Travel

To Athens!

C360_2012-05-08-11-07-47

I wasn’t expecting the scream. I’d landed in Athens not an hour before and was getting the tour of my friend Cait’s apartment. I’d be staying there for the 5 nights I was over and the reason for her exclamation suddenly became clear. There was a pigeon sitting dead still in the corner of her room. He seemed shocked, almost as much as us, and we stood there for a minute trying to figure out how to remove him. Luckily he was sitting beside closed doors to the balcony. A gentle open-the-door-and-position-the-curtain-and-poke manoeuvre had him off and gone but he’d invited a friend over. A cockroach friend no less. A jar, spray and the aforementioned doors relieved us of his presence and the holiday could begin.

I’d never been to Greece before, let alone Athens. I also didn’t know I’d booked a trip that coincided with the General Election. Perhaps that’s why the flights were cheap. :) It turned out to be a fantastic week in the company of a great friend. Friday saw us visit the Acropolis and the accompanying museum which opened to the public in 2009. A key motivation for the construction of a new museum was that in the past, when Greece made requests for the return of the Parthenon Marbles from the United Kingdom, to which they had been carried away, it was suggested by some British officials that Greece had no suitable location where they could be displayed. Containing over four thousand objects, it’s a stunning addition to Athens and a proper home for all historical artefacts from the Acropolis and Parthenon. I’d advise anyone thinking of climbing the Acropolis to visit the museum first. It’ll give you a better context to what you’ll see up there. Friday night saw us catch up with some of the Athens CouchSurfing group (for those unfamiliar with the concept click here) and hit the Exarheia area of the city for beers. It’s the area of the city where students and anarchists hang out and we enjoyed some beers in a bar owned by a Robert Carlyle lookalike.

Saturday meant a trip to the Panathenaic Stadium, which hosted the first Olympics in 1896, and dates back to 329 BC (in its current marble form). I’m not sure how much we paid in but it was well worth it with a self guided audio tour included. If you’re in Athens, please don’t miss it. As the sun went down and the super moon rose we stopped into A for Athens, which has a stunning open roof terrace facing the Acropolis. It was one of those picture perfect moments.

sixdogs

C360_2012-05-07-15-08-42
Sunday involved a nice walk about the city, a tough game of five-a-side and beers in the coolest bar I’ve ever been, Six Dogs. It’s a gig venue but has a big multi-tiered open space at the back with trees and a canopy. Monday was a trip to the Archaeological Museum and whilst I saw some amazing artefacts, one in particular stood out: the Antikythera mechanism. Discovered aboard the wreck of a 1st century BC ship that ran aground off the Greek island of Antikythera, it’s an ancient mechanical computer designed to calculate astronomical positions. The museum have put a stunning exhibit together with artifacts and statues from the wreck but the Antikythera mechanism just blows your mind. The complexity of it for its time beggars belief.

Friends have asked since whether there were visible signs of unrest. Whilst there were no protest marches during my stay, there were burned out shops/businesses (the Attikon cinema being a particular
shame) and riot police in Syntagma Square. At the time of writing the political situation remains uncertain so there’s trying times ahead. I’m looking forward to visiting again at some point over the next year and I’ll hopefully take in a few islands then.

A lesson in frustration with Aer Lingus

Photo by Martin O'Connell under Creative Commons License: http://www.flickr.com/photos/martinoc/535049143/

As I’ve mentioned previously, I bought a share in a Man Utd season ticket this year. That gets me three pairs of tickets for Premier League home games throughout the season. The first of which was last weekend with the game against Blackburn. I’d booked the flights with Aer Lingus back in August with a preference over Ryanair because I believed I’d get better service. Man was I wrong. Now I have to state that I’ve flown with Aer Lingus before without incident and I had a high opinion of them.

So, last Saturday rolls around and myself and Dar arrive in the airport at 8. The trip had been slower due to the snowy conditions and I knew the runway had been closed briefly so expected a delay. We consult the Departures board which shows “09:25 AER LINGUS 204 – CANCELLED”. Nightmare. It was amongst a handful of flights cancelled and we queued up to find out why from the Aer Lingus desk. After about 15 minutes, a staff member was checking the queue for people travelling to Manchester and explained that the 06.30am flight hadn’t left and to head to the check-in desk. We did just that and got through security quickly and headed for the delayed earlier flight. It’s about 09.20am at this point and things are about to go awry.

We arrived down to the gate where a lot of people hanging around. This was to be expected as most of the airlines were running behind time due to the earlier runway closure. The snowploughs were out in force though and aircraft were beginning to move with a few Ryanair flights going out. There was no sign of the Aer Lingus plane we’d be boarding though and there were no announcements. A guy we’d met earlier in the queue for the other flight was querying what was happening with the gate agent so I had a quick word with him. There was no immediate estimate on when we’d be leaving. Bear in mind that this is now about 11.00am and the original flight was due to leave at 06.30am.

I’d spotted a couple of Aer Lingus planes out on the apron that were parked up since we’d arrived at the gate. Why couldn’t they use one of those planes for the Manchester flight? In the meantime, approx 11.15am, a seperate Aer Lingus plane arrived in and parked close to the gate we were waiting at. We got talking to a guy and his son who had been at the airport since 5am. They were hoping we’d be able to take that plane. He went off to check the departures board which said “Delayed 11:45am” and instructed us to stay at the same gate. A couple of minutes later, the screen changed to display an Aer Lingus flight to Heathrow as the next flight leaving. That flight was running approx an hour late but, as you can understand, it riled a lot of people that Aer Lingus would be running a flight ahead of one delayed for almost 5 hours.

Shortly thereafter, we were directed towards another gate at the other end of the terminal. Upon getting there, we saw no Aer Lingus plane and staff who were ill-equipped to start answering questions from a couple of hundred angry people. A *lot* of people who are travelling to Manchester on a home match Saturday morning are going to Old Trafford and such was the case with the majority of people on our planned flight. The guy who was talking to the gate agent earlier was leading the effort to get answers whilst trying to stay calm. He relayed what the gate agent was saying to the crowd, by shouting, as the staff would not use the tannoy system. We were to be loaded onto a bus to take us to the aircraft, the aircraft would then be de-iced and we’d take off asap after that. The time at this point would be 12.30pm approx. They couldn’t offer any guarantee on what time we’d take off. At this point the airport police turned up, followed shortly by a few Gardai. As Ryanair announced the boarding of a Manchester bound flight, the crowd mock cheered. We were then told that Aer Lingus would be offering a full refund for those who wished to avail of it. Whilst that probably seemed like an acceptable alternate, people would be losing out on match tickets which were already paid for. I’d like to point out that a few kids were in floods of tears at this point at the prospect of missing the game.

We eventually boarded a bus to take us to a plane that had been sitting there since 8.30am. A certain amount of people had decided not to travel so a new manifest was required. The plane was then de-iced and we took off at 2.00pm for the short flight over. We eventually made it to the game at 3.25pm at Old Trafford but had missed the first three goals. My problem throughout the whole morning was that we were not told what was happening. Where was the original plane that was scheduled for the 6.30am flight? Whilst the gate staff insisted it wasn’t their fault, whose fault was it? The pilot stated he was scheduled for the 6.30 flight so it wasn’t affected by the threatened pilot’s strike.

It was a lesson in frustration and one which I’ll be very reluctant to risk again with Aer Lingus.

1 2 3 … 11  Scroll to top