The Heartless creeps who work at Ryanair.

What was possibly one of the best trips I've ever been on easily started out as the worst. And it wasn't even leaving at 2 in the morning to catch a 6 o'clock flight that made it so bad. No. It was just Ryanair. Bloody Ryanair and their lack of hearts. So before I get to the amor part of Roma.. let me vent.

Everything went smoothly until we got to the coach station and Emily realized she had forgot to print her tickets. The coach station worked with her, but not the airport. She went to print out her ticket, but because it was less than the alloted 4 hours before the flight, she had to pay 40 pounds to print her ticket. Which is more than the ticket costs. That was Heartless act #1. Next came when Blake realized he only had a return ticket. After talking to the desk, he realized that he had accidentally booked his flight for the day BEFORE and had missed it already. We had to leave him at the airport to figure out what to do and rush through the security check. I guess you could call Blake's problem heartless act #2. While it was Blake's bad for not realizing his ticket date, they were royal jerks about it. He ended up having to fork out half of his inheritance to buy a one-way ticket for later that day. Meanwhile, security...

All of your liquids have to be in a sealed zip lock back. Unfortunately, my ziplock bag didn't matter much because my liquids were ALL to big anyway. Apparently your liquids have to fit in a bottle the size of your pinky finger, so all of my toiletries were thrown away. Fine. I exaggerate. I did get to keep my toothbrush and toothpaste. And some yellow nasty nail polish that was somehow in my bag. Glory. After informing me that people from my country try to use liquids to bomb his country, the wonderful security man picked up my hairpray, deodarant, make-up remover, vaseline, Mary-Kay facewash, face toner, and face lotion and kindly placed them in his bomb proof bag. Aka - Trash can. I'm glad they're concerned about my safety... but not really. I'd prefer to have my face wash.

Also. Keep this in mind when you look at my pictures of this trip. I basically brushed my teeth and splashed my face with water everyday. That constitutes heartless act #3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9.

When that massive security check finally ended, everyone had left me. I look up at the screen to see my flight number reading FINAL CALL. To make matters worse, my gate was literally the FARTHEST FROM MY CURRENT LOCATION. I ran. And ran. and ran. I truly believed that these heartless creeps would simply make me sit and watch my plane fly away. So when I ran around the corner and saw the line still waiting to get on, I burst into tears. I hadn't realized how stressed I was until that moment. Kinda embarrassing, but here ya have it. Ryanair brings normally happy people to tears.

Of course they wouldn't let anyone on the plane with more than one bag, so we had to make sure we shoved our purses inside our backpacks. Poor chap in front of us bought a book 30 seconds before boarding and they made him re-pack it in his bag. When they say everything must be in one bag, they don't mess around. Heartless act #10.

The Heartless acts 11-20 consist of the 10 times that the interrupted our sleep on the flight to inform us LOUDLY that we could purchase scratch stickers, cigarettes, and ridiculously priced "ice-cold, refreshing beverages". Or that the plane was about to fly over a slightly ominous cloud.

Basically this post was just really fun for me to write because I got to vent. To end on a positive note: while their customer service is the worst I've ever experienced, they nicely informed us at the end of the flight that we had arrived on scheduled. In fact, "90% of all Ryanair flights in the past year have been on time!"

Luckily, we got to experience what only 10% of Ryanair customers do on the way back. We left over an hour later than scheduled.