Bodrum. Part 1.

I've decided that, for my posts on Bodrum, it's probably best to split them up a bit as I have quite a bit to say. This first one covers our time before we even got there...

“I Love Bodrum, Let’s Live Here” – Emma Millard

I think she had it spot on when she said this on only the first full day in Turkey. It was a brilliant holiday, with lots of unforgettable moments and once-in-a-lifetime experiences, and it shall never be forgotten.. and it won’t be because I’m going to recall it all as best as I can in this post right now.
So, starting from the beginning...

Well, I guess it’s best to start from the very beginning. Organisation, to be fair, isn’t our strongest quality. Yes, I can take a lot of credit for setting up the holiday, but when it came to the actual travelling to the airport, we were already in uncomfortable territory. For some reason, although all twelve of us were getting the same flight from the same airport, we ended up all getting to Gatwick in different ways/times. Rob, Steve and Tellie managed to get a lift (fair enough on them) to the airport, whilst the rest of us went for a train from Chippenham, changing at Reading to a line that went straight into Gatwick airport. However, even the nine of us managed to split up. Sarah-Jane, Emma, Jake and Ian took a train an hour earlier than us. At the time, Paul, Sean and myself (at this point Ryan and Chris were getting a lift to the airport) thought this was unnecessary as we had ages to get to the station. Ryan and Chris eventually decided to get a train and chose for the same one as us. Ahh I remember the time now as well, 12.20 to Reading. When we got to the station excitement was rushing through us. We walked through the automatic doors, looked up at the train times and... SHIT!!! There was a terrifying, highlighted blue bar through ‘our’ train, noting that it was “cancelled”.

Paul, being the sensible one, didn’t seem moved at all, but I was already panicking. I went across to the train dude and told him the situation, but he said we could use our tickets on the next one. I calmed down. We still had about 5 hours left. We would be fine. Although I knew Sarah-Jane would have something to say!

See, we hadn’t even left Chippenham and there was already drama. And that’s not it! As we waited (about an hour!) for our train to finally take us away from Chippenham, we sat inside the ‘greenhouse’ waiting room. We were being quite yobbo-y and messing around and such, when Paul started talking to me. I can’t remember what the subject was, but I was getting into it quite seriously when Sean, Ryan and Chris started going “Alex!” and shouting at me. I thought they were just being mental, like “waaaaaay Alex!” so I was like “hang on..” but then they pointed behind me... and oops! I had, somehow, knocked over a whole cup of coffee or tea and it was pouring out all over the floor. Yobs on tour... and we hadn’t even left Chippenham!

There would still be more drama before we even reached the airport. Once we got to Reading, we had a little wait for the Gatwick transfer, but we still wanted to rush to the platform to check what time it was coming in (obviously, because we had taken a later train, we wanted to make sure there weren’t going to be any difficulties). As we started walking along the platform in a bit of a rush, there was a loud ‘clanging’ and we all turned round to see Ryan holding a piece of metal, and his suitcase slumped on the floor. It may not sound funny, but it was hilarious, and I needed to capture the moment.

The rest of the train journey went by without much to mention, I got a texts and a phone call from the other groups who had all already got there and told me to “hurry up!”. There was no rush so I don’t know what her problem was. She (Saz) then rang me a bit later on saying they had gone through check-in and they had left the rest of the tickets (our tickets) behind one of the counters. This seemed a bit weird.

When we got to the airport we were sent to a different number counter than the one Saz had said to go to, and I explained what she had told me. The woman at the counter stated that “They don’t usually hold back tickets”. Great, I thought. We weren’t even going to get on the plane thanks to people wanting to rush through to the shops. She seemed quite persistent but eventually went across and got our tickets off an old man. We went through and saw the other guys, and after a minute of explaining why we were late, we were all sorted! I remember me and Ryan playing on guitar hero for about a minute in the little arcade area, and that Sean, Chris and Steve were watching a bit of the Netherlands V Brazil game in one of the pubs, but it wasn’t long before we had to board our flight.

Once we finally got through the last stage of waiting, we were in the big waiting room (I can’t remember the official name) and something wasn’t right. We were supposed to have been called up to board but no-one had said anything. Then, a voice spoke out on the speakers, explaining that a “part” of the plane was faulty, and that they had to send off for a new one. About twenty minutes later the same woman said that the “part” was on its way, but the driver was stuck in traffic. A few of us immediately thought of a typical builder, probably named Dave, driving down in his van with a rusty “part” for the plane. It helped time move along to be honest. After about an hour of delay, we finally boarded the plane, happily saying goodbye to cold England.

Seating wise, it went like this:

Rob Tellie Jake....
Emma Saz Me .... RyanChrisSteve

I hope you understand this as it’s VITALLY IMPORTANT. Not really, it’s not important at all. The only things to really mention about the flight were that:

A) I found it terrifying taking off.
B) I watched the whole one-and-a-half-hour last episode of ‘LOST’ on my iPod.
C) I didn’t realise at the time, but during the flight, Emma and Saz were actually getting sloshed.

My next post will focus on our arrival in Bodrum, our first venture around the area, and our first night out! Stay tuned.