June 24th will be our first wedding anniversary and I’d been wondering how to celebrate it. Spent most of yesterday, a rest day, booking a week in Majorca leaving on June 24. Neither Essy, nor I, are herd animals. We much prefer making our own decisions about where to stop, for how long, what to do next etc. rather than just follow the herd so any type of ‘packaged’ holiday is a no, no for us. After lots of searching for a good flights deal finally booked Easyjet from Gatwick to Palma. I had commenced booking with Flybe from our local airport, Southampton, but became very pissed off with Flybe when they started adding lots of extra charges to the flight price – £6 per flight sector if you wanted to take a suitcase with you! Unless it’s a day return for business most passengers have a bag to check-in. Hers and mine out and back thus added £24. Want to sit together on the plane? Just tick the box to add more money. Paying by card? That’ll be a few more pounds. Need oxygen when the aircraft passes 10,000′? Tick this box to pay :-) Bugger off Flybe, even if I’ve paid as much after adding Gatwick parking, fuel to get there etc, I’ve made a protest about your marketing methods. I found an excellent site to help in the search for low cost flights www.skyscanner.net

Next I fixed up a hire car. Got a VW Polo with air con for £78 for the week, all taxes, insurance with no excess and bail bonds inclusive. Quite happy with that. I was last in Majorca 4 years ago before I met Essy and travelled alone. I took the Rough Guide to Majorca with me and had made notes in the book about the places I’d stayed in and where I’d visited. Looking at the book again is a real eye opener. I’m waitng for confirmation that our booking at one hotel for the first 3 nights has been accepted, I’d commented in my notes that this hotel was much nicer than the description in the Rough Guide and it would be worth staying in. Being a small family hotel it doesn’t have an online booking system – you e-mail a request and wait for a reply.

We probably wont book ahead for the other 4 days, better to decide where we want to go when we’re there. It’s freedom we like, arrive somewhere and it’s nice then stay on, if it’s not to our taste then get the hell out of it!