Foreign Perspectives

Not so long ago you were encouraged to put as much as you could into checked luggage so that the passenger area of the plane wasn’t cluttered with a whole heap of a little (often a lot) too large carry-on luggage.

Of course, it’s completely different now and they want you to do without checked luggage altogether if you can. Despite their normally over the top approach to charging even Ryanair has raised the carry-on allowances to a notional 10kg  (Ryanair say “It should weigh no more than 10kg”). In practical terms, so long as you go for online checkin, there really isn’t a limit so long as you can actually carry it onto the plane and so long as it’s not too far off the 55x40x20 size.

Even the liquid limits don’t seem overly severe so long as you don’t try to bring drinks. Normal sized tubes of toothpaste might look big but they’re no more than the 100ml limit. You can even bring on drinks so long as you buy them after you’ve passed through security thus avoiding the ridiculous prices on the plane (though don’t be drinking too much on Ryanair as it’s £1 for the toilet).

Laughably these days you’re still not allowed to take “magnetised materials” onboard although that’s a rule that has been totally impractical to enforce since credit cards came on the scene not to mention the magnetic stripe on many tickets. I wonder when it’ll occur to IATA to revise this?

What is a real pain is getting everything into the one bag. As you read this I’ll be struggling to get a weeks worth of clothes plus assorted items for my OU summer school into a bag: white coat, big lump of a course book, computer, etc. I’m sure that there’s room for a “how to pack a carry-on bag” course!

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When you’ve got a family it doesn’t take long for the price of couple-type holidays to get completely out of hand by the time you multiply the airfares by four or five, throw in the multiple rooms required and that’s before you even think about organising something that most of you will like most of the time. That’s where european holiday parks look very appealing.

The transport costs are considerably lower normally as you can just get in the car, over on the ferry and you’re there. In most cases you can do the door to door transport in much the same time as you’d be talking about with flights by the time you add in the couple of hours prior to the flight and all the messing about getting to and from the airport. Moreover you don’t have any of the hassles entailed in avoiding the excess baggage charges and, of course, you have your own car so you don’t need to budget for renting one.

The accommodation costs are massively less as you don’t have the multi-room problem (why can’t hotels allow for larger families?) and the food costs are a whole lot more controllable if you aren’t tied to hotel/restaurants all the time. In some cases you can get a weeks accommodation at one of the parks for less than you’d get a nights accommodation for a family in a hotel and that’s not requiring you to go downmarket to make savings like that either.

Once you’re there you’ll find activities laid on to suit just about everyone at every age and, of course, there’s the option to explore the local countryside too.

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All being well, we’re heading off to the maritime festival in Belfast shortly.

It’s one of the original festivals (which include the summer carnival and autumn film festival) that were started before we began to get large numbers of tourists. In fact, the last time we were there was just before the big jump in the number of tourists so it’ll be interesting to see how they cope (not well if last year was anything to go by!).

It’s one of the natural festivals for Belfast in that there’s quite a substantial history of things naval including, of course, the construction of the Titanic. Last time we were at it, the kids wouldn’t go on the baby Titanic that was there as they were sure it would sink! Worth pencilling in is the opening of the major Titanic exhibition in 2012 (the hundredth anniversary of the sailing).

Anyway, must tootle on as we’ve several other things to do today as well as the festival.

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