I’ve spent a considerable amount of time doing the whole online marketing thing in one form or another – and to be honest, despite all the hype and ‘specialist’ chatter, nothing in online marketing is really anything new – people have been doing the same kind of things in shops, retail operations and companies for years, just in a more traditional sense.

In the last company I worked for, link building was a staple of their daily online marketing activities. It seemed like nothing more than an aggressive throwback to business association networking evenings, with the difference that in this case, you skip nearly all the pleasantries. Likewise, optimising for search engines – if you think about it, yes it takes some work, yes it’s new ground for a lot of people and it’s constantly shifting. But really, it’s a little bit like if you want to rent out a shop unit in a shopping centre – then you obviously want to be where the crowd are, as opposed to in the basement. What’s new about that? The only difference is, if the shopping centre was owned by Google, then you’d come in one day to find your shop was in the basement regardless to make way for a more popular shop.

Anyway, as is the usually problem with my attention span dwindling, I’ll get back to my main point – the article on A/B testing. If you think about it, shops have been at this for years – mixing up the aisles all of a sudden, seemingly overnight, and then checking out what people think. Some shops have been arranged differently, and so on until they find something that works – having the bakery near the front for example so the smell wafts out. And that’s basically what this is – you try something with one group of people and see what they think, and if it turns out they like it better than what you have at the moment, then you change it.

The problem with the internet is it’s made complicated by how far down you want to divide up the groups to test – age group, country they’re coming from, source (i.e. search engine referral, etc). But in one way or another, it’s been on the go for years as well for sites with any considerable traffic to them. It’s also tricky to know when it’s useful for – on this blog where I don’t really sell anything, what would I test for? I could try putting the adsense or the affiliate banners in the middle of the page and see if I could pull in a few more dollars – but with traffic on the site so small, it’d hardly make any difference considering the effort involved.

But on the other hand, I’m running an article directory and I need it filled with content (I don’t actually, there’s a world of spammers out there doing the job for me) – then having a ‘Post an article’ button right in the centre of the page where it can’t be missed might be relevant. So then it might be something to test for. This website from the article professes to make the actual testing – something which I used to spend considerable time doing – much faster and much simpler, and to be honest it looks great having toyed around with it for half an hour. Provided, as I say, it doesn’t create a whole breed of thousands of me-too services overnight (it probably will).

But at the end of the day, for now, I have neither the time nor the money to seriously play around with this on my own sites – although the website mentioned in the article, Optimizely is very cool and something I’d love to consider if the above mentioned issues weren’t as pressing. For now though, has anyone tried this out? Thoughts?

Dublin's Terminal 3, possibly?!

A couple of years ago I was ranting and raving about the whole Aer Lingus thing complaining that it wasn’t being sold, and what a waste. Then, I had some sort of epiphany during my trips back and forth to Germany and realised that it really does provide an ‘alternative’ service from Ryanair, no matter how much more the price is, and that the service is simply superior – and getting better – and that sometimes price just isn’t the be-all and end-all.

So, why do I think this is such a positive step? Well don’t get me wrong – it won’t be at all a positive step in the slightest if the Government continues to maintain absolutely no intention of letting go. I know it’s a national treasure that sits close to our hearts along with the Rock of Cashel and Copperface Jacks’ nightclub, but seriously; Etihad is as good as it’s going to get. If it was down to me, I’d be doing a cash deal with them first thing tomorrow and they could have the whole lot. Don’t get me wrong, the management in the place at the moment seem to be doing a fine job and I’m pleased that they’ve really put forth the ‘service’ aspect, because everyone knew that Aer Lingus was never going to be as cheap as Ryanair, no matter how hard they tried, were they? I mean it’s like trying to ask Superquinn to be as cheap as Lidl at every price.

Etihad - "Grr, Emirates...let's buy a bunch of small regionals until we have more planes than them!"

So, yes, I think the service aspect is where they should be going – and from personal experience, rude staff in Dublin aside, Etihad seem to have it pretty much nailed. The aircraft are modern, the food and drink is (complementary and…) excellent, service is top-notch and the price – sure, it’s a little bit higher. But oil is on the constant up and the cost of throwing a plane up into the air just isn’t getting any cheaper – so cost may be becoming an increasingly poor basis upon which to try and sell yourself. As long as they keep the costs as low as they can, increase the service as much as they can – then the price will still be attractive to those, like myself, desperate to avoid an unpleasant travel experience as with certain other carriers.

Now, here’s the current problem. They’re a small airline at best, and you just can’t get the deals with a size like that. Aircraft list prices are the metaphorical industry toilet paper – nobody pays a list price, they pay what they should be paying considering how much they’re buying, how big they are, and how likely they are to be needing more in the future. But when someone like Aer Lingus buys a couple of aircraft for long-haul, that’s probably the last time you’ll see them again until those aircraft are also done flying – if of course, you happen to be Airbus. So they’re not really much good to you short of an explosive growth, which is why the Etihad co-operation on purchasing gets interesting. Etihad are growing like lunacy, and you can bet they won’t be stopping since their Government is basically bankrolling them to do whatever they fancy. So, if you’re Airbus chilling out in France sitting around and the next thing this one huge customer rocks up with an order for 30 aircraft with no difference (bar a bit of green paint on some of them) and is telling you they’ll probably be back, of course you’re going to be doing them a solid turn unless you want them heading to Boeing in Seattle next time they’ve got the cheque book open.

There are so many ways this could work incredibly, and so far very few I can think of how it can go terrible – the Govt. refusing to sell being the main one – but what do you think? Let me hear some opinions…

Buses/Trains/Public Transport in General

While you were away, you will have arrived in the other country, tried out the transport options and thought to yourself ‘this isn’t much better than Ireland’…except it will have been. It will have been very much better in fact.

Same old, I promise...

While you were away, I assure you nothing has changed save for three distinct innovations especially in Dublin-based public transport. The first is we now have boards like they had in other countries for years that tell you when a bus is going to arrive. At least, in theory – I guarantee that the 75 to date does not show up within 7 minutes of it apparently ‘arriving’. The second innovation is very exciting indeed; we now have a card called the ‘Leap’ that’s a bit like the Oyster card, but a few years behind it in terms of usefulness (and it’s not exactly the most modern system itself anyway), so you’ll still need an old card ticket for your monthly bus/luas pass. The third innovation is also certainly worthy of note – the Luas now comes with a gang of youths almost guaranteed between Ballyogan and Carrickmines, who very generously dedicate their time to cleaning the windows by spitting on them and giving the finger to any security presents.

The Pyjama Party

Another thing you will surely have missed is €7 pyjamas from Penneys. When I say ‘you’ will have missed them, I don’t literally mean yourself – more, you’ll have missed seeing people walking around, filling up their car in the petrol station, queuing up in Superquinn, etc in them.

Wearing pyjamas is very seriously the new trend it seems and is spreading faster than the winter vomiting bug in February. Nonetheless, if you’ve become accustomed to people going about in clothes that make sense for the time of year, be it t-shirts and shorts, or suits and winter coats, then the sight of a gang of people standing at a bus stop when it’s 5 degrees outside in not much more than a pair of pink pyjamas with polkadots will surely provide some entertainment…initially, at least.

The Problem with Watches

The last place I spent time in was Germany, so I’m well aware of the obvious potential for me to have sort of…acclimatised to their punctual stereotype. But recently I was informed by someone who stood the chance of making a few thousand out of us that she wouldn’t be arriving until 11:30am. Then, at midday, she called and told us she was running about half an hour late. Finally, I saw her around 3pm.

A once-off you say? Unfortunately not – we have a reputation for being sometimes frequently ‘delayed’ but if you step out for a few years and then step back in, it becomes obvious how chilled out a lot of people are when it comes to sticking to the time. It appears, quite frequently, to be something more of a ‘guideline’ than anything to actually be kept to. Similarly, the standard workman’s appointment of “I’ll be there between 9 and 6” suddenly seems quite ridiculous, as if absolutely no element of a plan could be constructed beforehand. Trust me, you’ll notice it.

Sales, Sales & Not a Euro to Spend

Depending upon how long you’ve been gone for, you may or may not have missed the complete decay of local shops in towns and villages throughout the land that appears to have been even further accelerated. Generally though, the ones that are left have all tried to engage customers either through tatty posters in the window which seem to belong to the 80’s, using Facebook and Twitter hopelessly without a clue as to what they’re actually doing or by doing something inexplicably well and saving themselves from imminent doom.

What you can’t miss however is big red ‘SALE’ signs in literally every window along certain streets, sometimes with no actual ‘sale’ as such to speak of. This activity also permeates throughout supermarkets where ‘Reduced’ prices are found adorning nearly every product. Obviously, this activity has been used to such ill effect that many supermarkets now even feel it necessary to write underneath when exactly the product was fully priced, such is the level of disbelief many customers now have that they’re actually getting any sort of reduced price, or a ‘sale’. In other words, everything is either reduced or on sale, and yet strangely, it’s all still the same price – certainly grocery shopping isn’t cheap and my bill has safely doubled since Germany. But that’ll be the ‘transport costs’ no doubt.

The Age-Old; Weather

One of the first things that kind of throws you off when you arrive back is bound to be the frequency with which people are eager to relay the weather to you, both presently and in future. To provide an example, I ask someone how they are and they begin with “Fine, but there’s a gale coming in later” like these two seemingly separate facts are strongly in correlation to one another. But then you come to realise – they actually are. You might be fine now, but by the time said gale has hit full-force and you’re battling along the footpath into an oncoming storm trying to get to the bus stop, it all starts to fall together.

This is the perfect Irish day...for full-scale analysis and debate.

Irish people love talking about the weather, really they do, but only being away (for me anyway) gives any sort of appreciation for why that may be the case. And there’s really no doubt that the wind in Ireland is so much more problematic than in other countries – they may have snow in Germany, or floods in Malaysia, but only in Ireland can a ‘normal’ day involve winds at such high speeds that you can actually feel your tram rock from one side to the other as it crosses a bridge. Best find your anorak.

So that’s it, if anyone wants me to send them a starter pack of €7 pyjamas, a luas/bus ticket (not the worst idea if you won’t be back for a while – beat the next price increase now) and a raincoat, just let me know! They’re both reduced and on sale…

Home!

In the last three weeks, I’ve done the very opposite to what most Irish people my own age and status are doing – I actually returned to Ireland.

For anyone not already aware from my 2008-til’-now ramblings, I finished college, did two interviews for jobs here (both of which I was deemed unsuitable for) and then decided not to wait a second longer. I went from Ireland to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for a period of months, where I did an internship and did quite a lot of work afterwards for a number of contacts I made doing web and graphic design, SEO and website maintenance. From there, I came back to Ireland where surprise surprise, things were still awful. I stayed in Ireland about 3 weeks – just long enough to consider filling out a jobseekers’ allowance form – and then left again for Germany, in spite of having only about 3 words of German.

I then moved to Germany early last year, sat around well into the start of summer surviving only on Germany’s economical prices. Then, I got a job and all was well once again. And this isn’t to say that I won’t leave at some point in the next year or two again, just for now it’s nice to not be racing, nice to understand what’s actually going on, and nice to at least know somewhere will be home for as long as you want to be and that you won’t be turfed out of the place after 6 months or a year for not having a valid work visa, because your employer won’t give you one.

And in spite of what everyone says, there are actually a lot of jobs. The problem with them though, is they’re all very specialised and the jobs most graduates want, they just don’t have the experience to get. But life abroad is good going and for me anyway, has ticked the experience boxes. I imagine it can only be a very tough move on those who have no option other than to actually go abroad not for experience, or to continue the good time, but to just get by.

Anyway, moving along – how is it to be back in the place that 2 years ago seemed completely void of any sort of promising jobs? For me anyway, strange to say the least.

Note from a local business...

After arriving, the first thing that can’t be missed is how dreary so many streets look. Areas like Dun Laoghaire (see the very interesting notice left by the owners of one recently-vacated premises in the picture) for example speak for themselves and are like movie sets, where nothing’s really happening any more. Shop units are all closed, to let, for sale, or just plain abandoned (I’m half tempted to see if anyone wants to lend me one for free to just sit in as a makeshift-office while I work on projects, just so the place looks busier!). It’s all a bit strange – somehow I seem to have jumped from when the recession was getting going and people were talking about how tough things would be, straight to some sort of post-apocalyptic aftermath where only few remain. Hard to explain – but you get the idea.

So that’s it – for the future time, all your blog updates (which will get more regular, I hope, as some semblance of normality enters my life at long last!) will be coming from Ireland once again, while I try to get used to the ‘fresh Irish breeze’ once again – hope to hear from and see you all soon once more!

My second living room...

Despite being in a job that requires absolutely no travel whatsoever (unless it’s mind travelling), I seem to be on a plane at least twice a month. How this thought came to me was recently, as I sat on yet another Aer Lingus flight towards Dublin and I realised I’ve actually read the same article about what there is to do in Frankfurt so often and the authors accompanying profile, that I actually not only know every attraction listed, but also know that the author is Irish, married to an Irish man, ex-president of some ski club in Frankfurt and thinks it’s a great place to bring up a family – note to Aer Lingus, two months is a very long time to leave the same magazine in seatback pockets , I can even recite the movie listings for transatlantic flights for December and January. And that’s saying something when I haven’t flown transatlantic.

Moving along, October we flew to Dublin, December brought us to London for a weekend, then to Dublin again in December for Christmas, back in the New Year, only to be back in a plane again about two weeks later to head back to Dublin. Literally, I’ve spent lots of time in planes back and forth over the years, but lately it’s getting a bit much. I’m actually surprised at how slowly my Aer Lingus miles are racking up to be honest. So in all this flying, what are my top five frequent flying observations? I’ll start with the most obvious and work it from there.

How fast can you get out?

1. Piling onto the plane in Germany is not a good idea. It is critical.

Getting onto a plane, if you appreciate comfort, is a serious case of ‘when in Rome’ when you’re leaving Germany. Anna used to always make a beeline for the gate the second they announced that families and those with small children (aren’t they normally the same group?) could board, which I never understood. Lately though, I’ve come to realise that there’s sense in all of this – Germans religiously bring hand luggage at the upper limits of the allowance, usually in the form of a Samsonite wheel-along and if you don’t race onto the plane with them, there’s not a single flight from Germany you can take where you won’t have to keep your hand luggage under the seat in front of you. Since doing that annoys me terribly, the only option is to hop up out of your seat in the departures hall like a rocket at the first sign of movement.

2. Dublin Airport likes surprises.

We have a new terminal in Dublin, which by all accounts is very lovely. However a few things spring to mind that the first-time flyer will wonder about and the frequent flyers will laugh about. The most obvious is the hand-dryers. In the race to make it streamlined, fancy and nice, the hand dryers are recessed into the wall by the sink. In fact a lot of people never find them and end up wiping their hands on their jeans (including myself, to be honest). But once you do find them, you find a more critical flaw – the dryer has a sort of ‘slant’ so as it blows your hands dry, the water just tips out and runs down the tiles onto the floor. The other slightly comical fact about regularly arriving to Dublin Airport, is that on my previous three occasions, there were more ‘staff’ guarding the passport control line, making sure that errant Europeans didn’t try sneaking into the ‘Other passports’ line, than there actually were passport control staff.

From here to bus in 25 minutes. Comes with my personal guarantee...most of the time.

3. Frankfurt Airport is what foreigners expect.

Frankfurt Airport (terminal 2 in particular) is what airports around the world, including Dublin, strive and fail to achieve. It is absolutely, despite its size, one of the most efficient airports I’ve ever been in. To date, over easily 8 – 10 arrivals, passport control is sufficiently staffed (provided everyone’s ready), the luggage is always already waiting – in fact, sometimes the belt is already turned off – and without trying, you can’t not be out and waiting for a bus within 20 minutes of getting off the plane. Similar efforts it must be said have been made at Dublin Airport but are let down by the slowness of the baggage handling and the scandalous two (of the world’s slowest) lifts in the car park that cause delays regularly of 7 minutes or more.

4. Aer Lingus has improved so much; it makes me want to cry with joy.

I find it slightly ironic that it’s taken us to be deep in recession back home before the airline abandoned its flimsy half-effort at being a low cost like Ryanair and started giving people what we’d been looking for all along – decent service, friendly prices and at least some moderate benefits. Their latest departure away from being a true no-frills carrier is this weird pricing strategy where you can have bags, seat selection, etc all thrown in for an extra 20 quid to the fare price. Personally, I say make it 25 and let people get a free snack pack or something on the plane, but whatever it’s a great start. I mean they were never going to win the battle with Ryanair and at least now their service isn’t so abysmal. And passenger numbers seem to be on the up I hear, so it’s a win all round isn’t it?

Alcohol. Electronics. Perfume. I need new ideas - anyone?

5. Airport shops never cease to disappoint.

Here in Frankfurt city, you can buy a bottle of water for about 45 cent in a supermarket. It’s cheaper than Ireland generally, and that’s always the way it is. But for some reason, airports and the shops in them continue to hold passengers to absolute ransom for the most basic of items – a bottle of water in Frankfurt airport after passport control in departures will set you back nearly €2.50. I don’t know where people are getting this idea that this is acceptable business but if a bottle of water in Ireland costs maybe 80 cent and they charge €1.70 in an airport, this is acceptable, what with there being no other choice. But to charge nearly 6 times as much is ridiculous. I’d rather die of thirst. Similarly, I’m still waiting to see an airport shop in an airport that’s actually selling something really exciting – both my two most regular ‘visits’ have a way of forcing you to walk through a labyrinth of shops to get where you need to be, and yet both of them sell identical ranges of alcohol, electronics, shoddy souvenirs and perfume. I don’t know what it is yet, but there must be more things to sell at an airport that I can’t buy cheaper online than what we have at the moment. Anyone any ideas for this imaginary shop I want to start? Other than cheap bottles of water?

If you’ve any funny stories or observations on flying, passing through airports, then leave a comment below!

What do we make of BA?

In the end of course, it’ll come as no surprise to anyone that my second drink – my benchmark test of how caring airline staff are – never actually showed up and some 30 minutes later, we came to land at Heathrow’s incredible, amazing Terminal 5. Personally, the last time I passed through the place, I really didn’t get what all the fuss was about. To me, the whole terminal is more confusing than anything else, requiring a bit of a slalom after security through a series of overpriced retail outlets and down an escalator to the actual departures area – if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky, you then have to actually take a little train along to the right terminal of the terminal if that makes any sense (which it doesn’t, even to me and I’ve just written it). Arriving, you’ll be pleased to hear, is equally an irritation. I think arriving to somewhere is one of the best areas an airport can actually be good at, because it’s dead simple – get passengers from their plane, give them their bags, get them through passport control and customs and out the door as quickly as possible. That’s what people want – nobody’s there, after a flight, to admire the architecture or wander through corridors looking for how to get out. They just literally want to get out.

Through T5's Many Corridors...

So I disembarked, wandered along the corridors for a few minutes before arriving at this train station (as I mentioned above) to take us from one terminal to the main terminal of Terminal 5. The train took about 7 or 8 minutes to present itself, by which time there was a number of flight-loads of passengers waiting, which wasn’t great. Then, at the other end, you go up a series of escalators for some reason, walk along a corridor, then (if you spot them) have to go back down another series of escalators to reach passport control. Where I waited 45 minutes. Somebody’s going to comment or write to me that Heathrow is a huge airport and what do I expect but no seriously, such a confusing layout and time robbery is not on at all. Example; I arrived to Frankfurt airport, also a large international airport at 19:55 last week in the midst of the New Year’s air-rush of people trying to get home and back to work. I was already standing out the front waiting for a bus by 20:17 (with my bags), and home by 20:50. Literally, it’s a model of efficiency (as you might expect from the Germans) – you get off plane, walk to passport control, the baggage belt is literally the other side of it and the bags are always already waiting and then you leave, the end. They manage it, so why can’t anywhere else? Even Dublin to be fair has made great strides in Terminal 2 with this where you get off the plane, up an escalator, and follow the same corridor to passport control, baggage, customs and even the car park without turning or changing level.

The shopping centre.

On the way back, things were however slightly better I suppose. I’ve gathered that Terminal 5 is one of those things I just can’t bring myself to like – it often feels designed more for aesthetics and pleasantries than actual usability. Passing through security, there’s literally just a shopping centre on the other side, which if you’ve any sense, you’ll skip right through. The only shop we did want to actually buy anything from was the WH Smith, and the queue there literally snaked from the checkout down past the drinks, looping around fiction somewhere and back to the entrance. Of course if I wanted to buy something from the Caviar House or whatever it’s called, I wouldn’t have had to wait even a second but it goes to show what most people actually want from an airport shop – a newspaper, drink and a bar chocolate. It actually took us so long to get these items from the shop, that we began to fear missing our flight and ended up taking off at a gallop to get down towards our gate, which was thankfully close by.

In conclusion, would I willingly choose Heathrow to transit through? Nope – I couldn’t, it’s not built to facilitate quick and fast movement around the place (or so it seems), even though Terminal 5 is a very nice building. Would I opt to deliberately go there again? I don’t know, for me, BA’s service isn’t that awe-inspiring to merit the extra few bucks travelling with them and since airspace over Heathrow always seems to be congested and causing delays, I’ll probably try Stansted or Gatwick in future and see if that’s any quicker. If anyone has any thoughts on travelling to London, the easiest or quickest ways, or comments, I’d love to hear them!

Last year for me personally, was a time of pretty much all-round change in terms of moving from Malaysia back to Ireland, getting bored within about 3 weeks, and then moving on to Germany where I’ve been working in internet marketing happily ever since. While I’d like to think things will stay relatively stable for the next year, you never really know and for now, in spite of the recession/depression/rain in Ireland, it’s really lovely to be back home, even if only for a short while. And strangely, it sometimes feels like Ireland’s sort of turned a corner in terms of the ‘badness’ of the last few years – but that could be just rose-tinted spectacles and grass is greener, etc. Who knows?

In terms of keeping the blog going, I’ve been at this site in its varying forms, for over 3 years now and intend to keep it going, although obviously that all depends on how much time is available to put into it. And, as you’ll have seen, after 3 years of paying hosting costs out of my own pocket for it, I’ve started dabbling a bit in ways for it to maybe at least semi-fund itself. So I’m pleased to have eBookers, Expedia and Hotels.com ads on some pages, which I think makes the advertising at least more relevant and less irritating than other advertising. What do you think? Of course, I’m still always looking to hear what everyone thinks of the site, or what I could do to improve or what you’d like to see more/less of – e-mail me, andy [at] youlovethatsh.com or you can get me any of the other ways up in the menu above.

Anyway, I’ll be right back in a week or two with my more usual posts, but until then, have a great start into 2012!

Cheap, Toronto, let's do it...

A couple of years ago, the opportunity presented itself by way of sheer cheapness, to travel with British Airways from Dublin to Toronto via London Heathrow. I was excited for all the nerdy travel reasons – first up, my previous trips to Canada had been with renowned cattle-class specialists Zoom Airlines, who had since ceased to exist, and had been of a quality ranging from relatively to completely awful. Secondly, BA had only moved into the disastrously-inaugurated Terminal 5 about a year ago, and with all the problems now seemingly solved, I was keen to see this piece of aviation magnificence for my good self. Finally, BA is in theory, one of the only full-service legacy carriers still providing some degree of comfort, and since I had taken Air France to Hong Kong a few months earlier and had been suitably impressed, I was keen to see what the Brits had to offer exactly.

Long-time readers of You Love Thatsh will then no doubt remember that the trip, in terms of travel experience, wasn’t exactly incredible, and even though it wasn’t 100% BA’s fault, I can’t help blame them somehow for at least some of it. Firstly, in spite of any advances made for British Airways in Heathrow, the usual problems remained. Namely, flight congestion landing in Heathrow, then the ‘Irish’ gates being quite some distance from terminal 1, where the apparently land, which is in turn quite far away from BA’s home at terminal 5 and finishing at terminal 5, where nobody’s boarding card issued in their home countries was being recognised at the security screening area (and I mean nobody’s), forcing lines of people at the security screening counters, then the check-in desks, then re-joining the security line, the fronts of which now had more people trying and failing to get through. The plane ride meanwhile (the part involving BA) had three main problems from my perspective;

One of T5's good value shops, no doubt...

1. The ridiculous tightness. I asked for an additional beer and it was, on the outbound part of the flight, treated with the same enthusiasm you might treat someone asking to decant all the fuel, mid-flight, out of the plane.

2. The ridiculous heat situation. For whatever reason, the aircraft in both directions had no way individual air vents, and this coincided quite awfully with the fact that the heating was cranked right up, and we were en-route to Toronto in winter, so I was appropriately dressed.

3. The racist. I also had the very bad fortune on the way back to be sat beside an impatient racist who imparted on me his admiration for Canada and why he was considering moving there, having been there on business, because they didn’t seem to be as open to other cultures as the UK was apparently fast becoming. Then, upon our arrival in Heathrow, he was out of his seat faster than someone with explosive diarrhoea to make his connecting flight to Derry. When he realised he couldn’t actually get off, he then proceeded to verbally berate the stewardess for making the plane late; as it was surely her entire fault. Not really BA’s fault, as I say, but she then took it out on me as she knew we were sitting together and decided against saying thanks or goodbye, or whatever, when I got off, like she did with everyone else.

Now I don’t usually do repeats, but you can imagine that this particular story seems to be a little exceptional and not what one would normally expect. So when the opportunity presented itself to fly with BA last Friday from Frankfurt to Heathrow, I thought hey, let’s give BA and Terminal 5 a try and see if I missed something last time.

Let's see if we can get to like each other...

So here we go, user experience, Frankfurt to London. The first thing you’ll notice in Frankfurt isn’t the friendly staff waiting to greet you. On the contrary, there were two women, one dealing with someone, one on the phone. And the phone call was obviously of critical importance, because she stayed on it and didn’t acknowledge me whatsoever. I’ve been in and out of Frankfurt Airport so many times I can’t even count, but nothing remarkable there – it’s a little bit like everything in Germany, a bit bland, a touch bare but does exactly what you want it to do, which is gets you in and gets you out much faster than nearly any other large European airport I know. I can usually get home and have the coffee machine on, for example, within one hour of the plane touching down.
So, on the whole, I think it’s great.

Anyway, all onto the plane – the queue to get on was actually extremely long, but thankfully entertainment was generously provided by a man and his wife who were dressed like they were just returning from a shopping trip in Milan and heading home to Monaco. Their 5^th home, that is. They kept trying to queue jump me, not because they had a valid reason in particular, but because they were BA Gold members or whatever and would normally have been afforded the luxury of boarding before everyone else. Except that there was no priority boarding lane, so in the absence of that, queue jumping was obviously the next best option. I’m not sure what it is, but BA seems to keep a relatively elderly fleet of planes and it’s noticeable to be honest – but as we carried on, I let that one slip.

After the on-board drink was served, I decided to see if enthusiasm for second drinks was any better all these years later and so, waiting until someone actually asked if there was anything else, I made my demand and waited…would it show up? Read the Second Part now!

Have any of you had a strange travel experience, like mine with the racist? Or an airline you think is way over-rated? Leave me a comment or drop me a line, I’d love to hear…

Good morning Earls Court...

After what can only be described (sarcastically) as another of the most restful nights sleeps’ of my life in London, we were back up at the crack of dawn. Once again, I should emphasise, it wasn’t particularly our choice to be up at the crack of dawn – more so, somebody in the room next to us had decided to go use the toilet first thing. And as I said in the last post, all the doors were strangely spring loaded so as soon as they decided to let the door close, we were more or less resigned to getting up early.

So, up we go and off, once again, to the local Subway for the early breakfast special deal. London is expensive after all, and I’d much rather sacrifice the traditional British breakfast – which anyway is very similar to the traditional Irish breakfast – in favour of not spending so much.

Crowds!

We didn’t have so much time on our second day in London, so we got through the breakfast as quickly as possible and went straight out, with Anna wanting to see some of ‘real’ London this time around, so we headed off in search of Camden town and the famous market. Well, as tastes of ‘real’ London go, it was certainly that – it was so packed, that we queued about 5 minutes just to get out of the tube station, then had to try and merge with the oncoming human traffic with more care than driving on a motorway. So, surprise surprise, Camden was already packed with the streets looking like the areas around Croke Park after a GAA match. We wandered around for what must have been all of 20 minutes before getting lost, a bit frustrated and sick of looking at signs warning of pickpockets. So I’m sorry Camden town, we left almost as soon as we possibly could. But not before queuing another 5 minutes to get back into the tube station.

My art project...perhaps.

Next stop, with time getting tighter and tighter, was Notting Hill to see what it had to offer us. I won’t lie, we got off at Notting Hill (which actually looks terrible when you first emerge from the tube station), wandered down the road a bit until we came across a bunch of hardcore Russian protesters who were being steadily outnumbered by the police, then wandered back up the road a bit again until we passed the tube station going in the opposite direction. And then, quite simply, we were just out of time so we had to go back into the tube station having seen only one street of Notting Hill (but very well). We headed back in the direction of Earls Court to retrieve our luggage from the undoubtedly very safe open shed that we had been told would be fine to leave our bags in some hours earlier, and to get some lunch. Surprisingly, our luggage was still in the open shed, but that may have had more to do with the fact that the police were now swarming our former accommodation seemingly in search of a resident criminal. Yes, we truly do stay in all the classy places.

Exciting Heathrow

Moving along, the next stop was somewhere to eat, and with some money left over, we were finally able to relax a little on that front. We headed down the road from our place and came to arrive, just as the rain began to fall, at some Indian place called Masala Zone, which was really only noticeable due to the crazy artwork that was all over the inside of the place. But, as food places go, it was absolutely delicious (hence the actual mention).

Time was up, so bags in hand, we raced back to Heathrow as quickly as possibly as we could, checking in our bags and then seeing what else we could possibly afford in Terminal 5’s overly-expensive shops – which wasn’t much – and getting on the plane back to Frankfurt.

A good trip – yes; but a restful and cheap trip – absolutely not!

Keep an eye out in the next week or two for my review on flying with British Airways, Heathrow Airport and the missing ‘second beer’.

The luxury residence. No sarcasm.

I won’t get into the travel experience with British Airways or Heathrow, but suffice to say it was nothing special – in other words, it was one queue after the other. Onwards to my accommodation – since Anna and I were on an extreme budget, we went for a room at some place in Earls Court beginning with Barkston. It was the cheapest place, absolutely guaranteed, with any sort of a decent location in all of London and with a double room so we didn’t have to sleep in a dorm room like we were on a secondary school trip to Irish college. To say it was luxury would be a gross overstatement – our room was at the very top of some building (which necessitated numerous flights of stairs), and the windows and doors were paper thin, allowing all noise from outside and inside contaminate our room. For added effect, we had a group of excitable Spanish students down the corridor so a restless night was almost guaranteed for the first night. And even when they did finally pipe down, there was deliveries to neighbouring buildings seemingly through the night, so there was never really a good chance to actually sleep soundly. To perfect it, the doors all had some sort of spring loading mechanism so when someone did innocently go to the toilet in the middle of the night, unless they carefully pulled the door into the doorframe again, it would absolutely slam shut practically waking the dead.

Good Morning London!

After a truly restless night, and with both of us involuntarily crying from so little sleep throughout the night, we took off the next morning to meet a friend of mine from many years past, who generously agreed to give of her time and bring us on a walking tour of London. We commended this grand walking tour at Trafalgar Square and took off, trying to pack in as many sights as possible, launching ourselves from the square down towards Westminster (avoiding the protests along the way for some unknown country fighting for its freedom), right along towards Buckingham Palace, into Hyde Park (to include a detour through some other park because I couldn’t possibly follow the path, given the hordes of people also out and about) and winding up for the first part of the walking tour in some frighteningly tacky attempt at a German Christmas market. Sadly, we know what a German Christmas market should look like and this poor imitation which seemed to blend the very best of stereotypes from across the world (the one or two Canadian stands seemed to rely heavily on having an oversize moose’s head sticking out the top of the stall) all into one. Funny though, all the same.

Ahh! The ocean...

London is expensive, that much is for absolute certainty and in a bid to keep costs down, we then spent most of the second half of our walking tour in search for a cheap place to eat. We wandered around, incidentally seeing a number of other sights as we went, becoming increasingly desperate to avoid the ever-present Pret outlets. In the end, things got so desperate that we literally found the first place that looked halfway decent and stopped there. The rest of the walking tour was fine but for the two constants throughout the whole trip to London; everything is ridiculously expensive. Secondly, London is not a city I find to be liveable – there’s overcrowding at every turn. You queue to get out of an underground station, then you queue again to get onto the street, then queue to cross at the lights while the traffic also queue’s, then when you’re finally on the street on a path, you can’t really walk properly because there’s half a million other people also wandering aimlessly along the path. But the best example of this was our trip (momentarily) into the M&M’s store, where we somehow were going against the sea of people on our way in, and then unable to move inside the store, somehow against the sea of people again trying to get out. No matter what, it was a lose-lose situation.

But, after so much overcrowding and overpricing, the first pint of the evening tasted great and we had another peaceful night’s sleep to surely look forward to…

Continued – Hello London – Part II is Here!