Silly in Seville...
- Clara Raven
- Oct 27
- 3 min read
After a fabulous few days in Seville, celebrating my beautiful niece's spectacular wedding, sight seeing Espana de Plaza and roaming through the fantastic Moorish architecture of the city, my family were ready to head home.
Reaching the airport check in queue, my heart sank.
"Erm, I've left my passport under the mattress," I sheepishly admitted.
"What?" they chorused. "Why did you do that?"
"Well, I put it there to keep it safe as there was no actual safe in the room. In the olden days, that's what they used to do."
"But, it's not the olden days anymore..."
After hanging my head in shame for a millisecond, my husband, Alan, sprang into action, ushering us past the bemused passengers to the front, muttering that his wife had left her passport under the mattress in the holiday apartment. A trail of red faces followed him. A stream of apologies from us and invitations to go ahead lead us to the check in desk. Alan explained the situation as him and my family members showed their passports and put their luggage on the belt to go through and I held closely on to mine as no passport to go with it. The others went ahead through security and we said we'd rush back to the apartment, grab my passport and meet them on the plane.
Alan and I hot footed it outside to catch a cab back to where we had been staying but, alas, nobody was in. We called the Airbnb contact but it was run by AI and so, it was an hour later, waiting in the hallway, with the help of a lovely South African couple staying in the building and a helpful, human security guard, who came to my rescue. I was supervised to grab my passport from under the mattress in the flat after being let in with master key. I had been having visions of it being scooped up with all the dirty laundry and put in the wash but, thankfully, it was still there in one piece. Phew. I rushed out down the stairs and onto meet up with Alan, who was out on the street trying to flag down a cab back to the airport.
"Go catch your plane," the security guard shouted after me and I felt like I was in Love Actually.
We waited for ages hailing a cab but finally got one, clambered in and made our way back to catch our plane. We raced through security but passport control was closed and the glass doors were locked. We were too late - we had missed our flight. Argh. Next, we got a message from family What's App group saying they could see us and had tried to hold the gate open but was not allowed and that Alan's suitcase was being removed, as my husband wasn't there to make the plane. Our next mission was making our way to Lost Property to retrieve the bag. Finally, with a suitcase each, we dejectedly made our way back to look at earliest next plane home, which was 7am the next day. Sitting on the plastic chairs and fuelling up on crisps and water from the machine for dinner, we scrolled through the best options. An hour later, we had something booked, so then needed to find a bed for the night. I found it all quite exciting.
"It's like we are young again and on an adventure, like when we were backpacking," I said, beaming.
He just said, "I might be calm and smiling on the outside but I'm crying inside."
We decided against sleeping on the uncomfortable seats we were sitting on and found a budget hotel nearby, where we crashed out for five whole hours before making our way back to catch our flight, this time successfully.
