Hal MacLean

Tonight I watched another programme which tore into Ryan Air and gave them a hard time over their pricing policies. Having travelled with Ryan Air more than a few times, and been subjected to their particular brand of in-flight care, I would have to say that there are definite areas for improvement in the servicdes they provide. I am not a staunch supporter.

However, I can say that I was fully aware of that each time I have booked, and the fact I re-booked goes to show that I accept their policies and terms of service.

I would say leave Ryan Air alone. They are still cheap, and you know what you are going to get well in advance. You know for a fact they will charge you heavily for food in flight, for carrying baggage, for making changes to your bookings, for turning up late, for turning up early… for turning up at all!

Despite this, you have the option of booking with them, or not. This seems like a definite case of not reading the small print… if Ryan Air were hiding these facts from you (and yes, I agree that their web site is complex and not particularly user friendly), then you would have cause to complain. But because Ryan Air are so up front with all of it, and you know in advance this is what it is about, then book the flight with them if you accept the terms they offer. If not, pay more and go elsewhere to get your flying sorted.

Today I was treated to a journey to Leeds on a National Express train. The thing is, I booked the tickets through the Virgin web site, and half expected to travel on a Virgin train. It turns out that Virgin don’t ‘fly’ out of Kings Cross, and so it was that I ended up on what I now consider to be the wrong train entirely.

A Virgin train ride (in First Class) includes access to the lounge area at the stations (unless it is Euston, which at the time of writing is undergoing refurbishment), all food, all drink (including alcohol) and a pendolino train with free wifi (no need to register). More subtle benefits of Virgin include more pleasant announcements and less of them, too, but more informative, somehow.

Compare and contrast that with National Express…

No lounge access unless you pay full fare (so no advance single ticket holders allowed), no food included, trains that lean unexpectedly as if on an adverse camber, wifi that is slow as slow can be (and frequently drops out), and needs you to divulge too much personal info for my liking. On top of that the announcements are at many decibels more than they need to be, and repeated at least three times at every station. Something about needing to have a ticket and if it’s the wrong ticket having to pay full fare to get the right ticket… ad infinitum.

Given that advanced tickets on Virgin cost the same, and you get so much more, and working on the assumption that VIrgin trains also make a profit (which they may not, of course), how can National Express justify their level of service?

Now don’t get me wrong – the staff on NX (!) are pleasant and polite… but so are they on Virgin. And it may be that I’ve been particularly unfortunate in that each NX journey (East Coast) I’ve taken has been spectacularly similar. I can’t help but come to the conclusion that NX are overpriced, underserviced and not particularly the best experience of rail travel.

We all know the story of Mr O’Leary’s Ryan Air and their cheap flights all over the known universe, and I have used them fairly regularly from Stansted without any real dilemmas (OK – a cancelled flight due to fog, except other aircraft were taking off and landing just fine, so I wondered if the fog was with the flight crew – and a refusal to let me go through to the gate because I was a few seconds late and the flight manifest had been given to the pilot, when in fact it was on the table right there…) This week, however, I flew from Liverpool (John Lennon airport) to Pisa.

All looked set and everything progressed smoothly, until we were told that there was an extra bag in the hold not accounted for. To be fair, this isn’t strictly a problem with Ryan Air in any way and the other agencies involved have to accept the responsibility. However, I fail to see how this sort of thing happens.

You see, there is a list of all the people on the plane, and next to their names is a sticker which is put there by the check in desk staff. The sticker shows the number of bags passed through, and the list of names is, well, a list of names. In simple mathematical terms, you count both sets of numbers and you’ll know how many of each you have got.

The lists get sent to the baggage handlers, who collect the bags and take them to the hold of the (almost always) correct aircraft, then stow them there. They count them as they go because there is a big label applied to the bag saying which plane it neds to go on. They then check their count against the list and make sure no-one has slipped an extra bag or two on. Yesterday the numbers didn’t add up.

So we were delayed as they went through the entire lot until they found the bag they didn’t know about, checked the name on it and talked sternly to the person on board to let them know… except we missed our slot for take off… twice! The net result was an extended stay in my seat – thank goodness I opted for one by an emergency exit where there is more leg room.

So I was thinking, what happens if there are less bags accounted for? Is that alright? Do they go through the lists so rigorously and make sure everyone has got their bag on board? I dont think they do – hence the amount of lost luggage in the world that doesn’t arrive at the destination when you do.

So perhaps it comes down to simple adding up and fear of an extra bag, when no such fear exists for a missing bag. If it isn’t there, it couldn’t explode, right?

Still, the ryan air flight was excellent, the staff very professional and the prices for the food on board astronomical – some things are always able to be relied upon! I wonder if the baggage system is the same eveywhere, or just in Liverpool? I’ll find out on Monday morning when I fly back and land at Stansted

I recently went to Rome for three days and unbelievably didn’t book a hotel room until about five hours before the flight. Normally I am fairly good at sorting things like this out well in advance, but on this occasion it just wasn’t possible.

So I was recommended a visit to http://www.laterooms.com which turns out to be a gold mine of information (thanks Matt)! As a visitor to the site you simply put in the country and area you wish to visit – I entered ‘Trevi, Rome’ and got a long, long list of al the available rooms I could book. Narrowing all this down took a while, not because the site’s filters are no good, but because I didn’t really know where I wanted to stay or at what kind of hotel. I managed to get it to about five choices, and then went simply for location.

Not ever having stayed in Rome before I wasn’t sure what to expect from the area I had selected – it was within walking distance of the Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, Colosseum and many more sights, and had a metro stop very close by as well for those trips further afield.

It turned out to be a very good choice! The Hotel St, Moritz is certainly not going to win awards for splendour or sophistication, but you couldn’t want for a more friendly staff (all spoke good English) and the accommodation was perfectly good enough. The hotel itself is located on Vai Nazionale – a fairly main road in Central Rome, and to find the hotel means going through a set of solid wooden doors, ascending two flights of stairs and going through a door… all a bit different to any other hotel I have ever stayed at.

Nonetheless, despite not having a luxurious bar or dining room, this hotel was ideally located and gave us exactly what we needed – a base to explore from. On the last day in Rome we were not due to fly out until 9pm, which would normally mean checking out of the hotel and wandering around with luggage for hours on end. However, the hotel were able to look after our bags for us until we returned at about 6pm, whereupon they kindly booked us a taxi to the airport. This kind of personal service is probably available from lots of places, but it was unexpected and we were very pleased to be offered it.

So, would I use the hotel again? On balance, it was well located, had friendly staff, the rooms were clean and tidy, it was peaceful and had good service. The breakfasts were basic and there were no real facilities to mention, but yes – it is worth going back to if you want to explore Rome. If you want a luxury hotel with bars and restaurants, etc, then don’t look here – but *do* spend some time on the laterooms.com web site!

As a sample of what Rome contains, here is a web gallery of a few images I took whilst there. Note the weather on the first two days was really, really good – hot enough for T-shirts, certainly! In fact, I almost got sunburn whilst sitting at a cafe outside the Pantheon. Day three was a different matter, a lot wetter, but no less fun all the same!

This summer we were looking for a break to just simply stop working and relax. As ever, lastminute.com came up trumps and we found ourselves heading to the Maldives and a tiny resort called Ranveli Village.

What a gem of a place! If you want two relaxing weeks doing nothing except sun bathing, snorkling and some very, very good diving you can do no better, IMO.

The staff were all exceptionally polite and friendly and whilst it was monsoon (and we did get a couple of big storms) the weather was excellent.

Food and drink were top quality as well (although I don’t usually have maple syrup on pancakes – the Shrove Tuesday kind – which was a new thing). Best of the bunch was Friday night which was ‘maldivian Night’ – all local foods served by waiters in local costume. It was excellent!

Snorkling with sharks, turtles, octopus and watching clown fish (like Nemo), parrot fish and tuna amongst a huge variety of others was, simply, breath taking.

If ever you get a chance, go there! Do take some sunscreen though – I got burnt on day 1, which was a bit of a downer…