Don & Marilyn Balkwill welcome you to their Holiday Website.

Our Wedding

We hope you enjoyed your holiday as much as we did. It was really interesting meeting people from all over the world. USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Hong Kong, Taipei. Lebanon, Ireland, France, Germany, Spain and Puerto Rico. I hope I haven't missed anybody out. It illustrates that it makes no difference where people are from if we make the effort, we can all get on.

Considering the problems we had to begin with it's amazing how well things went. Our trip home was uneventful apart from one little incident which happened on the plane.

We were sitting next to a gentleman who introduced himself as Abdul. During the first part of the flight he was taking a healthy interest in Marilyn because of her red hair. He eventually offered me six camels for her and kept upping the price until he reached twenty. Of course I kept refusing however he was very persistant. I eventually put him off by saying I would agree to sell her for fifty camels and on condition he took my mother-in-law as well. This put him off when I explained she was short, Jewish and spoke with a New Jersey accent so the deal fell through.

However this was not to be the last we heard from our friend. When we were flying over the North Sea and just after we had been served our in-flight meal he leapt up with a plastic fork in his hand and said, "I am hijacking this plane." It's funny the thoughts that run through your mind at moments of stress. I thought of our young Australian friend, Tanya, who on the previous evening's meal at a Hungarian Restaurant had been gripping her fork in a threatening manner. The reason for this was that Nevin, our tour director, had just said, "One last thing" for the fourth time and Tanya was growling "If he says "One last thing" once again I'm going to stab him." I thought, this guy is no more frightening than Tanya so I said to him " Where do you want to go?" (I'm always interested in foreign travel.) He replied "Take me to England, Infidel" I replied "Abdul, sorry to spoil your moment of glory but that's where we are already going!" Abdul just said "Oh!" and sat down.

Well after that the BA stewardesses couldn't do enough for me, there was one in particular who was absolutely stunning, long blonde hair and legs up to her armpits. For some reason she began to take a particular interest in me. Whether it was because she had heard me telling Bill and Marg who were also on our flight, that I was currently casting for a play that I am directing in November I don't know. (I had neglected to mention it was an amateur production for my little home town.) She kept coming up to me and offering drinks and generally fussing and leaning over me revealing a very attractive cleavage. She was saying how brave and handsome I was and that she had always been attracted to older men because they were so much more interesting. Finally she came over to me and whispered in my ear that she couldn't fight it any more, she had to kiss me. Just as she was leaning over to do so Marilyn nudged me in the ribs and said "Wake up Don, you've been sleeping and your snoring is disturbing the other passengers!"

Hey Ho we can but dream!


For the benefit of those who are not aware we really did have problems in getting to Prague to start the holiday. We were supposed to be flying from Heathrow. As you may be aware there was a problem with the people who provide the in-flight meals and this led to an unofficial baggage handlers strike. This started on the Thursday before departure. When we got up on Friday morning we checked the news and found all flights from Heathrow had been cancelled and later on BA that were asking passengers not turn up for their flights. I immediately emailed Trafalgar, the tour company, and asked what was going to happen. I later rang them at the London number and as I later found out was switched to Switzerland. They were unaware of what was going to happen and promised to call back. A bit later we had a call from a London office in response to my email. Their response was that it was BA's responsibility and we had to go to Heathrow to check in.

Anyway after a lot of hassle and numerous calls between our Travel Agent, Trafalger and ourselves it was agreed that if we could find a flight through another airport and would pay for the flights ourselves, Trafalger would reimburse the cost of the flights and taxi's.

A flight was booked through Cardiff airport for 17.40 that afternoon which gave us about 3 hours. We called a local Taxi firm to take us to the Airport. On the way there we got caught up in a traffic jam because of an earlier accident. I telephoned the airport to say we would be late and they informed me that they were aware of the traffic problem and were keeping the check-in gate open until half an hour before the flight take off time. We arrived at the airport with 2 minutes to spare, checked in, and rushed straight onto the plane. We taxied out on time and then taxied back. Our air conditioning had failed. We all got off the plane and spent the next two and a half hours in the departure lounge. We eventually took off and arrived in Prague at about 11.30 p.m. We took a taxi to the hotel, arriving at about midnight. We then began our holiday and thankfully nothing else went wrong. We shall have to wait and see whether Trafalger make good their promise to reimburse us. We will keep you informed.

This web log (site) has been set up so that you can add comments and photo's if you wish, please do as it will add to the the fun. Click on the little envelopes, make your comments and add your pictures.

I have set up four different pages dealing with different aspects of the holiday. Just click on the links.

Prague

Vienna

Budapest

Pictures I wish I hadn't taken