Luton airport is not for me

I’m back into the routine for a couple of weeks, so having fought my way through the morning rush hour traffic on the Bordeaux peripherique I am now sitting in the departure lounge of Bordeaux airport waiting for the 10:15 flight back to Gatwick, and the good news is the plane is already here to take us back to the UK, so we should be on time.

We have just had a very wet weekend in Sigogne, so a perfect time for putting up Christmas decorations and pottering around the house. Having said that, we spent Saturday morning playing catch up, because we left it too late to start, around the DIY stores of Cognac & Jarnac, hunting for tiles for the bathroom in room 3. We bought all the tiles for 300€, less the decorative frieze which will cost 200€ and is on a week’s delivery, but all in all the bargain hunting went well. Then it was off to Jarnac to buy a Christmas tree, the one we wanted, a Norwegian Pine was 60€ which was a bit expensive but it was 6ft (2m) tall, so we settled for an ordinary tree at 22€ but still 6ft tall and we will do some extra sweeping over the festive period if we forget to water it. Fleur then spent the afternoon decorating the tree, Fleur style.

I had planned for us to go out to eat at Hotel Karina on Saturday evening, but we went to franca’s friend Fabiola for dinner on Friday night and we did not get home until midnight, so I figured out that Fleur will not be such good company eating out again on Saturday night, so even though Franca did not appreciate it, we ate at home, but we will go there this coming Saturday. Dinner at Fabiola’s was very nice, they have 2 houses and I think 3 barns on their land, they have almost finished the smallest house which is where they are living whilst they work on the other buildings, and the reason for the dinner was to show us their new 90% complete kitchen which looked very nice, and was custom built by Patrick, Fabiola’s better half. Fabiola is not a typical French name, and that is because she is from Guatemala, Patrick is French, and he is one of the lucky public sector workers who are allowed to retire at 50, and he retired just three weeks ago, so he has plenty of time to work on the rest of their building project. Dinner was excellent and the company was fine and the whole evening was great for my French which is still struggling to get past the tourist stage.

I am having to travel to Bordeaux from Luton for a couple of weeks in December as BA do not appear to be laying on an afternoon flight from Gatwick to Bordeaux, or its completely sold out which is unusual, there is always space in club class at a price. Luton airport really is awful once you get through to the departures area. It is very bleak and dark going through to the Easyjet shed, and that is the only way I can describe it. It is one of these so called silent terminals, but there appear to be unintelligible announcements every few minutes. I am pleased that I do not have to use Luton every week, it would be a truly depressing experience, I always thought Luton was a modern airport like Stansted, to be honest I would say give me Ryanair from Stansted over Easyjet from Luton any day.

Well time to get on the plane…