The Start of the Holiday?!

My family seem to love airports. They get excited when they arrive because it’s the start of the holiday. This baffles me. To me airports are soulless places that exist only to move groups of people from one place to another, usually via an extremely long walk in an atmosphere that ranges from depressing attempts by staff and travellers to ‘have fun’ to the usually offhand and sometimes downright rude attitude displayed by the security staff. In the airport you exist only as a cash cow, where overpriced shops and restaurants compete to reduce the amount of spending money you have on holiday. I get told off for not enjoying myself but I don’t see how you can in a kind of cross between a cattle market and purgatory! The holiday starts only when you get to the hotel for me.

Asian airports tend to try to make the experience of waiting for your plane relatively pleasant with Singapore and Kuala Lumpur being the standouts. Their restaurants are excellent, the shops are fascinating and reasonably priced and the family travelling together are actually cared about with great little play areas. Add to that green spaces and even art galleries and you have airports that make an effort.

The worst airport by a country mile is Newark New Jersey. The food is routinely awful, ludicrously overpriced and served as quickly and in as perfunctory manner as possible. Then you get to security which is unpleasant even by the usual standards of the profession.  They all seem to be annoyed that they aren’t in the FBI and therefore are unable to attack you! In all seriousness, there is an atmosphere in that airport that seems to put everyone on edge. I don’t intend to ever go to the US again, but if I did I would avoid Newark like the plague.

It would be so good if someone could temporarily lobotomise me whilst I am in the airport and re-engage my thinking faculties when I get to my hotel at the other end!!