In fact, the option to stay here is not realistic, as all hotels across Spain are likely closing down.
Castillo Son Vida will be down to around 30% occupancy tomorrow - crazy Germans wanting to play golf.......if only the courses hadn’t been closed down.
We turned in at about 22:00 last night and were worried enough to be wide awake zgzjn by 12:30 until about 15:00, when I came across an easyJet announcement on Facebook that provided a little comfort and so after upping my Duolingo scores to more or less guarantee promotion to the Diamond League tomorrow and finishing Laidlaw, we went back to sleep until about 06:15.
Another beautiful sunrise appears over the Sanctuary of Cura to the East beyond the airport.
We stopped by Recepcion to see if there were any overnight up-dates on the State of Emergency measures (No!) and then went down to breakfast - strangely quiet there today, compared to the last 11 days.
Back in the room, we finish our leaving rituals and then we’re ready for the off - now, where’s Pedro to help with our luggage?
He appears soon afterwards with our 4 items, loads them into the car and then we say our goodbyes, telling them all to stay safe.
Drive to Airport
The MA-20, which is usually teeming with traffic is eerily quiet, as the State of Emergency is compelling locals not to undertake non-essential travel and to stay at home - otherwise, it’s tourists like us trying to get to the Airport to get out of here.
Avis Drop-off
You’d think that they’d have invented a machine by now that would scan the condition of the hire car on return, check the speedo and automate the entire process, but of course here in Mallorca at least, they need a man to do that.........and he’s nowhere to be seen at the Avis terminal.
Eventually, he appears and drops the key fob three times, as he fiddles with the App that contains all of the relevant information he needs to verify, eventually shattering it into at least three pieces on the concrete floor. Mental note to self - check what you sign, to ensure that he’s not trying to put the repair cost on me!
No, I’m home and free - no additional charges on this occasion!
Check-in / Security
Although the roads were quiet, we’d expected the terminal to be heaving with panicking tourists trying get out of Spain, but whereas a few of the airline bag-drop queues were lengthy, we were three hours early and as Speedy Boarders, able to join a relatively short line, where 5 minutes later, we say goodbye to our hold luggage, collect the printed boarding passes that Sandra regards as her ‘right’ and head for security.
The normally longest / most tortuous part of the airport process was not as bad as usual on this occasion, as there simply aren’t the number of passengers being processed.
We utilise just the 6 trays for our hand luggage, outerwear and bits and pieces, remembering to take the iPads out of the carry-on..........but not the cameras out of my camera bag, which I had to humour them with, before being allowed to proceed, after re-dressing / collecting our valuables and pulling-up my cargo pants, which were around my knees without a belt to hold them up.
Duty Free / Retail Experience
Result!
All of the duty free shops and cafes / bars are closed, with only vending machines working to dispense their contents to anyone daft enough to join the first ones that we encounter - there must have been about fifty people trying to get their bottles of water!
Progressively, as we make our way forward through the terminal, the vending machine queues shorten, but it’s a weird experience, compared to the normally buzzing public areas.
We find a seat at the beginning of the designated Zone A that easyJet are using, and await a gate announcement, and wait, and wait, and wait.
That’s the downside to being so early.
Gate A19
When the gate announcement is eventually made, we find that we are only a short walk down the corridor and find ourselves #2 in the queue for Speedy Boarders, behind a chap from Chester who I get chatting to.
We overhear the check-in lady saying that they will be using both gates A18 / A19, once the Bristol bound easyJet flight has departed, so sidle across to A18, when appropriate to maintain our position.
I’ve been tracking via Livetracking the inbound flight on my easyJet App and see that it is over France and about halfway to Mallorca, with about 46 minutes to go before landing.
Amazingly, given the chaos that is all around us, the App is showing an eta for LGW of 13:42, only 12 minutes behind schedule.
We’re going home!
easyJet Flight #EZY8622
We take our seats in 1E & 1F again, speedy boarding have done what is says on the tin and I lug my cabin luggage into the overhead locker on both sides of the aisle, so that when we land, we should be able to get off there pronto.
The flight is surprisingly not full, with a couple of spare seats in the front row across the aisle and the entire row behind that empty - whether they are no-shows, or what, I couldn’t say.
Hopefully, it’ll make baggage reclaim less painful than on a full flight when we get to Gatwick.
The sun is shining, we’d love to be staying in some respects, but after the uncertainty last night are more than a little relieved to be on the way home.
It appearsthat the Hive App is not talking to the router at home, so we’ll not have any heating / hot water when we get home, but I suspect that will be the least of our worries.
Enhanced Immigration Measures
In fact, there is absolutely nothing out of the ordinary at Gatwick.
Apart from a Border Control lady asking where I’d flown from when the automatic scanner thingie didn’t recognise me again (can’t wait for my passport to expire and get a new blue one), there we absolutely no additional precautions taken in going through the airport.
Coming from the second worst affected Country is Europe, I’d half-expected at least a question about whether we’d shown any symptoms, or even a temperature test, but no.........nothing!
Reading about the UK approach to coronavirus, we seem to be adopting a different approach to the rest of Europe, which is slowly locking down the population. Let’s hope our usual ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ approach is the right one.
Dudley picks us up outside M&S, where we’ve stocked-up on milk and a few food essentials to ensure we’ve got something for breakfast tomorrow and then whisks us through the backroads of Surrey to pick-up the M25 at Reigate, after the M23 was closed for maintenance. He tells us what has been happening, although he’d been away himself for part of our absence visiting South Africa.
Gee But It’s Great to Be Back Home
There you go, two Paul Simon song titles in a single post!
The house is freezing when we open the front door at 15:00, so I fiddle with the Hive to get things fired-up and then we pop out to Waitrose before it closes at 16:00 to see if all the stories of panic buying are true - surely not at Waitrose (the prices they charge).
Sure enough some things are in short supply, but we manage to get what we need and will no batten down the hatches and get slowly get back into our normal way of life.
Home, sweet home.
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