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Old 11 Aug 19, 06:38 PM  
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HEMANCLOFTY
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An Adults Only (Port)Adventure - Travel Home Day, Summary & Future Plans

An Adults Only (Port)Adventure
Travel Home Day – Friday 5th July
(Plus a Summary & our Future Plans)


The Index is here
Day 3 is here


I woke up before the alarm this morning, so watched an episode of Friends on Netflix and the end of an episode of New Girl that I’d started yesterday.

We went down for breakfast at 8am, booking a taxi for 9am as we passed Reception.

Rich popped out for a smoke so I joined him and took some pics at the front of the hotel...









I had my usual of bacon, tortilla and beans, followed by a coupe of pastries and some fruit and yoghurt, with 2 cappuccinos…







Rich also had his usual – sausages with tortilla and bread and a few pastries with an OJ (I actually managed to get a pic of his today)...



Back up to the room by 8:30am and I quickly packed the last few bits and did a final room / safe check / balcony pics and it was time to go...





We were back in Reception by 8:50am – I just had to hand in the safe key to get our deposit back and, oops, I’d packed the deposit slip again (I did exactly the same thing last year). I explained to the Receptionist what I’d done and that our taxi was due any minute now so there was no time to open up the suitcase to look for it. Thankfully she agreed to give me my €10 back.

By the time I got outside to meet Rich (who’d been having a cigarette), our taxi was here. We arrived at the airport at 9:15am – the fare was €29, but we gave the driver €35, leaving us with €25 for airport bits and bobs...



Port Aventura in the distance...



When I opened up our boarding passes in the Ryan Air app, I realised that I’d made a mistake – our flight was at 11:50am, not 11:05am as I’d thought – oops. No worries, we had plenty of drinks to get through (4 cans and a big bottle of water) and we’d have only been hanging around in the hotel lobby anyway.

I popped inside to weigh our case – it was 18kg, so I squeezed in a couple of extra bits that had been in my tote bag.

We sat for a while and then joined the Ryan Air bag-drop queue at 9:45am. It wasn’t open yet but quite a few people were queuing, so we thought we may as well. I checked flightstats.com and saw that our flight was delayed again – this time by 1 hour 32. There was no mention of this on any of the boards / screens though.

Bag-drop opened at 10am. With the extra bits I’d squeezed in, the case now weighed in at 18.5kg 😊.

We popped outside for a bit whilst Rich had another cigarette, and I wandered up to Arrivals to take a pic of the fighter jet…



There was still no sign of the delay on the Departure Boards, so we went through Security at 10:30am.

We popped into Duty Free and spent a bit of time trying perfume and aftershave. We also picked up some gifts - a Tin of Chocolates for Mom and some Biscuits for Aunty Wynn (€15.20)…







I had just enough change left to get a bottle of water from the vending machine (€1.75), which left us with a €10 note and 22c in change...



We sat by our gate (8) for a while, reading a magazine and texting Tom (he’d had a great week and was enjoying his last couple of hours before setting off for a 23-hour coach journey home at 4pm).

At 10:45pm I got a text from Ryan Air confirming that our flight was delayed until 1:25pm. There was still no sign of this on the Departure Screens or any announcement in the airport.

At 12:20pm there was an announcement to say that our gate was now 12 (still no mention of the delay though) – everyone was queuing, and as Rich fancied standing up for a change, we joined it (even though we knew it would be a while).

We watched as our plane arrived at 12:50pm, at which point the crew started scanning our boarding passes and sent us to wait outside whilst the inbound passengers were unloading. Within 5 minutes we were boarding…







One final view of PortaAventura and Shambhala...



We were in seats 28 B & C and, bonus, seat A (the window seat) was empty 😊.

Rich dozed for most of the flight, so I got to make the most of having two seats to myself and the window (im usually stuck in the middle seat). I took some pics of the mountains & Channel Islands below us…









I read the rest of my trashy magazine and finished off my trippie notes, getting to this point by 2:20pm, which was almost time for landing.

Coming in to land over the M1...



I didn’t write any more notes from this point, but we would have landed at around 2:40pm. Security at EMA was quicker than usual and I think we were through and had collected our case by about 3pm. Rich nipped straight outside for a cigarette whilst I popped into WHSmith to get him a Pepsi Max Cherry and to Greggs to get a “proper” Cappuccino for me...



We had about a 5-minute wait for the shuttle bus and an uneventful drive home 😊.

Summary & Future Plans:

We absolutely loved our little Adults Only (Port)Adventure – it's something that we would have never done had Tom not been away with school though. It helped us with the anxiety of him being away for a whole week, keeping busy and knowing that we were only a couple of hours drive away from him if he needed us (not that he did).

I loved spending quality time with Rich, and we’d do it again if the opportunity comes up, but we did really miss the 3rd member of our trippie cast.

We definitely struggled with the warmer July weather – it hit 32oC most days and we could really feel the difference to the low-mid 20s of our May and October previous trips - Definitely no Florida in August on the cards for us any more!

Port Aventura was amazing as usual. It remains one of our favourite theme parks in the world (even if our beloved Shambhala has been knocked off the top coaster spot by Taron at Phantasialand). We really enjoyed Midnight closing - riding Shammy B in the dark was awesome and Hurakan Condor at night was a surprise highlight too. The new Sesame Street, Street Mission is a world-class dark ride and I wouldn’t be surprised if a version of it popped up at some point in the Sesame Street area at SeaWorld.

Hotel Dorada Palace was great, as usual. We love it’s location and, unless there is a really good deal at one of the onsite resorts, we’ll definitely be returning.

We love Salou – we aren’t really sit on the beach all day people, but we always enjoy our walks along the beach front, and its nice that you can just pop down for an hour as it's only a 10 minute walk.

Roadhouse has kept it’s place as our favourite restaurant – Jonny and the team there are great and the food is spot on.

Will we go back to Goretti after a 3rd poor service experience? Probably, the pizzas are really good.

So, what’s next for the Huxwolds?

In just 9 days’ time we’ll be off on our next adventure – a week-long Germany / Netherlands road trip, doing Europa Park, Phantasialand, Efteling and Walibi Holland and we can’t wait. Look out for my “Europa Parks(s): Planes, Coaster-Trains & Autobahns” trippie coming soon 😊.

Thanks for reading along and sharing this (Port)Adventure with us 😊

Edited at 12:11 PM.
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Old 11 Aug 19, 09:51 PM  
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I’ve enjoyed reading along, looking forward to the next trippie
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Old 11 Aug 19, 10:22 PM  
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Originally Posted by Cutiepie View Post
I’ve enjoyed reading along, looking forward to the next trippie
Thanks so much for reading, I'm glad you enjoyed it

We're so excited about our next adventure - we've been finalising route plans, hotels and car hire tonight (in between uploading all the photos on here) - so should hopefully have enough to cobble-together a pre-trippie by next weekend
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Old 12 Aug 19, 09:50 PM  
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Lovely little trippie thank you glad you had such a good time!
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Old 15 Aug 19, 09:38 PM  
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Originally Posted by Loopylooloo View Post
Lovely little trippie thank you glad you had such a good time!
Thank you 😀👍😀
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Old 18 Aug 19, 02:27 AM  
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Always love your trippies 😊
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Old 18 Aug 19, 12:10 PM  
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Originally Posted by sparks1 View Post
Always love your trippies 😊
Aw, thank you so much
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