13 May - Lisbon & Airports
Am rapidly becoming a convert to ‘No to air travel’. And not out of due care to the environment. I mean, I know only last week was complaining about having too much free time in London during a bank holiday w/end with no specific plans, but travelling for a w/end is silly. Yes it was lovely in Lisbon, sunnier than here and overall a perfect tonic with all the walking up and down hills involved and sampling of food and wine, but…
I started the journey on Friday by leaving work at 3pm and walked through the hotel door at 10pm (and Portugal is not an hour ahead so there’s 7 hours there), an hour of this was an excruciatingly slow queue at Lisbon passport control. The 2 official guys policing my queue took an average of 3 mins per person processed. They literally were keying in passport numbers into their machines for each passenger of the several hundreds stretching in front of them. They took 5 mins with me, couldn't find my perfectly recent barcoded passport details anywhere on their system.
The return was worse, the sight at Luton was tears inducing. Again, too few people at control though eventually these were more cheerfully waving us through or they’d have a riot on their hands (there were two dedicated officers for non EU passport holders of which there were only about a dozen Asian ones but no. they couldn’t suddenly start processing EU passport holders. I know because we asked. Apparently you have to complain to the home office, nothing to do with the airport in question. Maybe it is a covert way to make us stop using fuel/polluting the atmosphere? Is Prince Charles behind this fiendish way to tackle the problem?
So again, leave hotel at 7.30, walk through own front door at 1.30am. It’s just a total pain in the neck. I shall now refrain from travel for another 6 to 8 weeks at least. Oh no, shit have to go to Tuscany in late June. Darn. After that, I’ll try to stay put till December. Will that be possible? What with several invites to friends scattered across Europe and some birthdays and anniversaries that could be best celebrated in Prague or Paris or Moscow or Copenhagen or Stockholm or…Tough choice ahead. I know caravanning is still being pushed as trendy, started last year in fact, but that's still unpalatable to me.
I started the journey on Friday by leaving work at 3pm and walked through the hotel door at 10pm (and Portugal is not an hour ahead so there’s 7 hours there), an hour of this was an excruciatingly slow queue at Lisbon passport control. The 2 official guys policing my queue took an average of 3 mins per person processed. They literally were keying in passport numbers into their machines for each passenger of the several hundreds stretching in front of them. They took 5 mins with me, couldn't find my perfectly recent barcoded passport details anywhere on their system.
The return was worse, the sight at Luton was tears inducing. Again, too few people at control though eventually these were more cheerfully waving us through or they’d have a riot on their hands (there were two dedicated officers for non EU passport holders of which there were only about a dozen Asian ones but no. they couldn’t suddenly start processing EU passport holders. I know because we asked. Apparently you have to complain to the home office, nothing to do with the airport in question. Maybe it is a covert way to make us stop using fuel/polluting the atmosphere? Is Prince Charles behind this fiendish way to tackle the problem?
So again, leave hotel at 7.30, walk through own front door at 1.30am. It’s just a total pain in the neck. I shall now refrain from travel for another 6 to 8 weeks at least. Oh no, shit have to go to Tuscany in late June. Darn. After that, I’ll try to stay put till December. Will that be possible? What with several invites to friends scattered across Europe and some birthdays and anniversaries that could be best celebrated in Prague or Paris or Moscow or Copenhagen or Stockholm or…Tough choice ahead. I know caravanning is still being pushed as trendy, started last year in fact, but that's still unpalatable to me.
Labels: travel
posted by Lisa Taylor @ 7:38 AM
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