As you’ll have seen from my tweets, Emma and I headed up to Shetland over the weekend.  Not been home since January (a complete change from last year when I seemed to be home every 4 weeks!)

Not much had changed. It was nice to be back but there’s still little to do for someone who has seen the island as much as I have.

I went paddling. Water still as cold as ever, global warming has not kicked in yet.

Also got the perfect chance to try out my new camera on some puffins.

And Emma got to meet some Shetland ponies. A highlight of the trip for her.

Back off the boat this morning. Feeling a little home sick but I’m definitely back in the right place, all the excitement of Tescos coming to Shetland would be too much for me.

Sitting on the bus to get from the departure lounge to the plane at Paris Charles De Gaulle (or Charles De Dull as I will now forever call it) airport on Friday night and I over hear the following conversation between a child and his mother…

CHILD: “Mummy, Mummy, I suppose Halloween is a very dangerous time for planes….!”

MOTHER: “Why’s that?”

CHILD: “Well it’s obvious isn’t it….? Egging.”

Now I was thinking he may have confused Halloween for Guy Fawkes night, in which case there would be fireworks in the sky, I could see the sense in that… but egging? A plane? That would be some good aim.

It was the only thing to smile about at Charles De Dull on Friday, as I was put in a very bad mood while I spent a total of 3 hours in it.

The UK use the Great British Pound. The Czech Republic (the location of our weeks holiday) use the Crown. France use the Euro. Seeing as we were only going to be in France for 3 hours in each direction, it didn’t really make any sense to take out any Euros from the Post Office, instead I’d just take some from the cash machine at Charles De Dull.

On the way out we ended up catching our flight from one of the older terminals of De Dull where there were plenty of cash machines but really no where to eat. In fact once you were through security there were no shops, restaurants or even toilets. Not a good plan for the over prepared David who always turns up to airports hours before he needs to.

On the way back (on Friday) we were flying from one of the newer (possibly brand new?) terminal…. great, you’d think. But lessons from Terminal 5 at Heathrow show that a new airport terminal isn’t always a good thing.

Plenty of shops. Plenty of restaurants. Even Playstation 3’s to play while you wait for your flight. But NO cash machines. None what so ever. One incredibly unhelpful French man informed us that once we were past security there were no cash machines and that we’d have to pay for anything with cash (which we didn’t have) or credit card (I’m a student, the last thing I need is a credit card).

One shop accepted British money! Hurray!! We had a £5 note, and £5 in coins. Except they didn’t except coins. Fair enough I suppose, except we didn’t know this till we were at the counter. And thanks to the terrible airport pricing and even worse exchange rate, our bottle of coke, Mars Bar and packet of crisps came to more than £5. But rather than letting us put one of the items back, the snotty French shop assistant refused to serve us.

Grrr… ALL I WANTED TO DO WAS SPEND SOME OF MY MONEY IN THEIR STUPID FRENCH AIRPORT! Is that too much to ask?

Finally we did find 2 Euros on us which was enough for Emma to get a packet of crisps. We didn’t dare go back to the shop that refused to sell us goods, so instead we found another. Yet this shop you were required to show your boarding pass before you bought goods, even for a packet of crips. It wasn’t surprising that there were several boarding passes lying around that people had dropped, how they were going to manage to fly I don’t know. The daft thing is, Emma managed to get through security without showing her boarding pass (I know this, because it was in my pocket), yet had to show her pass to get a packet of crisps. Madness.

People have said for years that the French are rude, ignorant, full of themselves (I could go on), but I didn’t really understand this properly till Friday.

If we’d been travelling Prague to Aberdeen direct, I would have been upset to see the lights of Aberdeen at 9.30 on Friday evening, but instead I was so relieved to see Dyce coming in to view.

I’ve decided that the bus being late isn’t actually that bad a thing.  Becase I always, without fail, turn up to the bus stop about 2 minutes late.  But with the busses in Aberdeen (and anywhere else I’d imagine) that means I’m actually early for the bus, by about 5 mintues.

Emma and I were back this morning from an excellent weekend in Shetland.

On the way up on the ferry I did wonder exactly why we were heading up north. This thought was mainly fuelled by the force 9 gale we were steaming through. Once every 5 minutes Emma would slide from one end of the cabin to the other. I think she too was wondering “why?!”

All that was made up for when we arrived in Shetland. The weather wasn’t spectacular, there wasn’t much happening and there was hardly anyone around… but I still got a couple of days to show Emma the ’sights’ (including my local pub), and take plenty of photos.

Completely knackered now though. Amazing, even after 9 hours sleep (that’s about 4 hours more than normal) on a perfectly calm ferry, I still feel totally zonked.