Despite all of the issues we had with returning our hire car, the fact that we could hire one at such short notice on New Year’s Eve actually saved our holiday and Mike’s 30th Birthday!
After being told our flight home from Berlin on the 30th December was cancelled and we wouldn’t be able to fly home for another 3 days at least, we hit panic stations. We needed to be home on the 31st as we had an awesome birthday planned for Mike turning 30 and we didn’t want to be spending it in an airport hotel just the two of us. We wanted to be surrounded by family and go with the plans we originally had.
Stood in a queue for four hours we thought of every idea possible; a train to Prague and fly home, a train to Amsterdam and fly home, getting to Calais and being foot passengers on the ferry across, a train to anywhere else in Germany and a flight home, and even a bus the whole way home taking 21 hours! Our phone batteries were dying, there was nowhere to charge them and the thought of getting home seemed more and distant.
Until, we go to the front of the queue and I asked the airline representative about any flights they had going out the next day. He said all Londo flights were fully booked and over capacity. I then asked where else in the UK they had flights to and after about five minutes of naming random places I hoped would have an airport we found seats on a flight to Newcastle at 06:40 on the 31st; we were going home in less than 12 hours!
Obviously, once we got to Newcastle we would have to make our way back from there, and that’s where car hire saves the day!
Once we had change to charge our phones, I went onto Go Car Hire and got us a car for the next day! It was so easy to do and saved us so much stress!
I simply told their search engine that I wanted to pick the car up from Newcastle Airport and drop the car back to a different location closer to home.
I then was shown a few options of cars that were available for us to pick up (ignore the dates in the image, it’s just to show you how easy the site is to navigate!)…
We opted with a four door Vauxhall Astra or similar as there were four of us driving back and ended up with a Ford Fiesta which I’m a huge fan of!
We got a great deal for such short notice and we made it home in time for a shower, hair wash and to be able to wear my new dress! So we were able to spend our evening surrounded by family as we had planned all along.
Mike’s 30th Birthday had been saved by a hire car!
I'm Squibb Vicious, better known as Haydy!
Happiest with a craft beer in hand, eating til my heart is content or exploring somewhere new.
Here you can read about my adventures!