More (Port) Adventures in Salou - Travel Day

[HEMANCLOFTY]

More (Port) Adventures in Salou
Travel Day - Monday 28th May 2018 (Bank Holiday)

The index is here

Even though our flight wasn’t until this evening, the alarm was set nice and early for 7am, as I still had all the ironing and packing to do. I did get my usual Sunday treat of tea and toast in bed (made by Rich) first, and I actually got up at 8am to put the first of 2 tumble drier loads on (our drier only takes half a washing machine load).

I started ironing at 9am – taking about an hour to work through all of my stuff, and then another hour to do Rich and Tom’s (which was mainly t-shirts). We’d been shopping the day before, so there was a some haul to sort through too...

Mine was from Primark - £62 for all of this (plus the aqua cardi which was £8 from Asda)...

Rich's was from next - about £70 for these...

Once all the ironing was done, it took me about 45 minutes to work out the best configuration of our 1 case and 3 main cabin bags (plus we watch had or smaller cabin bag with iPad, phones etc). Eventually everything fit and I checked and double checked that we had enough chargers, adaptors and memory cards packed too.

Whilst I was in packing mode, Rich dropped Tom off to spend a bit of time with his mates at 11 and picking him just after 12. He also popped out for diesel and soft drinks for the journey and made us a packed lunch of ham cobs for us, a sausage roll for Tom, crisps and cereal / protein bars.

I had a final proper British cuppa at 12 and rang my mum for a quick catch up, and we were all ready to leave for the airport at 1 as planned...

East Midlands Airport is actually only 1 hour and 20 from our house, and as our flight wasn’t until 6:05 this was super-early, but with it being a bank holiday we didn’t want to take any chances with the traffic – especially as we’d left at 2 for the same flight in October and it had taken until about 4:45 to get to check in.

Rich had queued up a mini playlist on his iPad and, as is Huxwolds tradition, the first song was Holiday Road . This was followed by I Believe I Can Fly (cheesy I know). Song three had me a bit stumped – Galway Girl. I struggled for most of the song to find the link, until Rich finally put me out of my misery and admitted he’s got a bit bored of finding songs to match the trip. Song four was apt though: Barcelona (another Ed Sheeran) – this was one I hadn’t heard of before, but it was quite good.

Tom and I were already quite hungry by the time we got to the motorway, but Rich’s car is only a couple of months old and still a crumb-free zone, so he said he’d find somewhere to stop along the way and we ended up at Tamworth Services at about 1:50. Despite the rain (and floods) in the Midlands the previous day, it had turned out to be a really nice day, so we sat on the grassy area to eat our picnic.

We had one funny moment when I thought there was an albino worm crawling across the box of cobs, but it was just a rogue French Fry (crisp) that had come out of one of the packets – it made me scream though 😊

The boys popped to the loo, and Rich came back offering to get us a cake each from Greggs, but we were all full-up from our pic-nic. Plus we knew we’d be eating loads on the trip and needed to save the calories. On a side note, Rich and I have been watching our weight and trying to increase our exercise since the end of Feb – I’d managed to lose 16lbs and Rich had lost about 21lbs and, whilst we weren’t going to watch what we ate during the trip, we didn’t want to do doo much damage to our hard work).


Back to today – we were back on the M42 by 2:20, arriving at the Long Stay 1 car park at about 2:45 (I’d booked it from 2). We managed to find a spot pretty quickly in Row D but saw quite a few other cars driving around and around so we must’ve had the last available space. We had a 10-minute wait at Bus Stop 1 and arrived at the terminal at about 3:10...

Check in wasn’t open yet, but we hovered around the Ryan Air line, knowing that as soon as they called us there would be a rush. Typically, this happened just as Rich popped outside for a smoke, but me and Tom managed to move quickly with all of our bags and we were the 2nd family into the queue (of 3 flights that were opened up). We still had about a 10-minute wait as the 3 desks got through the rest of the queue from the earlier flights, so Rich was back with us in plenty of time.

The lady on the check in desk was really friendly, and we had a nice chat about my Primark sunglasses (a £1 bargain that I’d bought yesterday). Our main case did weigh in heavy at 22kg, so once our passports and boarding cards had been checked we had to step to the side whilst I popped into the next arrivals hall to pay £22 at the Ryan Air kiosk. Once I’d paid we just had to nip quickly back and the check in lady took our case, putting a Heavy sticker onto it.

Security was relatively pain free (although Rich did get pulled for an extra scan down as usual), and we had a quick browse as we walked through Duty Free, where I tried and really liked CK Eternity Air. Then we had a quick mooch around WH Smiths and grabbed some seats in the middle of the shopping area. Tom popped back to WH Smith to get us a drink each for the flight (Pepsi Max for Rich, Drench for me and some sort of Blueberry fizzy drink for Tom – total £6.40), and Rich popped upstairs to the smoking area.

At about 5:10 the gate still hadn’t been announced so we all popped upstairs for Rich to have another smoke and me and Tom to use the loos. As final boarding was due at 5:35 we were sure the gate would be open by now, but it wasn’t so we went straight back upstairs to get Tom a Burger King (Double Bacon Cheeseburger and Large Fries - £7.04). Sorry, no pic.. He let me pick at a few of his fries.

The gate finally opened at 5:40, and we had a bit of a trek around to Gate 18. It was very hot in the gate area, and the screen said that we were estimated to take off at 6:20 (15 mins late).

Whilst we were waiting, 2 staff members came around to check and process the cabin bags. We were told that all of ours were ok to keep with us. We also watched our plane arrive, unload, refuel and load up our cases and we actually got on board at about 6:25.

The Captain explained that we might have a further 25-minute delay due to Brussels ATC, but we actually took off at 6:45 (so a 40 minute delay in the end).

During the flight, we shared the bag of Pretzel Flips that we’d brought with us (£1 from Asda). Tom watched Ninja Turtles (which he’d downloaded on Netflix) and I did a few puzzles from my Puzzler mag. I pondered buying a bottle of the CK Eternity Air that I’d liked at the airport as it was only €27 – maybe on the way home!

The Captain announced that there was a thunder storm on landing, and it was quite cool to watch as we flew into the thick black clouds, followed by flash after flash of light. We heard one big bang and saw a fork of lightening just beyond the wing too – Tom was doing lots of fake scared faces. We landed safely though, and the Captain definitely deserved his applause for landing us smoothly in that.

It was raining as we got off the plane, but not too heavy and it was still quite warm. We were the 3rd family through immigration and then took it in turns to use the loos during the 15-minute wait for the baggage carousel to get started.

Rich spotted our case quickly and we were very quickly outside...

Rich had a quick smoke before we jumped into a taxi – spotting the camel back hills of Shambhala on the way. The taxi took about 15 minutes, getting us to our hotel (Dorada Palace) by 10:40. It was €32, but we paid €40.

Check in was quick and easy and everything was familiar after our October trip. We weren’t expecting our evening meal tonight due to our late arrival, but the check in colleague said that we could come to the restaurant for a cold buffet, as long as it was before 11:15pm (a nice bonus).

So, we did a quick bag drop in our room (436, looking over the 2nd pool) and were back down in the lobby by 10:50. I double checked with Reception whether we should go straight through to the restaurant. This lady said it would open at 11pm for us, so we grabbed a drink in the bar area as we were all thirsty (€6.40 for 2 cokes and a sprite) – the entertainment tonight was a mixture of the Logo Game and music, with all the crowd singing along to Sweet Caroline.

We headed round to the restaurant at 11, but there were no staff members. There was another Irish family waiting too, so we hung around for 5 minutes. Still noone about so I asked the barman, who said it would be “uno momento”, but still no one by 10-past. Then a 3rd family came and just walked in, so we and the Irish family followed.

There were tables set up with our room numbers on, and a selection of salads, cold meats, melba toast, rolls, fruit and desserts on the buffet counter. There was water on the tables for us too. We just cracked on and helped ourselves and it was actually a really nice late tea...

Afterwards we had a brief sit outside by the pool patio area whilst Rich had a smoke...

We headed back upstairs at 11:35, where I unpacked whilst the boys were on their iPads watching Netflix.

Rich dropped off around 12:30, but I couldn’t sleep so I put on an episode of How I Met Your Mother, which did the trick. I woke up at 3:30 and 6:00, but both times HIMYM got me back to sleep again .

Day 1 - PortAventura, is here

[inky1]

Sounds like you got off to a good start .
Looking forward to reading the rest of your report as we are looking at this for next year!
What were the prices like please?

[HEMANCLOFTY]

Originally Posted by inky1

Sounds like you got off to a good start .
Looking forward to reading the rest of your report as we are looking at this for next year!
What were the prices like please?

See more...

We booked with onthebeach.com and paid £1250 for flights and our 7 night stay at the hotel, which included breakfast and evening meal.

PortAventura tickets were £107 each for 7 day tickets.

So overall a bargain for a half-term holiday

[inky1]

Thanks .Definately a good price for half term but I meant price wise in resort ,beer ,restaurants etc we are also a family of three although our 13 year old son probably eats more than us two put together lol.

[frozenfan97]

Great start to the trip.

[Cazzius]

What a smooth start. A shame about the late take off and arrival but so nice of the hotel to put on a late buffet for your supper.

Looking forward to reading the rest of your Spanish half term adventure

[HEMANCLOFTY]

Originally Posted by inky1

Thanks .Definately a good price for half term but I meant price wise in resort ,beer ,restaurants etc we are also a family of three although our 13 year old son probably eats more than us two put together lol.

See more...

We didnt buy any alcohol in the parks, but found the food and drinks very reasonable - some days we shared 2 meals between 3 (approx €20) and if we all had a main meal it would be under €30 - these prices included a large Coke (€4.20), which we always shared as 1 was more than enough.

Tom is also a 13yo with a healthy appetite

Just checked a few receipts and a few example prices are below...

500ml Bottle of Coke - €3.20
Bottle of water - €2.50
Ice cream (Carte Dor) - €3.30
Crepe with ice cream - €4.75
Cheese & Ham toastie - €3.95
Plate of bolgnaise pasta - €5.00
Bread roll - 60c
Chicken Fingers & Chips - €6.95
Burger & Chips - €8ish
Bag of crisps (Doritos / Ruffles) - €1.70
Tub of Pop Corn - €2.95 (I think, can't find the receipt for that one)

We found the meals at Ferrari-land approx €1 more than Portaventura & Costa Caribe, but we all thought these were the nicest of what was all good for theme park food.

We also took our own cans of pop and bottles of water from the supermarket, which saved us loads. Cans were as cheap as 38c and water from 29c a bottle. We only got stopped from taking them in our our last day, and even then they didn't spot the can in Rich's pocket or check our smaller bag. And no one ever looked underneath jumpers etc.

I did take quite a few menu board pics, so I'll try to include them on the relevant days.

Hope this helps

[inky1]

Thank you that’s really helpful,
Looking forward to hearing about the rest of your trip.

[EJSakaAnna]

Well done on the weight loss Ems, you look fab! Sounds like a great travel day x