Surviving the flight. And staying married.

Testing the wines at lunchtime

Nothing to fault with The Premier Inn at Terminal 2. We had a nice room overlooking the runway, but with triple glazing working its magic, we could barely hear a rumble. The expected glass or two of drinks to help knock us out, a good meal and an early bed was the order of the evening.

NOTE TO SELF. Next time we stay at the Prem, I’ll ask to be on the top floor though. About 11.30pm the people above us were clearly trying to get their step count up. How someone could walk that heavily was pretty baffling. Thankfully the “fairy footsteps” got bored by midnight and retreated to their bed.

It was a struggle leaving our room this morning as we were busy watching the planes coming in. Each time they came in to land, it looked as though they were about to come into our room. What was further weird was, having been so close to the airport, it then took us a ten minute taxi drive to get to the airport drop off.

We were ordering breakfast 45 minutes after leaving the hotel. We had a seamless baggage drop off and although both of us exceeded the limit, no alarms went off, so we kept quiet. Drat, should have crammed more into my case.

The flight was uneventful, other than Nick suffering the usual broken arm and wrist. There is nothing natural about flying (IMHO). Take off always involves a certain amount of “controlled breathing” from my side. As for landing, it’s full on expecting to die and when we do actually survive, I am so ecstatic, that I have some sort of out of body emotional experience, which also involves transmitting my fear into Nick. Hence the semi broken limbs. There is also a certain amount of swearing that goes on. This is as a result of pure joy that we have actually landed in one piece. I wish I could be one of those cool travellers who just carry on reading while the plane lands, but from my side, that’s never going to happen.

Check in to Silver Wind was a seamless process with lovely staff guiding us at every step. Our cabin boy is Daya and Santosh is our personal butler. Blimey, that’s all a bit swanky. And then the panic set in. Santosh came to give us the room tour. We’d worked most of it out, but he’s paid to do a job, so let him do it. He politely advised us that we needed to view the safety briefing before we could set sail. Standard procedure. And then the announcements came. Polite to start and then getting more urgent. That basically we weren’t going to set sail until everyone had seen the safety briefing and reported to their muster stations. Ok, we get it. Stop unpacking Gabs and do the dutiful thing.

And that’s when the panic really set in. I couldn’t find my key card. The key card isn’t simply what lets you into your cabin, it’s what gets you on and off the ship. Our room is then turned upside down, with Nick making “helpful” suggestions. Nope, it’s not in any of the locations. I know I’ve had it and I know when I had it last, so suggest we go back to the restaurant where we had lunch. And then, all innocent, he produces it out of his pocket. You’ve heard of the story Death on the Nile, well there might be a new murder mystery called Death on the Cruise.