I expected a Canary, I got a Turkey

Blame early morning check-ins. Blame sloppy staff who haven't checked the tickets properly. Don't, whatever you do, blame the passengers for not paying attention to where they were being shipped. It sounds to me like they're annoyed enough already.

Actually, we shouldn't be assigning blame, but thanks - this one's a purler!

A family setting off on a five-star holidays travelled 2,000 miles out of their way after they were given boarding passes for the wrong flight.

Charlie Coray, his wife, Tania, and daughter, Phoebe, 9, were caught in a mix-up at a check-in desk before their week's holiday in the Canary Islands.The family realised the mistake only after the plane landed and the air stewardess announced: “Welcome to Turkey”.

An investigation was started after it emerged that the family were given the wrong boarding passes at Cardiff airport for their holiday in Lanzarote. Mrs Coray, 44, a teacher, said: “It was unbelievable. I know they send luggage to the wrong places but not people.” Mr Coray, 47, an engineer, said: “It was about 6.30 in the morning when we arrived at Cardiff airport and we were directed to the check-in desk. We did not realise that more than one flight was being checked in there. We were half-asleep. When we were called to the gate we gave them our boarding passes, got on the plane and fell asleep.”

The Corays, from Llanishen, Cardiff, had booked an all-inclusive holiday with First Choice in a five-star hotel. Instead they arrived at Bodrum airport where they had to pay a £10 visa charge per person before boarding a plane back to Cardiff.

RELATED LINKS

• Holiday hell for travel companies

They have accepted First Choice's offer of a holiday in Ibiza because they could not get a flight to Lanzarote.A spokesman for the handling agents Servisair apologised and said that the staff member who accepted them on to the wrong flight had been suspended pending a hearing. A spokeswoman for First Choice said that an investigation was under way and that the Coray family would be refunded in full for any additional expenses incurred.

A cheap holiday in someone else's misery

We have an ongoing credit crunch. Some might call it a recession. Whatever language you choose to employ, certainly there's not much money left over for luxuries like vacations right now.

So who has decided to start pitching for your hard-earned holiday cash?

Why, the Iraqi tourist board, of course!

And you thought you already knew about the silliest holiday idea ever.

Hassan alFayath, a spokesman for the Iraq Tourism Ministry, points out one little drawback you might otherwise overlook

“War is never good for tourism...”

But he shares with many of his fellow Iraqis an indefatigable optimism

“...but I think things will get better.”

Of course Hassan might be overlooking one other small point, which is that once the US Department of Homeland Security get a look at that big fat 'Iraq' stamp in your passport, that trip to Disneyland is probably off.

Which, depending on your frame of mind, might not be such a bad thing....


(T-Shirt from Fat American)

StayCations - The debate hots up

The second you get a nice trend going, there's always someone who comes along to decry it.

The person decrying the StayCation thing is a pleasant-looking lady from St.Louis called Aisha Sultan.

I think her problem might be that she's looking for a traditional holiday experience - and that's precisely what I (and many others) strive to avoid.

Proponents of these staycations tell us to: Rediscover the hidden treasures in your hometown! Visit local attractions! Eat luxurious dinners! 

In reality, a staycation, one-tank trip, holi-stay, whatever you want to call it — is just depressing. It's also a slippery slope. It's too easy to start eyeing your disorganized closets and the messy garage. It's not a vacation when you can walk into your kitchen and see a stack of dirty dishes. And, it's too easy to fritter the nights away watching reruns of "Law & Order."

The thing is, if you're ever going to get your house straight, then this is the time to do it. You're too knackered after a day's work and the weekends are just too damn short. One decent pub lunch can pretty much consume half a weekend if you do it right. Throw in a barbecue on the Sunday and you're done.

Of course if you don't want to tidy up your house Aisha, then don't. No-one's judging you. You can be as messy as you like. Besides, with all that money you've saved by not going on holiday you could always get a cleaner or something.

And you make frittering a night away in front of the telly sound like a bad thing. Personally, Battlestar Galactica, The Sopranos, and The Mighty Boosh are my pile of DVD poison but if you want to watch Law and Order then watch away, my St.Louis friend. Watch Law and Order until your eyes bubble. It's not like you have to get up in the morning.

And remember, you'll be minted. You can go our for luxurious meals. Meals are ace, try a few. Plus, because you're at home, you can always get a babysitter, if you're the more fertile type of lady.

Fly the empty skies

Not a travel story as such, given that no-one's actually travelling, but it seems some airlines are running empty planes on scheduled routes rather than give up the slots that they evidently can't fill.

So, next time you calculate the carbon footprint of your holiday double it, because chances are that the airline will have made a few dummy runs just so they could be ready at the airport when you need them.

Doesn't that feel good?

Picture of the Day

Not sure what relevance this has, but I like it..

You know where it's from

The StayCation meme spreads & diversifies..

We Are Storytellers is running a StayCation theme month at the moment, with a forum, hand-made postcards from home and all sorts of crazy.

The 'home holiday' idea is really picking up now. Of course I'm not so arrogant as to claim it was all my idea.

But it was.

I started a joke..

I must confess, when I started work on Sod Abroad, all those months ago (actually, now I think of it, it’s a big hole out of two years but then I did suspend operations briefly to work on Shopping While Drunk) I didn’t honestly believe anyone would ever agree with any of my points.

It was intended principally as a sort of amusing Deb.Soc. conjuring trick wherein I raised an untenable argument and then attempted to stand it up with a series of entertaining essays, comical pop-culture-inspired lists and the odd unscientific equation.

Now, one apparently unpredictable credit crunch later, all sorts of grown-ups are reporting that the phenomenon I thought I’d invented to raise a few chuckles is in fact for many people a genuine and necessary response as the walls of recession close in like that enormous garbage disposal thingy in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (as we’re obliged to now call it).

The inimitable Simon de Bruxelles, in The Times, gives the phenomenon a name:

"Welcome to the “staycation”, which experts expect to be the trend as families who cancel or cut back their holiday plans opt to stay at home during their summer break"

An associated article quotes John O’Connor, a Somerset shipping manager:

“The cost of everything is rising and we are starting to feel the pinch. A holiday is a big outlay so unfortunately it’s the first thing we can afford to go without. Holidays in Europe seem very expensive at the moment because of the exchange rate and we were very surprised at the cost of self-catering breaks in England"

Meanwhile, Jeff Randall in the Telegraph observes that:

For me, Britain's finest hour comes just as the dash abroad begins. It is only then that one realises how much nicer life would be if our cities were not so crowded.

Peter Riddell has all the hard stats on the thing, if hard stats are your kind of thing:

"Nearly three out of five of us say that we intend to cut back our summer holiday plans because of financial pressures"

I would love to pretend that I saw all this coming. Of course if I had, even for a moment, I’d have been doing something clever on the stock market instead of wasting my weekends writing comic essays for your amusement.

Still. All the same.

I told you so.