We were flying at 9.30 so needed to be at the airport by 7.30, more or less. But before getting to the airport we needed to return the 2 hire cars and deal with some car issues.
When we were in Arnea I scratched the car. Not a tiny little scratch. A long, deep scratch that included a small hole in a panel. They type of damage that a bolt jutting out of scaffolding that you didn’t see as you try to drive a car through a tight squeeze might do to the side of a car. Woops. I learnt a long time ago to book rental cars directly from local rental operators. It’s cheaper than the big international companies, the money goes to a local company and it also allows you to buy insurance directly from them. Third party insurance coverage is not recognized by the car rental company, so you would have had to have pay for the damage and then claim it back later. In this case, I estimate the damage would have been a few thousand euros. Yes, the damage was pretty ugly! Instead, I paid a fifteen Euro handling fee and the insurance paid for all the damage. There are two lessons here. 1 – always get FULL insurance with a 100% deductibles. You’ll pay more but will have no problems when something happens, because eventually, something will happen. 2 – Don’t try to be clever and drive through spaces you can’t get through with your rental car.
The guy at the car rental return office was quite good natured about the damage, mostly because I had full insurance, so it didn’t affect him or me, AND I was sheepish, apologetic, repentant, remorseful, honest and very embarrassed. Sometimes you just gotta take your licks when you deserve them, especially if they don’t cost you anything other than your pride.
Garry had the small matter of a speeding ticket to deal with. The Greek country cops hit paydirt when they stopped a tourist who was a bit heavy-footed on the gas pedal. Oh well.
After dealing with the cars we got to the airport and needed to get into the check-in line, even if we’d already completed our on-line check-in. We had El-Al tickets, but the flight was operated by their cheapie subsidiary, Sun-D’or, who farm it out to a Bulgarian charter company. I couldn’t care less about any of this for a two hour flight, except …. we were told that we couldn’t take our trolleys on board and needed to check them as luggage, for free. No big deal, to be honest. As I mentioned in the section when we were at the winery, we bought wine under the belief that Yoni’s El-Al platinum status allowed him to check luggage (or a box of wine) for free. Unfortunately, there wasn’t the slightest sign of an El-AL rep at check-in and the Sun-D’or/Bulgarian Cheapie Air staff weren’t in the slightest bit interested in Yoni’s El-Al platinum status. If he wanted to check the wine he had to pay 90€. So the absurd was that us plebs in the cheapo ticket department were forced to check our trolleys for free, but Platinum status holders have the luxury of being able to take their trolleys on the plane, but of course can’t take liquids. Especially not 6 X 750 ml bottles of liquid. They have to pay for checked luggage. Perhaps he could have thrown his Platinum weight around if there had been an EL-AL rep in sight, but on an early morning Sun-D’Or flight, forget it. El-al were happy to take our money but that’s as far as their responsibility goes. In the end, the check-in staff did see the absurdity of “forcing” the cheap ticket holders to check their luggage but not affording that right to the platinum status holder. So Yoni was allowed to check his trolley for free, but a packed box of wine doesn’t rank as a trolley, so couldn’t be checked for free. Do I need to use the word “absurd” again? He was forced to unpack the box of wine, remove all his clothes from his trolley, give them to Sigal for her trolley, stuff more clothing into his shoulder pack and then load the six bottles of wine into his trolley so it could be checked, in the hope that the bottles wouldn’t break in his trolley. All this at the check-in desk of some anonymous Bulgarian charter airline that masqueraded as low-cost Sun-D’Or which doesn’t even try to masquerade as El-Al. Kafka for the 21st century.
We got back to Israel in one piece, as did the wine bottles and after some confusion as to who bought which bottle of wine, made our ways home. We’ll laugh about the tribulations when we look back on this great holiday. Or when we are next in Greece. We’ll definitely be back.