Something Different - Salou / PortAventura - Travel Home Day

[HEMANCLOFTY]

Something Different - Salou / PortAventura (Oct 17)

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Travel Home Day – Friday 27th October

Today was coming home day and, as our flight was 12pm, we didn’t have time to do much other than have breakfast and finish packing.

I’d set the alarm for 7:30am, but I woke up at 6:30am. I did manage to fall back asleep pretty quickly after using the loo and then slept through until the alarm went off.

Last morning sunrise shots...

Rich said that he didn’t fancy any breakfast today, so it was just Tom and I – popping down at about 8:30am to fill our boots for the journey home. Not one to break with our usual routine, we sorted out our drinks first (tea for me and OJ for Tom) and used them to hold our table.

Tom headed for the cereal whilst I joined the queue at the omelette station, where we’d spotted that the chef was also making mini pancakes, which Tom fancied.

The pancakes were very popular, so there was a bit of a wait. I counted, and the chef was making about 48 at a time. By the time I was at the front of the queue, Tom had finished his cereal and had come to find me, and I’d decided that the pancakes looked so nice that I was going to have some too. I got 5 with strawberry syrup for me and 4 with chocolate syrup for Tom. We both absolutely loved them and Tom upgraded his breakfast rating to 7/10 (If only we’d spotted them on day 1!).

As the pancakes were quite filling, I skipped the hot option today, but did have a couple of the lovely mini chocolate and custard croissants from yesterday and my usual bowl of peaches and yoghurt (which was the only pic I got this morning)...

We decided to sneak a cheeky cheese sandwich back to the room for Rich, which we wrapped in a napkin and put in Tom’s bag – he really appreciated this.

By 9:20am I was sat on the balcony enjoying a final 10 minutes chilling whilst Rich was getting ready...

Once he was done, I finished packing the toiletries and we were down in the lobby checking out, returning the safe lock (getting our €10 deposit back) and ordering our taxi by 9:50am.

I look a couple of lobby pics whilst we were waiting for our taxi to arrive (which wasn’t long at all)...

We were being dropped off at Reus airport by 10:15am. The taxi was €29 which we rounded up to €35. It was a teeny tiny little airport, with the check in desks and security in one hall and the departure gates just beyond the security line. You could see PortAventura in the distance beyond the drop-off area (can you see it?)...

There were quite a lot of families with cases waiting at the Ryan Air check in desk, and we waited about 40 minutes to drop off our bag. It felt like a long wait, as it was hot and I was feeling a bit sicky

NB – there were similar length queues for the Jet2 and Tui flights, which went down much faster than our Ryan Air one, but I suppose you get what you pay for.

Once we’d finally dropped off our case, Rich popped outside for a final pre-flight nicotine fix whilst Tom and I nipped to the loos. Then we went through the very short security line into the departures area, where there was a small restaurant and an even tinier Duty Free / shop.

We had just about enough time to get some cigarettes for Rich (€58 for 200 B&H, which we put on my card), and to pop into the restaurant where we paid €3.10 each for a Coke and a Sprite, €1.85 for a small bag of Jamon Ruffles. I also picked up a bottle of water and some chewing gum to settle my stomach. I didn’t make a note of the cost of these, but the whole lot came to €16 – which made us appreciate how reasonable the prices in PortAventura were.

This final purchase left us with €15 left over, which meant that we spent €441 in total – so not too bad at all!

At the gate we had to go past a booth where our passports where checked, then we had to walk outside, past about 4 other planes to our which was at the end...

We were on board and in our seats by 11:30am – and the flight was pretty full...

The crew started their announcements at 11:40am, during which Rich was quietly shushed as we were deep in conversation about a possible February 18 DLP trip .

We took off 10 minutes early at 11:50am and the view was lovely – Tom had the window seat, so used my phone to take some pics as we flew out over the coast and mountains...

I finished off the Wimpy Kid book that I’d started reading on the flight out, which took me about 30 minutes. I was feeling a lot better now, so I tucked into my Ruffles and one of the chocolate croissants that we had left over from our room snacks...

I spent the rest of the flight writing up my trippie notes, getting to the point where we were leaving Ferrari Land (yesterday) by the time we had to put our tray tables up ready for landing.

We landed at EMA 5 minutes early at 1:05pm (UK time)...

We got onto 1 of 2 waiting buses, only to be faced with a very slow moving 45-minute immigration queue (according to the baggage claim signs there were about 8 flights landing at similar times). We really hadn’t expected this, so found it quite frustrating! At least at MCO you expect the wait, so can be mentally prepared for it!

There were some self service kiosks, which hardly anyone was using as kids under 12 couldn’t use them. By this time (over 40 mins into our wait), we weren’t prepared to risk being caught up by a dodgy machine so held out for the last few minutes for the manual immigration check. Rich was quite frustrated by this point, knowing what the M42, M6 and M5 were like on Friday afternoons, and we were getting very close to peak time (it was almost 2pm).

The one plus side of a long immigration queue was that our case was on the carousel by the time we got to it. Tom grabbed the case and then Rich sped ahead to have a cigarette whilst Tom and I took it in turns to watch the case and use the loo before going out to find him.

As luck would have it, we only had to wait 2 minutes for the carpark shuttle bus, and we were in the car by 2:30pm, with Google Maps telling us we’d be home by 4:05pm (Rich was convinced it would be at least 5pm though).

We saved a few minutes by taking the back roads out of Castle Donington and cutting out a bit of the A42, and we were home by 4:10pm in the end, so not too bad after all!

[Mortimer Mouse]

Nice report. I've enjoyed reading along, especially as I know absolutely nothing about Port Adventura. Looks like a good alternative to DLP.

Thanks for posting.

[HEMANCLOFTY]

Originally Posted by Mortimer Mouse

Nice report. I've enjoyed reading along, especially as I know absolutely nothing about Port Adventura. Looks like a good alternative to DLP.

Thanks for posting.

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Thanks for reading along

[margyloveswdw]

Great little trip report - interesting to read now as we've just returned from a weekend in Majorca and are considering a week away at end of April and DH did suggest Port Aventura so am going to have a look at the hotel you stayed at!

[HEMANCLOFTY]

Originally Posted by margyloveswdw

Great little trip report - interesting to read now as we've just returned from a weekend in Majorca and are considering a week away at end of April and DH did suggest Port Aventura so am going to have a look at the hotel you stayed at!

See more...

Thanks for reading along - if you do head to Salou I hope you have a great time