So anyone up for a laugh as I regale you all with my adventure in trying to have a long weekend away? My g/f and I love going away, its our great passion and outside of covid times we'll probably go abroad 5 or 6 times a year. This was our first attempt since all this awful crap started.
We chose Albania as its a country we're familiar with. Its far enough south to still get decent sunshine in late September and it has a decent coastline plus there was no covid entry requirements and its currently amber listed with the UK traffic light nonsense.
Getting out there was fine. Heathrow was busy but not crowded and the plane was probably only 1/3 full if that, so plenty of space. Amusingly BA tried to de-board the plane in small groups so people didn't crowd the aisle, admirable but not much use when you then get crammed in with all the other passengers onto a small bus for the stupidly short journey to the terminal.
Whilst we were out there it was really good, the sun shone all the time and it was a very outdoors holiday. No masks worn but it didn't matter because even the indoor spaces were only nominally indoors as big bi-fold doors were open all around most buildings we went in. The only real covid measure we saw was an 11pm curfew which seemed to be well observed and didn't need policing beyond a few police cars driving around gently beeping the horn. The real fun started on the way home. It was actually really nice to escape thinking about covid the whole time even if we were deceiving ourselves. It felt like normal and it was wonderful because of that.
Paid for a PCR test at the airport (35 euros a pop). Whilst I have no doubt it was a proper test the swab taken was the most cursory swab in one nostril and that was it. I don't think anyone was going to test positive and it was nothing but a tick box exercise. The check-in staff sort of checked the test result and passenger locator form but were pretty disinterested.
Security and passport control were a nightmare. Huge crowds crammed into a tiny airless space. No masks obviously. After an hour of that we were resigned to our fate of joining the delta club. Things didn't get much better on the plane as it was completly full and there was a mass of maskless children swirling around the plane.
Things really got to there worst though when we arrived back at Heathrow. For reasons known only to them we were corralled into a corridor with passengers from several other flights including passengers who went on to have to declare they needed to red zone quarantine, that was a nice touch. I don't know why we were made to mass in the corridor because passport control was largely empty. Still the 10 minutes we spent in the corridor with hundreds of other people certainly gave the virus a much needed boost.
Got home on Sunday. So, we had done the PCR in Albania on Sunday morning, we then did a LFT on Monday and second one on Tuesday. Surprisingly all clear. Did the compulsory day 2 private PCR test, to great amazement also negative. Wednesday we got the inevitable ping from track and trace because the plane was a covid infested cesspit, queue another negative LFT. Didn't have to self-isolate because we are double vaccinated but do have to do an NHS PCR test which I've just done this morning and its now with Royal Mail.
So, what have we learned from all this? It ain't worth it for a couple of nights away. We went for 3 nights and I reckon that's the bare minimum. Since Sunday morning I have done in total 6 tests. Airports and airplanes are in no way "covid safe" whether this in country or abroad. The measures the UK government have put in place regarding international travel are nothing but piss poor theatre that does nothing to keep the country safe but a few people are making a lot of money from it. The art of being seen to be doing something whilst not actually doing anything worthwhile at all.
The last thing we learnt from all this is that our vaccines were put through the fire and they seemed to have kept us safe, probably (so far anyway).
yougov.co.uk
eyes: Even though it was busy everyone was wearing masks.
