Mallorca-Part 1

“Do I have coffee on my nose?”

Miranda was standing to my left, in the long queue to get on a Ryanair flight to Mallorca. I had a creamy egg salad sandwich in my left hand (and part of it on my upper lip) and a passport in my right. She had a coffee stain on the tip of her nose.

“I’m such a brown-noser,” she said.

This was the first bit of levity we’d had all morning. We managed to get to the Stansted airport just fine, but the $30 one-way fare by train was already rattling my brain. Miranda and I tried for nearly two days straight to find a good package deal to someplace exotic and we’d managed some success. But by the time we were ready to book, we realized the Web site we were using was a local company whose offices and servers closed at 7 p.m. It was 7:15 p.m., the day before our intended departure date. A Web site called Lastminute.com, whose prices were pretty cheap when I’d searched for fun, didn’t actually pan out when you were, in fact, in need of something at the last minute. The same sort of trip we could’ve gotten for $300, was suddenly $3,000.

We were starting to yell at each other. She left the apartment to get cigarettes. I bitched to my roommates. Finally, after a few more hours of searching, I managed to find us a hotel for $50 a night and airfare for about $250 per person. So it came out to be about the same price, but much more frustrating.

Still, not a bad deal. Three days in Mallorca for $300. Now, add the $30 train fare, and the inevitable return train fare of $40, and that brings us to $370. Once at the airport, we were informed you could only take one bag on, and a purse was considered a bag, so that meant I had to ship my bag and carry on my purse, with Miranda’s purse tucked inside. Fine, except that it cost $20 one way to ship a bag. And an additional $4 per person for checking in. The woman at the baggage check in was nice enough to waive the $8 check in fee for us, but now with my baggage check going and coming, we’re up another $40.

Before I’d checked in, I asked a security agent if I could take contact solution even though it’s a larger size than is allowed. She said yes. But when I got to the security checkpoint, the woman said I wasn’t allowed my large bottle, but could go to the drugstore and buy a plastic bottle to put it in. When I got to the checkout, the woman informed me the bottle wasn’t sterile, which meant I’d be at risk for bacterial contamination of my solution. So I had to throw away my $10 bottle of contact solution and instead, buy a trial sized bottle for $8. I’d also purchased a chicken wrap for $6.

When I got to the gate and took a bite of my sandwich, it was disgusting. I threw it away and bought a creamy egg salad sandwich for $6. It was absolutely delicious.

The moral of that part of the story is never buy a sandwich at a drugstore.

So now the tally is $430 and I haven’t even made it to the right gate. We were standing at a gate going someplace I’ve never heard of before, eating crappy sandwiches. Miranda’s was awful too and she threw it out. We finally make it to the right gate, get in line and realize we have to go out onto the tarmac, in the freezing cold, to get on a plane where our knees touched the seat in front of us. This is budget travel. Had our tickets not been $250 and instead, $25, which I’ve seen before on this airline, I might not have been so upset.

“Oh my, it’s all yellow,” Miranda said as we boarded. “Yellow is a nervous color.”

She proceeded to repeat this several more times while telling me that she also didn’t enjoy looking at the safety illustrations in front of her, on a yellow seat. “Also, those advertisements on the overhead bins are making me nervous,” she added.

“Hey look at that picture,” she said while referring back to the safety illustrations. “That woman is holding her skirt in place as she slides down the side of the plane.”

One of the illustrations showed a life vest bag you tear open from the top.

“Do we have to purchase that too,” she wondered. “How much is it in U.S. dollars?”

We were laughing heartily after that, on our way to a place we’d never been. It might turn out to be more expensive than we’d hoped, but here’s hoping the experience, like most of those we have together, will be priceless.