All seven (yes, 7!) of us piled into our local Thomas Cook and spend hours deciding on the perfect holiday. For us it would be our first holiday abroad without our parents and at the time it felt very surreal because all I had ever known was packing my suitcase and going. For the first time we were responsible for everything to do with the holiday, from booking it and packing to arranging transport to the airport and the best thing was we could go anywhere in the world that we wanted.
Immediately we all agreed that we wanted to go somewhere hot and sunny, to have a break from the typical British summer. It was a cold January's day when we crammed into the travel agents and the thought of sun opposed to the snow outside was amazing. Although we decided sun and preferably sea were essential, we knew that we did not want to or had the money to spend fortunes, so we were looking for a reasonable deal.
After considering a number of countries and islands we set ourselves on going to a hotel on the East coast of Majorca, a mere two hour flight time away.
From the start of our planning, we all decided that more than anything we wanted a relaxing holiday and although we wanted the opportunity to go out if we wanted to, we didn't want it to be the focus of our holiday. For this reason we avoided the notorious Magaluf and went to a resort called Callas De Mallorca.
The best thing was that none of us had been to the resort before or even Majorca which meant that it would be new and exciting for everybody. There was even people in our group that had never been on a plane or abroad before!
We also knew straight from the start that we did not want to be buying or cooking food every single night that we were away, although we wanted the option to eat out for a couple of nights at restaurants if we wanted to. Therefore we found an all inclusive option at a resort which consisted of three hotels and although we were warned of a potentially long transfer time, we booked our holiday.
Then the countdown began. At first I found that the weeks and months were going by so slowly and our holiday seemed ages away. However, once the holiday got closer and I realised that we only had 100 days until we flew the days started to go by quicker. By the time that it was one week until our holiday I had barely brought new holiday clothes and sorted out my travel insurance.
It was a strange sensation knowing that you would be leaving the country, yet all of your family members would be left behind. I think the whole experience has made me realise that I am growing up quickly and that I am going to be doing more and more things without my family around all the time. But more than anything I was excited, and I was ready to see a new island.
As our flight was scheduled to leave Gatwick airport at 8.20am, we knew that we needed to be at the airport for 6am at the latest. It took us about 2-2.5 hours to get the airport from our home so we were leaving our small town at 3am, whilst everybody else was still sleeping. Luckily for us, there were no accidents or delays on any of the motorways or roads that we travelled on so this made our journey much more enjoyable. None of us had been to sleep either, and in fact I was still putting last minute items into my suitcase at 10pm! High on excitement, we arrived at the drop off point and said goodbye to both my dad and my friend's dad and we went up the lift to the main terminal. At this point the fact that we were leaving still didn't feel real, although now we were alone in one of the country's biggest airport.
Overall our journey to Majorca was fairly straightforward, we checked in with no problems and all our suitcases were underweight, we boarded the plane without problems and there was no delay in our flight. So far so good. The only problem we had with the plane was that 4 of us were sitting in row 32 and the other three were sitting in row 7 so we couldn't really speak to them much, if at all.
The flight itself to Palma was rather interesting. Behind us we had several rows of boys going on a lads holiday to Magaluf and so the whole journey there they were singing 'Maga Maga Magaluf Magaluf' which after about 3 minutes got rather annoying. Directly behind me was a family obviously not travelling to Magaluf with a young girl who decided to throw the Monarch seat cover type thing onto my head, which admittedly was rather funny.
Not to be left out, the other three in our group also travelled near groups of lads going on a holiday to Magaluf. However instead of the singing, they decided to congratulate our pilot Alistair when he successfully landed our plane and then proceeded to give him a round of applause. Brilliant.
At around 11.30 local time we landed at Palma airport. As we were coming into the airport it almost feels as though you are going to be landing in the sea because of how close you are to the ground when you come across the island and you are slightly shocked when you realise that you are actually going to be landing on the ground.
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