Here's the story about my holiday in the sun between 19/1/07 - 2/2/07 staying at the Lagoa Azul in Arpora.

Thursday 18th Jan 2007.

We were flying on the Mytravel flight at 1950 this evening, we live north of Newcastle and I usually set off for Manchester at about 1300 whihn usually gives us plenty of time as it takes about 2 1/2 hours. Today was different, there was high winds forecasted so we were packed and left home at 1100am. It was a pretty windy journey down to Manchester, it took 3 hours to get onto the ring-road which is where the 'fun' began.

I was on my usual route when the roads started closing and diversions where made (there were lorries being blown over) We were eventually diverted onto the M6 which immediately closed down at a high viaduct which were about to cross. We sat stationary for 4 1/2 hours eventually starting to crawl at about 1830, fully expecting to miss our flight bearing in mind we were supposed to be checking in at 1700. After frantic calls to Direct Travel and Mytravel it appeared that there was traffic mayhem around Manchester and 160 passengers were yet to check in so they were holding the desk open for as long as possible. I passed on the telephone duties back to my Mother back in Northumberland who was keeping us constantly updated, she was telling us that there were more and more people checking in so by now she was begging them to keep the desk open. We now decided to make alternative arrangements with the holiday company, the best they could come up with was 2 seats on a plane to Goa the following evening form Gatwick at a price of £189 each (bearing in mind we'd already paid that each for our seat upgrades on our original flight), this was going to turn out to be a long and expensive holiday.
We eventually got going full speed at 1930, the next problem was dropping our car off at our hotel in Altrincham and getting a taxi to the airport. It was dark, windy and rainy and I was driving in a panic ( I don't usually get stressed but this was exceptional) What happened next nearly pushed me over the edge - I took a wrong turn and ended back onto the M6 - that was it - disaster, we decided we might as well go to the airport to collect our tickets and finalise tommorrows arrangements. We parked the car at the hotel and raced at breakneck speeds to the airport in a taxi whose driver was appreciative of our plight (mother still on the phone to the check-in desk - still begging) we pulled up at the terminal.
I sent Amanda in while I sorted the cases out, as I walked around the corner I saw Amanda standing at the desk handing our passports over, the deck had shut at 2100 and it was 3 minutes past, but the wonderful staff at Mytravel re-opened the desk for us. We were rushed through to departures, as we were running I commented to the wonderful Mytravel girl who was with us that this was just like that program off the tv - she said it was but we try and get all of our passengers on!

We were the last 2 passengers to get on that flight at 2118, we heard that 10 people missed it because of the atrocious weather conditions that day

Well done Mytravel for getting as many people as possible on the plane for their much anticipated holiday and thank you very much to the rest of the passengers who waited for us.
To put things into perspective, there were around 8 people killed due to the weather that day.

We got to Goa, had a wonderful holiday and came back.

Then this happened.

We had a great flight home, got back to our hotel, went back to my car to collect our overnight bag and 4 cans of cider only to find my car was in a different position, windows smashed and dented all over - some *^%&^^s had trashed it. I had a "I love Newcastle" sticker on the back window, the vandals left a note under the windscreen wiper "love the black cats" (the nick name for sunderland football club).

We eventually got home on Saturday afternoon, and went back to work on Sunday. T really rub salt into the wound, I took my car to the garage yesterday and they gave me a Fiat Panda as a courtesy car!

Good Holiday, bad journey.

Paul & Amanda