Holidays are a time of excitement, a time where we get to relax and unwind from the hectic everyday life. Or it’s a time for excitement for adventure and new beginnings. That what I thought was all ahead of me and my friends when we were off on our Leaving Cert holiday. We had just finished a stressful few weeks, as we had graduated from secondary school and were looking forward to the unknown foreign land of college.
We headed off to Dublin Airport with our sunhats on and flip-flops at the ready for a week-long stay in the party island of Santa Ponsa. We had booked our flights very last minute, so we had a connecting flight from Dublin to Heathrow and then Heathrow to Majorca. Initially, we thought this was a great idea as there were no flights left on Ryanair and we got them for nearly half the price. But oh, were we wrong. The flight from Dublin to Heathrow was delayed by thirty minutes and while we didn’t think much of it at the time, but this was the beginning of the nightmare.
When we landed in Heathrow, we had reached passport control, only to be informed that we had twenty minutes to make our connecting flight. Suddenly, I broke into a sweat of panic as my friends and I sprinted through Heathrow Airport. Thankfully, we arrived at our gate by the skin of our teeth. I thought if we had one blip for the entire trip I’m glad that was it, but the story doesn’t end here.
We arrived in sunny Majorca, exhausted from our early morning flight and our eight hundred metre sprints in Heathrow. We left the plane, passed through immigration with not a problem in sight. However, when we got to baggage claim, it seemed as though our problems were only to continue. As minutes passed by, our bags were nowhere to be seen and by the time every other passenger had received their package, we knew something was wrong.
All five of us then marched up to the British Airways help desk only to be told more bad news – our bags hadn’t arrived yet. We couldn’t do anything else except head to our hotel, exhausted and defeated. Luckily the Santa Ponsa didn’t disappoint and neither did the hotel, so we decided to enjoy our first night on the party island. However, as the next day came around, no baggage was to be seen.
As we still had no baggage, we headed back into the main city of Majorca to buy more clothes. Thankfully one of the girls’ suitcases arrived at that evening. As the days passed all the girls’ suitcases arrived, yet mine was still unaccounted for. It wasn’t until the day before we were about to leave that my suitcase eventually arrived and the nightmare had ended.
Niamh Dunne
Image Credit: Tara Shiels