Ticket tribulations

Monday was a lazy day, not going far, not doing much, just enjoying summer idleness. Finishing work on making good the roof after chimney demolition has slowed right down. The weather is good enough for this not to matter.

Tuesday morning, I woke up early, thinking about September, travelling back to Malaga, and how I'd succeeded in changing my flights at great expense back at the end of June, but had not yet got around to re-checking my booking. Last time I visited the Vueling website, when I was in Spain, the change was registered, but it was unclear from information displayed that my booking for hold baggage had been carried forward with the changed flight. Ages ago, I resolved to check this out at Cardiff Airport when I got back, but done nothing about it.

I got up at seven, and decided to have another look at my flight booking on the Vueling website, just in case I was making a fuss about nothing. Horror of horrors, the website refused to recognise my booking reference and email address! Something very hard to cope with so early in the morning. In a mild state of panic, I dressed, breakfasted, and then got myself into town to pick up the airport bus. By just after eight I was at the Vueling departures check-in desk, but nobody was there!

I should have known better. The Vueling airport team isn't very big, and they multi-task. Once all the passengers for the 09.10 flight to Malaga are booked in, the staff make their way to the departure gate and see passengers on to the aircraft. The Alicante flight, on the days it runs, leaves later, so they have time to themselves in between. I asked a man at the Norwegian Air check-in desk next door how I may find someone and he directed me to a desk at the far end of the Departures area.

There I found a Swissport booking manager, to judge by his overhead display title, whose role was dealing with ticketing enquiries, for companies and flights out of Cardiff International. It means he has executive privileges to enter every travel company website admin back-end and can interrogate systems for needed information. Such a comforting asset for bewildered travellers, and a reassuringly efficient service!

I explained my problem as simply as I could, and within a couple of minutes, he confirmed that my two flights were registered for the dates and times changed, and that I had hold baggage booked. He gave me a printout to that effect. Failure to access my Vueling account was due to a simple error about which I should've known better. Mistaking 'O' for a zero in the booking reference. I must have taken this in last time I logged into the site, when I saw on-line the booking changes I'd made had taken effect. Exactly the same confusion I experienced in Vinaros, trying to register devices to the Vicarage router wi-fi.

How much grief and anxiety could be spared worldwide, by making sure that the distinction between a zero and an 'O' is made clearer in any displayed typeface in print, and on the web.

Fifteen minutes at the airport, then a shuttle bus back into Cardiff, and I was home again just after half past ten, after a few troubled hours on the move. Thank God for a free bus pass and an excellent transport schedule for journeys to the airport and around town! 

I still don't have a boarding pass. I don't need to pay extra for a designated seat, happy just to reach my destination wherever I'm placed on the flight. So, I have to wait until Tuesday next, when a seat will be assigned to me by default, and printing out my boarding pass will cost me nada.

Apart from this, an uneventful day ensued.

   

Up up and away

This morning I was up at six, out of the house by half past, walked down Romilly Road, intercepted an 18 bus just picking up passengers at the stop on Cowbridge Road. It dropped me outside the bus station in perfect time to get the airport shuttle before the one I was walking to catch! Cardiff Airport was at that time very quiet so this time I passed quickly through bag drop and security check, and had an hour to spare. The flight left on time and arrived twenty minutes early, and I arrived in an overcast Malaga, at about the same temperature as the Cardiff I'd left. Bill picked me up, as he did last time I arrived, and drove me to Fuengirola, showed me the apartment, and then took me to lunch at an excellent restaurant, a few blocks from where I'll be living for the next couple of months until the new Chaplain's residence is ready to occupy.

The apartment is on the first floor above a row of shops and restaurants on the beach promenade. The living space and balcony faces the street behind and has two bedrooms, lounge and kitchen, well equipped for a comfortable stay with a full range of European satellite TV channels. It doesn't enjoy a great deal of natural light, but that matters less when the great outdoors is very congenial, except in the worst of weathers. Once I'd unpacked and done a food shopping trip El Corte Inglez supermarket by Los Boliches RENFE station, I collected the Chaplain's phone from the church office, and registered my new laptop on the wi-fi to check my messages and call home, and write a sermon. Unfortunately I couldn't print it off, as the main computer's access password had been changed since November. It was ten o'clock by the time I'd cooked my first meal back in the apartment, and then crawled into bed quite tired, but not aching from the unusual exertions of office moving yesterday, thankfully.

    

Homeward bound

When I got up this morning, the temperature in Fuengirola was much the same as that in Cardiff, but sunnier. Having packed and cleaned the apartment, I drove to St Andrew's where I met Ian and handed over all my keys and the chaplain's mobile phone. He took me for a parting glass  to a restaurant above the covered market, a short walk from the church. Above the restaurant, I discovered is the local public library and above that several rooms for community use. It's an impressively useful piece of municipal social architecture, and apparently, well used. As Ian lives a few stops up the railway line to Malaga via the airport, we travelled together and chatted about the way of life in these parts which both of us appreciate so much.

My tarjeta dorada railcard gave me a discount fare of €1.55 for a forty minute journey. I'd over-anticipated the time I'd need to check in and go through security by an hour, and had to wait half an hour for the bag drop counter to open. By the time I was air-side I had two hours to wait, which passed by quickly enough, nosing around the shops, and walking the considerable distance to the Vueling departure zone. Flying past the snow capped Pyrenees lit by late afternoon sun was a pleasant experience. The couple occupying the seats next to me were returning from a three month spell of mission supporting the Ark evangelical church in Fuengirola. Through the good offices of a friend they were introduced to the mission among Andalusian gypsies which has seen significant growth in Pentecostal churches serving gypsies in Spain, a group that has become alienated from Catholic tradition. So, the conversation on my return trip was just as interesting as that on the outward journey.

We arrived in the dark at five thirty and I was soon on the airport shuttle bus to Cardiff, and quickly on to a sixty-one, reaching home in time for the Archers, and a welcome home supper with Clare. And now, a month's mail to read!
   

Return to Costa del Sol

I got up at half past six, and was out of the house with my luggage heading to the bus station by ten to seven. Half way there a 61 bus conveniently appeared and I took it the rest of the way there, and had plenty of time to get the seven twenty five Cardiff airport bus. Still, I believe, not enough promotion of this excellent half hour shuttle service is being done. There were only three others on board.

The airport seemed very quiet when I arrived to check in. I stopped immediately to drink the coffee I'd missed at breakfast time, and headed for the security bag check at ten past eight, only to find that there were over fifty people queuing, and only one of the three available bag scanners staffed and operational. The boarding call for the Vueling flight to Málaga was made just as I was cleared. That's thirty five minutes compared to ten in Bristol. The number of staff and scanners in Bristol is higher, matching the higher volume of traffic, but Cardiff's security portal is running at one third capacity. Staff are excellent, but being worked too hard for their own good. The new airport management has some catching up to do in order make the place attractive to customers and new airlines.

I sat next to a lady from Llanmaes going to stay in Nerja for a spell. It turned out she was Anglican, and parishioner of Llanmaes into the Llantwit Major Rectorial Benefice, not far from the airport. We talked intensely throughout the flight, as she has a long standing dedication to working internationally  with the Church's mission among Jewish people. Apart from the few occasions when I've fallen asleep on take off and awakened on landing, this is one of the only occasions where I had not a moment to enjoy the ride, staring out of the window. A fascinating conversation however.

Churchwarden Bill met me, as arranged, outside the main Arrival entrance door, and drove me to Fuengirola, where I met Val, the church secretary. We had lunch together, then went down to St Andrews church in the district of Los Boliches to pick up a Citroen C3 for me to drive for the day until the outgoing Chaplain's diesel C4 car is returned after his departure tomorrow. We had a brief look around the church, then Val escorted me to the apartment where I'll be staying, a couple of miles inland. 

I'm in this ground floor one bedroomed apartment. Here's a section of the Residence El Albañil, looking from the road below. My apartment is at garden level behind the hedge third from left.

And here's the view from the study window. More a place to contemplate than to work! Thankfully there is also a well equipped church office in town, about 3 miles away.

 After unpacking, I drove down to the nearest Mercadonna supermarket and stocked up with food. Later, I went back to St Andrew's Church in Los Boliches church, one the communes of Fuengirola, for an All Souls prayer service, led by lay Reader Linda and her husband Peter. I arrived early and went for a wander around the area, found another supermarket and bought a couple of essentials I'd forgotten first time around - onions and lemons.

It was dark by the time the service was over, and I missed my turning inland going back to the apartment, but eventually backtracked until I spotted a familiar portal I couldn't spot in the dark first time around at the street junction I needed. Only at this moment did it dawn on me that I hadn't properly memorised the address, and there was no map in the car, so I was relying entirely on landmarks registered in the two trips I'd made and nothing looks the same at night.

   

Anyway, I returned safely, and cooked a vegetable sauce with white beans to eat with pasta, before hunting down BBC Four wrongly marked on the Astra satellite menu, and watching Inspector Montalbano before heading to bed, tired but happy to be here, just hoping that my sermon prepared yesterday would be relevant in this new context.