Rich and Su's wedding
Well, it's been forever and a day since my last post. But what better occasion to merit an update than the wedding of my friends Rich and Su?
The wedding was novel for a couple of reasons: firstly, the festivities were near Paphos, in Cyprus; and secondly, I was best man! An incredible number of people made it out to the island, with most people turning into a mini-holiday and staying for a week. Personally, I was staying in a villa with a bunch of friends from my IBM days, and we had a great time maxing and relaxing in the days before the wedding itself. Lots of barbecues, lots of G&Ts, and lots of lovely food, the highlights of which were definitely the fillet steak at €24/kg and tiger prawns at €11/kg. On the wedding day itself, I tried to keep Rich's nerves as steady as possible with a fairly calm schedule - a trip down to Su's hotel to drop off a couple of prezzies, a bit of table tennis and then sprucing ourselves up for the main event. Table tennis produced the first slip-up of the day, in that Rich, chasing an errant ball, did actually slip-up into the pool, fully clothed, much to our amusement. After drying off and getting suited and booted came hitch number two, when the buses ferrying the hundreds of friends and family around left earlier than expected, stranding some people. After some frantic phoning, that was resolved, and everyone made it in plenty of time. The venue was a little restaurant perched on the side of a hill overlooking the Mediterranean, with the service itself actually happening under a little gazebo just outside. From here on in, everything was plain sailing. Plain sailing, that is, until Eyjafjallajökull decided to explode the very same day.We found out the next morning, when I popped round to Rich's Dad's place to do some snorkeling (which would become a fixture over the next few days). At that time, there was very little information: lots of flights were being canceled, but there was no indication as to how long it would continue, whether airlines would cover accommodation, whether alternative routes might be do-able, and so on. A few people were inconvenienced immediately, as they had to be home for the weekend. Luckily, I wasn't one of them, although I had a flight booked to Toronto in a week's time. Surely, things would be sorted by then, I thought! However, as the days passed, and the flight restrictions remained resolutely in place, I started to get nervous, and looked at other ways to get back to the UK. If Cyprus hadn't been an island, I would definitely have hired a car and driven it. Google Maps reckoned it was a 2-3 day trip, but with two people, it wouldn't have been too bad, and what an adventure! Unfortunately, the ferry to Greece took two days, and the word was that car hire was very much more in demand than supply anyway... Luckily, easyJet, Air Canada and HSBC insurance were all great, agreeing to move flights around and pay for alternative accommodation without so much as a grumble (although I'm yet to file my claim...). Initially, my flight was moved back ten days, which took a huge chunk out the time I'd planned to spend in Toronto, and there was no guarantee even that flight would be possible. In the end, camping at the airport did the trick, as although the online booking systems were showing as completely full, most flights were actually going backwards and forwards half-empty, due to the re-scheduling bonanza that had been happening. I got back to the UK five days late, and headed out to Toronto the very next day.
