Departure

As per usual we left it to the last minute. It's debatable who was to blame, but as the chatty taxi driver who dropped us off at the airport commented, "how he'd never met a more relaxed bunch of lads." Arriving to find the airline desk closed quickly transformed relaxed vibes to feelings of panic. We perhaps stupidly asked the lady at the adjacent desk why there was nobody there to hand in any luggage. To which she flatly replied: “Because it's closed.”

 

This obviously was a shock to us as the fear of missing our flight dawned upon us. A quick dash up to the passport control area was met with more obstacles. Apparently we didn't have the correct boarding passes, although the papers we had were clearly boarding passes printed off as we'd already checked in online. After explaining this the slightly grouchy Scottish official he then made a few calls and we were eventually let through. For some reason he thought Ryanair did all the airport boarding passes even though we were flying with Norwegian airlines. I think somebody needs refresher training. 

Finally, having our baggage scanned it seemed the worst of it was behind us, well that was until I forgot to declare my bottle of Victor and Rolf and my baggage had to be checked by hand. Eventually I remembered the offending bottle of aftershave and the busy baggage lady advised me that she needed to test it. Seeing the meticulous woman spray the aftershave on to testing paper pained me greatly. I didn't even have much left to begin with - all that came to mind was the waste of my precious odour. With the clock ticking away we had to play catch up and run as coordinated as possible. David had hurried ahead trying to make sure the plane didn't leave without us with Demola in hot pursuit. I was trailing  some way behind due to being held up. As I reached the gate I saw David waiting as people were still boarding, Demola was no where to be seen. Where was he? Both puzzled we thought he might have gotten lost, or boarded the wrong plane. Quick thinking told us it would be wise to call him. David quickly rang Demola - and to his surprise he told him that he was in a duty free shop buying a bottle of water and cocoa butter Vaseline lip therapy. We both laughed at the lunacy of it, who actually buys something when they are having to run to catch a plane that is about to leave... Demola that's who.

Abdi, TCC