Chapter 1 - 18/19 December to Santiago

Tuesday 18th December - to Madrid

In the last five years there seems to have been plenty of travel stresses on our Christmas holidays. Air traffic control failing in whole UK, fog delays and lost baggage (all of it). So it was no surprise to learn that the A55 - the road of all of North Wales uses to get anywhere ended up closed. This was due to a “device” being found on Colwyn Bay beach. This is ironic given we thought the mines were to be avoided in The Falklands not North Wales. Anyway I would imagine it was a WWII mine being washed ashore and the military dealt with it eventually. Given our past experiences we did leave ridiculously early and avoided this closure by about 30min. Finally some luck. Even the flights to London and onward to Madrid were only an hour or so late! We found our baggage (all of it) all be it on the wrong carousel. We got a six hours sleep in the hotel and parted with 30 euros for a bloody pizza from room service - but not much choice at midnight. Fun fact Manchester airport and Tomos; involved his bag being screened three times. Manchester has the second strictest/worse security in the World. Anglesey Airport still top of the list!

Wednesday 19th December - to Santiago

An early rise even though the flight wasn’t timed until 12.20pm. Taking no chances. There are lots of long flights you can do - the new longest is SIngapore to New York (16 hrs). You can fly from London to Perth these days (16 hrs), Doha to Auckland is another epic. So I suppose a mere 13.5 hrs + 1 (the airbridge got stuck) is a walk in the park. Very glad to be sat up the front (thanks AMEX). Normally its screaming kids that wind me up. Things have changed; I now have a rather sweet old Spanish lady sat close by - she alternates between fits of coughing (she doesn’t sound good) or when she isn’t coughing she is laughing loudly as the crew plugged her in to a comedy movie. 1st World problems ;)

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