Not Having A Ball On Another Long Haul
What a whirlwind the last ten days have been. Mum’s funeral was a beautiful send-off for her and I know she would have approved. Everyone’s support and love has been quite overwhelming. It has been an emotional rollercoaster & I’m still finding myself regularly on the verge of tears but also smiling when a fond memory of mum pops into my head. I’m hoping that finishing this holiday with Miss Molly will be a good distraction, producing lots of fun memories.
While I was very excited to be going back to Europe to see Molly again, the prospect of another 24 hours in the confines of an economy seat was not one I was looking forward to.
This time it was an older plane and my seat squeaked and creaked with every move I made. I know what you’re thinking. It’s the same thing my seat buddy was thinking. As I repeatedly turned to him and allocated the blame for the suspicious noises emanating from seat 65C, squarely on my excessively noisy chair, his eyebrow raise said it all.
We seemed to have had an abundance of vocal babies on the flight. Just like one barking dog might set off a cacophony of other dogs barking, one crying - no, make that screaming - infant, sent the rest of the tiny passengers into a frenzy of ear-piercing mayhem. The crying choir had one particularly adamant participant who was repeatedly screaming: “I wanna get ooooffff!!!”. The general consensus in our neck of the plane was that we’d like to grant this little miscreant his wish, however, short of touching down mid-flight and deploying the inflatable slide, there wasn’t much we could do. I actually felt for his poor embarrassed parents who “shooshed” almost as loudly as their son pleaded for escape.
My previously mentioned seat buddy, a young, fit, rugby playing hulk of a man, who had trouble fitting into his little seat, for some reason refused to wear his mask. He had it tucked neatly under his nose for the entire flight, never once covering his snoz, which he was blowing incessantly. That, along with his profuse coughing was making me nervous. I was so tempted to tell him to put his mask on properly but he was a lot bigger than me and I thought a confrontation could make for an awkward 14 hours to Dubai. I should also add, I may have got him a tad offside when I tipped my cup of water all over him and when I pulled on his fastened seat belt thinking it was mine and proceeded to wake him up. I already wasn’t in his good books so just I kept my mask firmly in place and tried to crane my head away from him as much as possible, hoping his germs stayed put.
I had a 3 hour layover in Dubai and it’s the policy there to leave the gates (with their plentiful seats) closed until it’s time to board. The few seats available outside the gates were chock-a-block so, after a spot of Duty Free window shopping, I spent two hours sitting on a table, reading my book.
Unfortunately the second leg of the journey was a little on the squashy side. The man sitting next to me was obviously under the impression he’d booked 1.5 seats because his elbow stuck out, halfway over my seat and dug into my ribs. Every time he went to the bathroom or took his arm off the armrest, I made a bid to gain back some territory. He also had his legs spread so wide, there was hardly any room for my legs in front of my own seat. Ahhh the joys of a long haul flight.
Having arrived a day earlier than me, Molly was almost a local and sent me some detailed instructions for how to get from the airport to our accommodation, involving a 10min travellator ride and an hour on the ferry, down the canal highway. The ferry made some stops at a couple of islands before dropping me off and the views out the windows of the cute old buildings, tall church towers along the horizon and little arched bridges were gorgeous!
Tonight, before a delicious meal of authentic Italian pasta, we wandered around the canals, under the flapping washing strung above our heads and over the cobblestones, watching the sun set over the iconic Venetian skyline, church bells clanging as we made our way home.
