Things that strike me

For reasons currently too convoluted to go into, my holiday plans have changed quite a bit and if you have me on Facebook or Twitter, you’ll know that I’ve spent the last few days trying to figure out how to get to Antigua.

It’s all Cabrinha’s fault. And Andre Phillip. It’s his fault more than anything. I have him on FaceBook (just don’t ask why) and he posted a link to a new Cabrinha video link pushing the 2010 Switchblade kites. The clip was filmed in Antigua.

This is not anything new of course – quite a lot of Catalyst was done in Antigua as well – but on the day in question, the weather was not all that great, I couldn’t lay my hands on a piano and frankly the thoughts of dropping everything to go to Antigua and play in Andre Phillip’s slider park were very attractive.

So I did some thinking. I was supposed to go on holidays in November but we can “delay” that and maybe go at New Year’s Eve instead. I’ve worked the last 4. So I went to see how you might get to Antigua from Ireland and discovered you fly to the UK and give British Airways or Virgin Atlantic quite a lot of money and after about 10 hours you wind up on Antigua.

If you want to go for NYE, that is. BA came back with something like two and a half grand from Dublin including an Aer Lingus flight to London. Virgin came back with nearer three grand. And that was before I discovered something I hadn’t know. Antigua is popular for weddings and honeymoons which sucks if you’re travelling on your own to go play in a slider park. Repeated requests for hotel accommodation came back with fantastic figures, such as 6000E.

Eeek. NYE not such a hot deal for Antigua then.

But I am nothing if not determined and when one of my friends saw this yesterday, she is equally determined that I go. Just not for New Year’s Eve. I am not looking at going at the start of February before the schools in Ireland are looking for holidays. I can work the flights more easily around then, and now all I have to do is pick kitesurfing brains for accommodation that is not designed for the ultimate in Romantic Honeymoons because a) I’m single and b) not getting married any time soon but that is designed to be near the kite beaches.

So if you know anything…including Dre’s phone number, I’m all open.