Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Many Thanks to Iceland.

I had been wondering how everything had been going so perfectly for me. Ofcourse, there have been a few ups and downs, a few nights i'd rather not repeat, and a few mishaps - but for the most part, life has been extraordinarily good to me lately. I was rather excited to spend a weekend in Amsterdam and Brussels with some of my favourite people, we had lists of activities planned, and, well, I really wanted bagels. But all of a sudden, the Volcano had to go and shut down the airports. It would be this weekend, wouldn't it? It couldn't have chosen a time when I was happily wandering around Barcelona? No, it had to be this weekend.
To make the most of our cancelled flights, we re-routed our get away to Palma de Mallorca. Mallorca is a Balearic Island, and happens to be where I spent my first birthday. It was no-where i'd planned to visit on my trip, and no-where I was too excited to go. But, when you're making the most of things, you take what you can get. We arrived to sunshine, and headed straight to the beach. It was picture-perfect. The kind you find in a magazine, and don't believe actually exists. We fell asleep to the sound of the waves, and awoke to meet some fun-loving local boys. Our weekend was paradise. Danielle, Annie, Kaitlin & I wandered the town, climbed along the rocks, and explored the nightlife. Mallorca was so much more than i'd expected.


As our weekend came to a close, we headed to the airport. It is quite a funny feeling to look up, expecting to find your gate number, and instead to see every.single.flight CANCELLED. The ash had moved over, and BCN and Palma airports were shut down. Finding another option, we headed down to the port to see if we could book a ferry. But, so did the other 200 people trying to get off the island. After standing in line for an hour and a half, and getting pretty much no-where, we lost hope of getting home any time soon. Finally, a silver lining to our dismal day... the airport had reopened. Thinking we would probably get a flight for tuesday morning, we headed over to see what we could sort out. We got the last four seats on the one flight flying to BCN in 20 minutes. We ran through that airport like we were being chased.

Being in the airport made me think of the way the world will end,
everyone sitting, trying to think of a way out, a way home,
but in reality, knowing there is nothing they can do.

2 comments:

  1. fatalistic ending there much?!

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  2. it's true though. some form of human enhanced natural disaster takes over. internet stops being updated, phone lines are cut, every form of transportation is completely booked, everyone just sits and waits, thinking of impossible ways home, no-one looks at the bigger picture.

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