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Last week, we decided to check out Ryanair when we flew to Spain, since Paul’s co-workers seem to like the deals they offer. Ryanair is a European “discount” airline. The word “discount” comes with many asterisks. Your fare is really cheap…unless you’re checking a bag, bringing along your kid’s booster seat, wanting assigned seats next to your child, etc. Warning: Ryanair brings out cursing.
Unless you pay extra, you’re not going to know what seat you’re sitting in until you board the plane, duck under some armpits, and snag one, catapulting your child into the one next to it so that no one tries to steal it.
Your purse counts as your only carryon, ladies. Choose wisely.
If you must call the airline (even at their advice after they notify you that your flight will likely be cancelled due to a French air traffic control strike), the phone call will cost 2.79E/minute—but don’t worry, you won’t need to pay it, because the office will be closed. Instead, you will spend the night worried that your plane will not be taking off in the morning.
When they email you regarding the air traffic control strike, they suggest you re-route. You wonder how they plan to re-route you from Germany to the northeastern coast of Spain without crossing an inch of what is pretty much the only goddamned thing lying in between.
If you’re flying out of Frankfurt Hahn, you’ll have more than one discussion with your husband—each deteriorating exponentially in amiability—regarding how the fucking fuck an airport can call itself the “Frankfurt” Hahn Airport when it is located no fewer than 114 km from the Frankfurt Airport and even farther from the heart of Frankfurt.
If you’re Paul, you hear about all of the above over and over and over again until you want the plane to go down in flames with just your wife on it.
On the plus side, due to the cost of checked baggage increasing as it gets heavier (weights which you must know/estimate before arriving at the airport when checking in online or risk hefty fees), you will find yourself trimming your wardrobe in order to fit new purchases into your luggage.
If you’re Las Brisas Hotel and Apartments housekeeping in Santander, you just found 2 pair of shoes, 2 pair of shorts, 3 shirts and a pair of pants in room 109.
[…] of summer travel arrangements, I looked into flights to Rome on Lufthansa (because God knows Sequoia and I don’t fly cheap airlines). I was pleased to find reasonable prices on dates I wanted to fly. Paul walked into my office […]