Pricey flying
Posted in Europe | By tim |
At the travel agents, Rhodes suddenly becomes a lot less attractive. She calmly tells us without remorse that there are no charter flights available to England at the moment and the scheduled flights leave Athens for £182. We run through some bizarre combinations, culminating in a flight from Rhodes to Brussels at £162 which we could use with a day’s worth of interrail left to get us to Ostende. From here, the ferry would get us back to Chris’s home town of Ramsgate, still leaving me at the wrong end of the country. Getting to Athens on my own and staying a night there, though, is bound to cost more. The options are distinctly sub-optimal.
After a while we question the travel-agent’s thoroughness and decide to ask around elsewhere. A tour of several back-street offices leads us to the cool interior of Contours, a possibly appropriately named company, who suggest they maybe able to help. After some initial confusion, we discover there is a flight to Manchester with British Caledonian next Wednesday. At £180 it’s still not ideal but it does give us two more days in the sun and this time leaves Chris stranded at the wrong end of the country.
Spend a good while considering, rather annoyingly, that most of the people here probably spent less than £180 on their whole week here including a hotel. Are we being the mugs here? Then, of course, there is the debate about British Caledonian. We feel sure they went bust years ago. We waste ages waiting around for the ticket to come through, and eventually lose our patience. Go for a swim in the sea and phone home, and then decide to come back on Monday. Big plans for a night out are half squashed by the price of beer here – £1.62 a pint – and half by the torrential downpour which impresses us so much as we prepare to go out that we just go to bed.
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