Sunday, July 04, 2004

Journey to Brazil

Not a good trip!

A two hour delay in the Aer Lingus flight from Dublin meant that we missed out connection in London. Several hours of going from Billy to Jack around Heathrow ensued. We got booked on Iberia to Rio via Madrid for the next day because the next British Airways flights were already full. British Airways couldn't book us a hotel though, saying we were Aer Lingus' responsibility, and by the time we got back to Aer Lingus they had gone home and abandoned us. So we had to find our own hotel. We got three hours sleep. Went to the airport good and early, got to Madrid and eventually onto a flight to Rio. More rushing around Madrid too!
At least we got here, only 10 hours late and exhausted and with no luggage.

We are about 250 euro down due to hotels and meals and taxis but we can apparently claim that back off Aer Lingus.

Impulse Buy

To top it all off I made a stupid impulse purchase in Madrid just before getting on the plane. It was a GBA game I was looking for called "Sword of Mana". Unfortunately I didn't check the languages, this cartridge only supports Spanish and Italian! Also, unlike advertised, it is not the sort of game you can play without reading the text. I thought it was one of those sword hacking jobs, but it's a bit more complex than that.

Anyway, I'll sell it half price, 20 euros, any takers?

On to more pleasant things...

Now I'm relaxing in Brazil. I can't drink any caipirinhas for about four days as I need to finish another course of antibiotics (keeping the pneumonia in check). At least I'll have good weather, good food, no work, a change of scene, and good company. We'll see how I take to Rio without alcohol, the acid test for any city! To be honest this is one test Dublin never passed.