• PhilHawley.com/blog
  • PhilHawley.com/blog
  • PhilHawley.com/blog
  • PhilHawley.com/blog
  • PhilHawley.com/blog

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Ryanair fails again!

Well I had a few more posts in the bag before this one but I am in a hotel room that I do not want to be in, in a place I am not supposed to be in, all because of Ryanair.

Well, my Dad is ill, badly ill, he was until a couple of days ago in intensive care with a new problem on top of the ongoing lung problems.  So I decided to come back from Moscow earlier than I aimed to, as soon as I could after getting my new visa so I could return, so after getting a new visa I rescheduled my flight back to the uk with BMI, then booked the best flight in terms of convenience that turned out to be with Ryanair. I have had my issues with them in the past so I have refused to fly with them for around 10 years until a few months ago when I had to fly with them due to a similar situation and was pleasantly surprised, so I booked with them again, and got my wife to do the same when she decided to come with me.

So, we arrived and checked into what is laughingly called Bournemouth International airport, went through security to told a few minutes before we were due to board that the flight was delayed by 2hrs and 1o minutes, this was fine as we were comfortable, and I had internet access on my laptop via my mobile phone.  It was a little later than that and we were informed of this, again fine.  When we finally got on the plane to take our seats, as it is a free-for-all system we sat down to be shouted at my a rather tired looking air stewardess that she was holding the seats for a group.  This is agianst the rules of the airline, and the group failed to materialise, so my wife and I were far from each other for no good reason.

After the plane stood there for a while I asked if I could go to the toilet, the stewardess said we were not moving for a while, so of course it would be fine.  I went to a toilet that I was assured had remained closed for this flight until then to find pee all over the floor and in the toilet bowl, and used tissues spread around so I took these photos on my mobile phone:-

After about 20 mins of discovering the hygiene issues of a newly ‘cleaned’ Ryanair plane we were told the flight was cancelled due to a strike by air traffic controllers, this obviously unforseen, or was it? Well the same flight two nights earlier was cancelled as the strikes had been happening all week, so not so unforseen.  When we got off the plane there were no Ryanair representatives as we were told on the plane, instead we dealt with servisair groundstaff who told us to go home, and we ‘may’ get a refund if we chose not to travel the next day.  Well, we live in Moscow, they basically accused us of lying about that at first, and the same again about my Dad being in hospital, then eventually said we could travel on the re-scheduled flight, or ‘try’ to reclaim the lost money for that flight, and not the cost of the newly re-booked flight which of course would be much more.  They then said at this point to book into a ‘cheap hotel’ giving no indication of what was considered ‘cheap’ by Ryanair, or else  Ryanair probably would not reimburse us the hotel cost or the taxi cost.  So when we got out to get a taxi there was a huge queue, again Ryanair did not provide transport, it had to come out of our pocket, and here we are in the ‘nearest’ hotel.

So the moral of the story so far, NEVER travel with Ryanair…….I will continue this tomorrow after the replacement flight, with more adevntures seeing if someone finally cleaned the toilets, and the rude staff got any nicer.

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Breaking the Ice on the Moskva

Whilst Lou and did a boat cruise on the River Moskva in the summer (on Moscow day) on a small boat with about 20 other people, in the winter this isn’t possible, however there is a longer cruise on an icebreaker.  These are larger glass enclosed boats, where you can have lunch or dinner depending on the time, and at least this winter the price was 1500 rubles (but we did have a group of 11, so might be more expensive for smaller group).  So this Sunday Lou and I went with a bunch of friends on the afternoon cruise (2pm), and although I was a bit tired from the previous day’s activities after a couple of beers, and some ‘fresh’ air I felt great.  Seeing the ice crack as the boat broke pushed through was interesting, and the seeing the buildings of Moscow from the river was interesting, especially on such a clear day with the sun low in the sky, it was also great to get some decent photos too.

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Moscow by night…….And Day

Last week we tried to have a wander around Moscow at night time to take some photos, but the temperature dropped rapidly as we approached the river, but luckily by this time we had already gone through Red Square to take a few photos, and so we made our way home via Ulitsa Varvarka.  The only problem I had apart from the cold was there was a fair amount of snow in the air and a lot of lights lighting up the buildings, causing a haze on some of the long exposure night photos.

A few days later on Saturday 6th February we got up early and caught the metro to Kropotkinskaya to see the mising sun light up the Cathedral of Christ our Saviour from the footbridge over the river Moskva, from here over the river and a short walk down Bersenevskaya Naberezhnaya to the Bolshoy Kamenny Most and walked back across the river down by the river in front of the Kremlin walls then back up to Kitai Gorod to home.  The sun had just risen and was low in sky, there were som e amazing colours which you can see from the photos.

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Walking in a winter wonderland – Serebryanyy Bor

The weekend after we returned to Moscow we went to visit a colleague of Lou’s and his Family who live in a reidential area of a park in Moscow – Serebryanyy Bor.  By the time we were walking around the sun was dropping so there were some fantastic colours in the sky.

The park itself is on an island on the River Moscow to the west of the city, has a number of private residences, and a large number of small paths crossing through the forest.  It seems like a popular location with cross-country skiers, we even saw an older lady being pulled along on her skis by a huge Mastiff dog, which had our friends’ rideback puppy cowering when it pulled its master over to greet the pup.

Another interesting site on the park was that all the waterways were frozen over with thick ice, but a ’swimming pool’ had been cut out of the ice, and as we were finishing looking around the area a guy was stripping off to go for a dip in the pool, madness!!

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The Finca Project – Part 1

20091230_Fortuna_023

My brother and his wife already have one great house in Fortuna, Murcia, Spain, but they have been on the look out for new possibilities for a while, and in the summer they bought a new place.  It is an old wrecked Finca (Spanish Farm) with one other wrecked building on the grounds, and 9 acres of land, mostly with Olive and Almond trees.

The two times I was in Spain in December/January I visited the property, it has beautiful views as you can see below, in does have lots and lots of trees on the land at the moment, and has some great features in the old farmhouse.  It has beautiful traditional Spanish beams, old vats used for olive and/or wine pressing, and some of the rooms make up a ‘cave-house’ that is typical of the area of Spain.

So I intend on recording the stages of renovation in pictures, even though it might take several years.

Click the pictures to see them in full.

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