Off on Honeymoon

Wooo – We’re back again. Hard to believe that the last time we were on hollibobs was Italy 2020, where Louis engaged to me…and here we are, as Mr and Mrs Fields, off to Crete for our honeymoon. You would think that you would give us some quiet relaxation time on the honeymoon, but we were inundated with requests to continue our blog, and we don’t like to let our fans down. We did want to go to Bali and travel Indonesia but then this thing called COVID happened, so we decided to stay relatively closer to home, just incase.

As with all our travels, it rarely starts off simple. Having had our second vaccines 14 days ago, we were eligible to get our NI vaccine passport. However, at the last minute, they changed the rules and stated that we couldn’t get one 3 days before we were travelling. Disaster! There we were with no proof of vaccine, no booked tests and no legitimate way to get into Greece without isolating.

Anna had continued to celebrate her marriage and partied with best man Nicky and chief bridesmaid Aoife into the early hours of the morning, whereas I was stressed (as usual) and coming up with all sorts of possibilities to get sorted. I guess it’s true, opposites do attract.

Unfortunately, the only option was to drive to Belfast City Airport to get a rapid Antigen test, travel home to fly from Derry. That would mean we had an hour to pack and get ready, Anna was still waking up at this stage. Half way through our packing, Auntie Grace had found an alternative test in Ballykelly, only 20minutes away and much quicker. Phew. Of course Louis was stressing and in the worst mood, I was still dandering about having the time of my life. Did you know I just got married??

Off we went to Ballykelly but we couldn’t find this clinic place. We tried the hospital, we tried Boots, we drove around and couldn’t find anything that resembled a ‘mobile clinic’. We’ve been scammed we thought. There was no sign of it and nobody had heard of this in Ballykelly, not the biggest of villages. Thankfully, out pops a doctor from the back of this hospital in his scrubs. We apologised for our constant calls but we thought it was a hoax. He said don’t worry, I was just in surgery and was like would you just give me a minute! Antigen tests done and dusted, results back negative and emailed to us within 5 minutes, we were back home to pack. Thank God – If it was a hoax, we wouldn’t have had time to get to Belfast and back to Derry to get packed so it worked out.

We packed and left for City of Derry Airport with our yellow suitcases (thanks David Lapsley and Jane Fields) and our Mr and Mrs Passport holders (thanks Laura Smallwoods) and were escorted into the business lounge. Anna was wearing her ‘Mrs’ clip and a white blazer so it was pretty obvious we were on our honeymoon. You only get married once I suppose. There was only one flight today and the airport wasn’t busy, but nonetheless we availed of our lounge and free drinks and food. The lounge was no bigger than a small school classroom but it started our journey off well. Of course that was until clumsy Anna spilled her drink over her already.

Once boarded, we were passed out asleep and were woken up abruptly as we touched down in London Stansted. Everything was running smoothly as we disembarked, grabbed our suitcases and headed to the shuttle bus. At this point, Louis was ambushed with questions from the bus driver. After she had noticed our ulster bank card and asked where we had come from, she asked if we were from Derry or Londonderry. One of the hardest questions to answer out of context, Louis made a joke about Derry having less syllables but it didn’t seem to go down well. Things went from bad to worse as when the bus took off, our two suitcases on 4 wheels went rogue and went flying around the bus. Louis had to go and save the day and tie them up, coming back all hot, bothered and embarrassed. Although isn’t he always hot 😉

The UK has been experiencing some what of a heatwave, and Louis hasn’t really dried off since the Wedding on Friday. To make matters worse, the air conditioning in our short stay at Stansted Holiday inn was broken! As we ate mozzarella sticks and had some pizza and lasagne (yes, vegetarian lasagne), we also realised that masks were not compulsory anymore in England, but some people were still wearing them, so we kept them on.

Louis set alarms for an early start and we tried to fall asleep in our sauna. Our first night on our honeymoon was extremely hot. Not the sorta ‘hot’ though I had imagined. I woke up to Anna lying on the floor, covered in soaking bath towels which she had soaked to cool her off. It was a sweatbox and extremely unpleasant.