Honeymoon Report Part 1 – Down to Earth With a Bang. Literally.

Remember when I told you I was frightened of flying? Well, I’m even more frightened now, folks, and you know who’s to blame? Scary-ass airplanes are to blame, that’s who. And, more specifically, their pilots, who sometimes choose to drop you out of the sky like a BRICK, and next thing you know, you’re screaming along the runway sideways, your life flashing before your eyes as you adopt the crash position and wait for the “Brace! Brace!” command, only it doesn’t come and you’re wondering if you’re dead already, and you’re thinking “I KNEW we shouldn’t have got on this plane, why did we get on this plane?” and… But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself here. Back to the beginning, methinks.

Well, our flight to Lanzarote started off badly. Not so much because it was a bad flight, you understand – just because I? Am a bad passenger. Seriously, never fly with me, you will regret it SO much. Having almost welded Terry’s shiny new wedding ring onto his finger during takeoff, I plugged myself into my iPod, opened my book and grimly settled in for the journey, breaking off every ten minutes or so to throw my hands in the air (like I just didn’t care, folks!) and shriek, “OH MY GOD I THINK WE’RE GOING DOWN!” God, but I would hate to have to sit next to me on a flight… Terry, meanwhile, nursed his sore hand, made friends with the Australian guy in the seat next to him and proceeded to ignore me. So far, so totally par for the course when it comes to me and flying.

What wasn’t quite so normal, however, was the way we landed. Now, as frightened as I am of flying, I have always quite liked landings. My logic, flawed though it is, is that every minute that takes us closer to the ground is a minute to be welcomed, so I generally try to grit my teeth, grind Terry’s hand to a pulp and let the pilot get on with it. This pilot, though? This pilot wasn’t so much for getting on with it. In fact, so totally un-fussed about the whole “landing the plane” thing was this pilot that I’m pretty sure he FORGOT TO DO IT until the last possible second. When that second arrived, and presumably thinking something along the lines of “Oooops! If I don’t land now, I’ll have to fly to Africa,” our pilot dropped the plane like a rock onto the runway. Cue the above “We’re all going to die,” scenario.

As you read this, of course, you’re probably thinking, “Well, Amber is an idiot frightened of flying anyway, she would think the landing was scary.” Let me just tell you, though, that it wasn’t just me. Or just me and the other scardey-cat passengers. Because the thing about this landing was that, as well as landing so heavily that everyone screamed and the plane almost blew apart (no, really), we also kind of landed sideways. And continued moving sideways down the runway. At about a million miles an hour, with everyone bracing themselves against the seat in front and the brakes screaming and the body of the plane shaking, and… Well, you get the picture. When we finally stopped (and for a moment there we didn’t think that we were going to stop), everyone burst into a spontaneous round of applause, and it wasn’t that kind of “Whee! We’re on our holidays!” kind of applause you sometimes get on flights, it was more of a “Thanks for not sending us all to a fiery death, you b*****d!” kind of applause. Yeah.

Once we got off the plane (me pushing small children and elderly ladies out of the way in my desperation to GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE), things got better – especially for Terry, who was really pretty sick of me by now, and we’d only been married for a day at this point. Oops. There was one more challenge in store for us, however, as we collected our hire car (a Renault Clio) and prepared to find our villa in the dark, travelling down unlit roads. We were staying in Tias, which is about ten minutes away from the airport, so naturally the journey took a good 35 minutes and involved us driving to a completely different village. D’oh! Finally, though, we arrived…

The villa was lovely, and much bigger and nicer than we’d been expecting. And I totally forgot to take any pictures of the inside, so I can only show you a totally random shos of the outside. From the balcony, we could see right down to the sea, and over to Fuerteventura. You don’t get to see that either, though, because I didn’t bother to take a picture of it.

 

The next morning we headed down into Puerto del Carmen for breakfast, which we had at a little cafe next to the sea, where we finally started to relax for the first time in… oooh, about three years – especially given that they gave us two complimentary shots of some kind of strong liqueur after we paid. By the time we got into the car to come back to the villa, though, it was clear that something was not right, and by that I mean “something was not right WITH ME”. And no, I wasn’t drunk. This time.

You see, I was freezing. Absolutely freezing. And while the weather wasn’t blisteringly hot, it wasn’t exactly cold, either. I, however, was. Cold, that is. And also sniffly, sneezy, achingy of limb, and with a throat that felt like I’d swallowed razorblades. Sharp ones. Yes, it was the cold, but on the plus side, I’m pretty sure this cold had intended to arrive on our wedding day, and just got its dates wrong, arriving on the honeymoon instead, so ha! Take that, The Cold!

The cold was to last for all of the first week, keeping both me and Terry awake at night with the constant coughing, and finally being passed onto Terry on about day five. Unfortunately he got it worse than me, and had to remain in bed for almost an entire day. So that sucked. Luckily, the cold almost always got a bit better during the day, so it didn’t stop us enjoying the holiday, or taking lots more pictures – bet you’re glad! Anyway, that concludes part one of my honeymoon report. Expect many more “parts” in the coming days, and try not to hate me too much for it. Meanwhile, I leave you with two of my favourite pictures from the honeymoon:

1. The Bimbo sandwich bread in the Hyper Dino supermarket – because everyone loves a Bimbo Sandwich, no?

 

2. The little fake lamb and goat in the garden of the villa next door. WHY?