Saturday at 5:00 am our alarm went off, and we readied ourselves for the last day in Northern Cyprus.

The checkout was painless, and they actually had our bill correct. Something we were surprised by, fully expecting them to charge us for stuff we didn’t have. They had sandwiches and tea for the large number of guests checking out and lining up for the two large buses that would be hauling us back to the airport. A bit of bad planning on the part of the tour group, as there were two couples stuck waiting and unable to board the full buses for the ride back. At the airport, the lines didn’t take too long to get through at the small airport, but they were rushing people through, so we didn’t get a chance to ask about our seats to only find out at getting the tickets that we were not sitting next to each other again. We were close, however, sitting on opposite sides of the aisle, allowing us to lean over and talk to one another occasionally but that’s about it.

One thing we found about Onur Air with this trip is they were consistent, consistently late. They were late leaving London, and they were late arriving and leaving Cyprus. And they were late enough getting us to Stansted that we had to rush to the immigration and rush to get our bags, with HK’s being one of the last to come off the line. As we quickly ran to the Ryan Air check-in line, we knew we wouldn’t be able to check HK’s large bag, but figured we would check anyway. So, a lady at the counter looked up or reservation, she said “you might be able to make it. And they will most likely just grab your bag instead of having you load it. But if you don’t make it, you will have to come back and go to customer service to book a new flight.” As we were waiting to go through security, I said, “we should just go back and get a new flight. This isn’t going to work.” But I wasn’t persistent enough and did have a little hope we might make it. But while in Cyprus HK bought some gifts that involved fluids, plus her usual travel items that aren’t an issue when being checked but are when going through security. It took forever for her to make it through the security check. I had always planned on carrying on my bag, so it wasn’t much of a hassle to get through security, but they did hassle her, and she ended up handing over about 80 euros worth of stuff.

From there, I had to take her overweight bag, and she took mine as we ran through the airport to a terminal at the far end to only find them closing the door as we arrived sweaty and exhausted from the run. Now, I’ll be honest here, I wasn’t a happy camper by this point, and as we walked back to go through everything all over again, there was tension in the air between us.

In the end, we bought our new tickets, we went through security again, and we at least got to sit next to each other this time. But upon arriving back in Dublin, I think we were both a little happy this trip was over.

Have you ever been on a trip and it was so relaxing and fun you didn’t want to go home? This was not one of those trips. This was one of the trips that we were glad to be back in Dublin, rain and all.