“Wow, look at the planes mummy!” insisted my sister.
Well at least she was occupied. I couldn’t stand another second of her saying ‘are we there yet, are we there yet’ every two minutes. Then finally I was saved from being bored to death and it was time to head out to the planes.
“C’mon Kiran, c’mon Aneeka,” Mum called from behind the exit.
“We’re gonna ride on an aeroplane, we’re gonna ride on an aeroplane!” chanted my sister.
“Oh Brother.” I quietly mumbled to myself.
I was wondering how I was going to survive the two hour flight with my six year old, moany, groany, tantrum throwing, always has her own way sister (I love her really). It turned out that I couldn’t have listened to her even if I had wanted to. Which I didn’t, so I guess that was a blessing.
In fact I couldn’t hear a thing while we were in the plane because the engine was so close and loud that we might as well have been in it.
“You’d better put these on.” My dad said as he handed me a pair of, what appeared to be, headphones, except with a microphone in them. “They’re so that we can communicate.” Then after a short while he said,” Oh by the way your one is broken Kiran but you can swap it with Aneeka’s one if you want to talk to me and on the way back you can swap yours with Aneeka’s.”
“Ok,” I had learnt not to argue with my father from past experience.
Mum attempted to doze off while dad looked through his pilot’s manual and did numerous checks on the control panel. After about half an hour in the plane the engine was finally fired up and raring to go.
The engine was louder than the next-door neighbours rock music. I tried to call my dad but it was as if my voice had disappeared. I understood why I had to wear headphones to communicate.
Fifteen minutes into the flight and I began to feel queasy. “Mum I feel sick,” I said through Aneeka’s headphones.
“Here, take this bag,” she said sleepily and then fell asleep again.
My mum is the only person I know who sleeps as lightly as a feather but can sleep through a hurricane. For example, she wakes up if I step on a creaky floorboard in the middle of the night to go to the toilet but she won’t wake up during a storm.
We were soon coming up to the end of the English Channel and the beginning of France. Finally, I thought, I can get off the plane and have my feet safely on the ground. Dad had been showing off his air skills, which made my stomach jump into my mouth, and to top that I now needed the toilet desperately.
Aneeka seemed to be occupied with the view, she actually seemed to like Dad’s air acrobatics and Mum was still asleep.
A final one and a half hours later, Dad had got his landing permission and it was time to set the plane down. It was a tense moment for all of us, except Aneeka; she was too young to understand aerodynamics. I knew, from the flight simulator I had played on, that if the landing wasn’t perfect we would crash.
We came up to the landing strip. We’re going to run out of runway I thought to myself. We got closer and closer to the ground. I was thinking about what would happen if we were to crash. It’s not that I didn’t trust in my dad’s piloting skills, I was just trying to keep my mind off my stomach.
Thankfully we landed safely at Le Touquet airport. It was quite a bumpy landing but it was way better than how I had landed my planes on the flight simulator. At least we were still intact.
Le Touquet airport was a lot larger than Wycombe airport but still quite small.
We arrived at the perfect time; there was no air-traffic, beautiful weather, friendly tourists and we checked out pretty quickly.
We took a taxi to the town. There were amazing sculptures and ingenious architectural wonders. We spent ages looking for a hotel to stay in, but most of them were fully booked. I enjoyed looking around for a while but my feet began to feel sore.
We ended up staying in a lovely five star hotel on a side street about a mile away from the beach.
The food was good, there was lots of choice and the weather was perfect during the whole holiday.
If there was ever any way that I could travel in time that’s where I’d be. It was definitely one of the best holidays I have had so far.