It was a quite straight forward trip, a little break at Toddington Services and to the parking place at Terminal 3 by 4.45 a.m. That is about where I left reality behind. I arrived at check in and it was one of those self service thingies that basically you do everything yourself, print out the boarding card, check yourself for firearms, knives and other dangerous items like undrunk bottles of water, and then finally putting your own label onto your baggage. All done I proceeded to the bag drop off point, to be told by the man and woman who were manning the two open desks that I was precisely 12 minutes early and I would have to wait. So I did and was then joined by my Nottingham colleague who decided to walk over to the totally free man and woman of British Airways check in desks to be told we were still 8 minutes to early. At four minutes early we tried our luck but no, we were four minutes early and must wait until exactly 2 hours before departure. Now during that wait for 8 minutes since I had arrived at the head of the queue, the man and woman had seen to a grand total of no people whilst there was now about 20 people in the queue who were also too early. Then bang on time they allowed us to deposit our bags and as the queue was now snaking around the barriers, just in time. I handed my bag and as everything was done it was simply deposited to the baggage handlers by the press of a button. God knows where my luggage would have gone to if they had pressed that same button some four minutes earlier.
As we were in Terminal 3 and the airline lounge is free as we have a qualifying credit card, we visited the rather plush lounge. I have put a picture on the blog of the food area. I think next time I will try to get there a bit earlier as there is food, drink and even a cinema in the lounge, really good it is too. I think I will try to be earlier next time to the tune of about 3 days.
The hour and a bit passed and reluctantly we walked to the gate and then the bus to the aircraft. As I had had precisely zero sleep due to setting off early enough to get to London, I basically fell asleep the moment I sat down on the plane and awoke as we touched down in Poland. That is what I call a good flight.
Once in Warsaw we headed for the Avis desk and arranged our hire car for the trip to Krakow. The car is a Renault Meganne this week and with only 8,000 kilometers on the clock you would expect pretty new. It is a wreck, not just the dents and scratches but once it gets to 60 m.p.h. it hardly increases speed any further, it is a complete shambles of a car. It is as if the car should have a sixth gear but they forgot to add it. Therefore we used half a tank of fuel to drive the approx 180 miles to the hotel, although the 180 miles on those roads did take over 4 hours.
I have to comment on the journey because it was unbelievable. I have noted in the past that driving in Romania was hair raising but it is just the same here. All of a sudden cars or lorries will overtake and be hurtling down the road on your side heading straight for you. If you don't drive into the side of the verge you are a gonna. My colleague even tried to take a video of a lorry overtaking everyone despite cars coming in the other direction and missing each other by inches. It was amazing. But we plowed on until we saw our next amazing sight, as we approached Krakow we passed a lay-by and there was a women dressed very provocatively in a very very short skirt, black tights or stockings and just stood watching the cars go by in the middle of nowhere. Then about two or three miles later another one in another lay-by. When I saw the first woman I assumed it was a lady waiting for someone, and she wanted to dress in a certain way but good grief was I naive. The second had an even shorter skirt and even more provocatively dressed. We were quite speechless as we entered Krakow and found our hotel. By this time it was nearing six o'clock and feeling weary after driving for over four hours I was ready for my room. We decided not to go out anywhere tonight and booked a table in the hotel restaurant for 7.00 p.m. Just enough time to log on, check a few emails, change and get down for dinner. As I went down for dinner, the most amazing thing happened as the lift doors opened onto the ground floor. I was alone in the lift and as the doors opened there must have been about 75 older school kids all trying to get to their rooms. I was instantly pushed to the back of the lift as as many school kids entered the lift as possible. I literally fought my way out and through the lobby striding over bags, suitcases and the odd child that had fallen in the scrum. My colleague had already done this and was laughing from the other side of the hotel lobby as he watched me.
We went to the restaurant to find the only table they had was almost in the lobby and hardly in the restaurant at all, so we refused it and decided to go out. I had to go back to the room for the car keys and to do that I coerced a worker to let us use the service lift to get up to the room. Then as I came back down in the normal lift and I reached the ground floor, the door opened and I was confronted by still dozens of kids but also some adults who promptly pushed my back into the lift as they tried to enter. But this time I was ready and fought my way out, physically moving people out of my way to get out of the lift. That was a first for me, as normal people actually let people out of a room or lift before entering themselves.
As we were about to leave the hotel, the hotel manager rushed over and told us there was some mistake and they had a table in the restaurant after all and in the end we ate there. My Nottingham colleague had a sushi starter and really nice meat dinner with baked potatoes and I boringly settled for no starter and the Novotel Burger. Not sure what I was expecting but it was a bit boring, it tasted nice but boring.
We ate and then chatted for a little while before he informed me he was going to go for a little walk to walk off his feeling of fullness, but I declined and went back to the room as I have plenty of work to do before doing the blog and then getting some more much needed sleep.
So with as much work as I can do and the clock approaching midnight I am going to call it a day and retire.
Night All.
This is the drinks area, I have to admit that at 5.30 a.m. I didn't feel like an alcoholic drink and of course I was going to be driving later
This is the food area where i did partake in a glass of orange or two, a cup of coffee and a croissant.
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