
This morning is where everything turned to hell. First, my
4:45 am wake-up call conveniently didn’t come until 4:52. This meant that I
missed the 5:05 bus to the airport. By the time I got on the 5:20 shuttle, the
driver started off the second I got in the door, so I had loads of trouble
trying to get my bags into the holders cause of the way he was driving and they
kept rolling away. And it sure didn’t help that all the English people on the
shuttle just looked at me and not a single one of the men offered to so much as
roll my bag back to me.
And now comes Easy Jet. First, even at 5:35 in the morning,
the lines are about 100 miles long. When I get up to the front, I find out that
you can only have one carry on, which doesn’t help with the fact that I had my
backpack and my giant purse both full. After lots of struggles cramming
everything into either my backpack or one of my suitcases, I finally made it up
to the teller, where I had to pay £10 for every kilogram over the weight
limit (which, I would like to point is only 20 kg, aka 40 pounds, per customer,
no matter how many bags you are carrying). Needless to say, when all is said
and done I will have ended up paying almost 300 USD for a flight that was
originally supposed to only cost me $62. Gotta love the exchange rates these
days…
To make things even more pleasant, by the time our gate
number showed up on the screen, we only had 18 minutes until it said the gate
was closing, and you had to cross the entire terminal to get to our gate. When
we got there, the line probably had 100+ people waiting, and we got delayed
almost 45 minutes. But, you don’t sit down to wait for your plane in this
country, so you are just stuck waiting in a really long line with your feet
wanting to fall off. Eventually, we found out that a crew member was sick and
had to be taken off by the paramedics, which is what was causing the delay.
While this part doesn’t bother me cause it couldn’t exactly be avoided, what
does bother me is the fact that they were waiting until the end of time to tell
us why our flight was being delayed and why we were all just standing around.
The nice thing about this flight is that even though it was
“full booked,” I still ended up with the only open seat in the whole plane is
right next to me. And, with Easy Jet you can pick your own seat, so I got what
I feel like is a fairly decent seat. Now, one more way to squeeze money off of
passengers on this flight is through the drink cart. Unlike any other flight I
have ever been on, you can’t even get ice water for free. No, water costs you £1.5,
which today is about $2.50, and a can of pop, just the small 8 oz ones, costs
you £2.
I paid £1.79
for a 20 oz bottle inside the airport and thought that was super expensive
considering you can get it for 80p (the English version of cents) at most
stores.
By the time that this is posted, I will finally be in
Madrid, meeting my new roommate and officially kicking off my study abroad
adventure. Now, our itinerary is looking pretty full for the next few days, with
lots of museums and things to look at. I don’t actually get to Sevilla and meet
my host family until Saturday, but I will keep you all updated on the fun and
excitement over here in España!
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