Why I hate Airports...

I hate airports. I always have and I always will. I never really had a reason before as to why I loathe them so much. Now I do. For me, airports are the absolute worst part of holidays and my most recent experience confirms this.

Flying Out: 
Checked suitcase in, said nothing as I saw the weighing scales tip a kilo over the 20kg limit and held my breath in the hopes that they wouldn't charge me. They didn't *phew*. Moved on towards security which is my absolute favourite part of the airport! Not. Made sure I had no metals on me and put my bracelets in my bag instead of loose in the tray as I'd heard of people being robbed whilst waiting for their turn going through the metal detector. Walked through the metal detector, no beeps which meant no frisking today! Things are starting to look up. I wait anxiously as I watch my bag go through the scanner. I watch as the security guard pause the computer on my bag as he searches through its contents for drugs or bombs or whatever it is that they look for, after 20 scary seconds he unpauses the screen and looks at the next bag. Yes! I can continue with my holiday!

Me at duty free.

Next to wait for two hours in the most boring place on the planet. Duty Free. Greeeaaat. I peruse perfumes and whiskeys as we wait for our flight, whilst I contemplate playing pranks on other passengers to liven the place up. I look through the newsagents and tried to decide whether or not I was hungry enough to pay 2.10 for a small dairy milk, in the end I decided I'd see what the food was like on the plane. Now for the fun part, boarding! As a teenager, I always tend to get glared at by old people for no proper reason other than the fact that they think I might be a hooligan. Fair enough if I actually was, but I am a respectable young gal who reads and helps out with the community so there's no need for that! :D Anyway I had this absolutely lovely old lady who inspected my boarding card, checked my passport to make sure I was who I said I was and then ushered me on with not so much as a 'Have a nice flight!' Boy would she have been sorry if the flight had crashed or something.

Anyway the flying part itself is always a pleasant experience for me, or at least sometimes it is, oh wait it never is? No you're right it never really is. I had the luck of being seated in between my best friend who is a little bit of a nervous flyer (I noticed this when my hand was being crushed during take off) and this gentlemen next to me who's hands were shaking so badly he couldn't fasten his tray table up. I'm so glad I'm a good flyer as the two of them would have made me have a nervous break down otherwise. The rest of the flight passed without much to write about, the man on my right ordered a few beers and other than that it was a normal flight to my holiday destination. There wasn't even turbulence to give us a bit of excitement.


Disembarking the plane we were hit by the sauna like heat that was the Portuguese air, I'm excited as it's evening time and yet it's warm! This is going to be great! Whipped out my passport for the very sexy god in passport control who very kindly and sexily welcomed me to Portugal in a deep voice. I may have giggled. Collected my suitcase from baggage claim and proceeded to hop into our transfer to the hotel.

Now for the part that really gets my goat. My two friends and I are sitting in our apartment chatting about the flight and other girly things, it's 10:30 pm we haven't started unpacking but decide to grab pjs and toiletries and the like. I proceed to open my suitcase when I notice something very unusual. There is a small, black velvet parcel or bag shoved into my suitcase beside my toiletries bag. I gingerly pick it up by the corner and say 'Girls this isn't mine.' They immediately pale. I'm starting to feel nervous about its contents. 'What do you mean it isn't yours? Are you sure? It's not something that one of your sisters might have put in your bag?' one says. I shake my head furiously. I knew it wasn't mine. I don't possess anything velvet. That's when I spin it around and see what we thought was Arabic embroidered on the back. Now we're really starting to panic. What is it? Why would someone put it in my suitcase? Was it illegal? I decided to be either brave or stupid and unzip it to see what's inside. Inside there are a whole bunch of leather looking straps or belts and two small black lacquer boxes with more of the same language on them in gold. At this point the possibilities were endless but we were automatically jumping to the worst conclusions as three teenage girls do. These included bombs, drugs (it had a funny smell) and possible scenarios with tracking devices and playing a very real role in a movie like Taken. Knowing how strict the police force is over there we were terrified that we were going to be the next 'Peru Two' by accident.

Fortunately for us, we met with one of my friend's very sensible neighbours who were fascinated by the two boxes and suggested doing a Google image search of them. An iPad picture, and Google image search later we had found out that these were actually two Jewish prayer boxes and the writing was in fact Hebrew and not Arabic. I was still in shock even though we had found out that these boxes were nothing sinister. I felt so violated. Someone had been in my suitcase. Ugh. Someone had touched my stuff and put that bag in with it.

 I always believe there is a lesson to be learned from every scare, so, here's what I learned; That I probably could have saved myself a lot of grief by being more culturally and religiously educated and that I will ALWAYS lock my suitcase firmly from now on. But I doubt I could ever have foreseen something like this happening. As an eighteen year old girl, I have to say it was the scariest thing that has ever happened to me. How would you have reacted? What do you think I should do about this? I encourage you to share my story as a warning to your friends and familys. Learn from my mistakes. I know that nothing terrifying actually happened to me, but it could have been so much worse.

Until next time x