Story Archive

Travel Travails

After her vacation to Benidorm, a popular tourist destination on Spain’s Mediterranean coast, Freda Jackson, 81, complained to travel operator Thomas Cook, who sold her the trip. “I have never complained about a holiday before,” the woman from Manchester, England, said, “but this one was a disaster from start to finish.” Worse, “My friend and I paid for it from our pensions and it was a struggle trying to fund it over 12 months and the holiday was totally ruined,” she said. “I cried after,” and demanded a full refund of the 1,133 pounds (US$1,460) she and her friend paid for the trip. Oh dear: what was the problem? “The hotel was full of Spanish holidaymakers,” Jackson complained. “Why can’t the Spanish go somewhere else for their holidays?” Thomas Cook offered the ladies an apology, a 50 percent refund, “and are investigating to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” a company spokesman said, stressing the refund was not compensation for an overabundance of Spaniards, but rather for a changed flight and not putting her in a ground-floor room as requested. (RC/Plymouth Herald) ...“The Italian seems wise, and is wise; the Spaniard seems wise, and is a fool; the French seems a fool, and is wise; and the English seems a fool and is a fool.” —Quoted as a ‘common proverb’ by Thomas Scot in The Highwaies of God and the King (1623).