John Edward Cooper’s Notes

Today, we bid farewell. Your Tour Manager will provide you with all the details you need for your transfer back to the airport for your journey home.

We hope your holiday with us has been nothing short of amazing. We wish you a safe and smooth journey home and can’t wait to welcome you back again soon!

Flipbook:

Your journey
Flight EZY1986 with Easyjet in Economy
Departing from MILAN - LINATE Airport (LIN) at 11:00 29 Jul 2025
Your booking reference number is K9L8GQN. You will need this and your passport when checking in at the airport.

Checked luggage: One piece per person (maximum 23kg), not exceeding 275cm (length + width + height) including handles, pockets and wheels.

Cabin bag: One piece per person, not exceeding 45 x 36 x 20cm including handles, pockets and wheels. Whilst there is no weight restriction for your cabin baggage, you must be able to lift and carry it yourself. The bag must fit under the seat in front of you.

Arriving at Manchester Airport (MAN) Terminal 1 at 12:15 29 Jul 2025

Transport:
For: Mr John Cooper - Allocated to seats in row 2CD both ways with EasyJet. The Outbound Locator is K9L8GQN The Inbound Locator is K9L8GQN
For: Mrs Janet Cooper - Allocated to seats in row 2CD both ways with EasyJet. The Outbound Locator is K9L8GQN The Inbound Locator is K9L8GQN

Janet had set her alarm clock to go off at 3.20am, and she got up at 3.35am. I noted the actual time when she vacated the bathroom and gave me the “OK” to shave, shower, etc.; but later, on the coach, although I found the pen in my pocket, the memo pad in which I’d noted these things was gone. (While on holiday, I tore the pages containing each day’s scribblings out of the pad, and put them away safely in a plastic envelope, in order to minimise loss from such an occurrence.)


Tuesday 29 July 2025 04:53:53
The candelabrum-style ceiling lamp in our room


Tuesday 29 July 2025 04:54:34
Starting to pack the second suitcase

Janet had packed the first suitcase yesterday; and now was packing the second, in which she needed to include my medications. Her first idea was to go down for breakfast, then come back for the suitcases and other things, and then go down and check out. That way, I could leave out in the room the tablets that I needed, and take them after we came back. I thought, though, that with breakfast starting at 6 o’clock and our pick-up occurring at 6.35am, there might be insufficient time to do all this if, e.g. there were a wait for the lift or a queue to check out at reception, and that we ought to take our luggage down when we went for breakfast. Carrying the tablets down with me, though, would be too much of a faff, I thought; so I took them before we went down, even though some of them were supposed to be taken with or after food.


Tuesday 29 July 2025 05:26:52
View from our balcony

We descended with our luggage to the ground floor in one of the two lifts (ca.5.45am), and seated ourselves in the spacious area furnished with chairs and settees opposite the staircase and reception desk. We were the first of the Manchester Airport people to do this. I went to reception, but there was no “checking out” as such; I handed over the key cards to the man on duty, and, although I told him the room number (“235”), he just took them off me without a word or any further action.
 The guy with the severed optic nerve in the right eye and his wife were perhaps the next to appear. (They sat at the same table as us at breakfast, but we never exchanged names.) Breakfast would normally start at 7.00am; but Kate had arranged that breakfast would start at 6 o’clock for those on the earliest flight to Manchester Airport. In fact, the tall, white-haired, white-coated, “distinguished”-looking server removed the rope-and-stanchion barrier at ca.5.50am. Janet went in first. I noticed that the guy was alone, so I asked him, “Are you on ‘guard duty’?” — and indeed, he was. Although Kate was to lead one of the two later-flying groups, she appeared downstairs. When Janet came back, I went for breakfast. There were others of our group in there. I had a couple of glasses of orange juice, and two flat peaches. When I returned to Janet, I asked her, “Did you see Kate?” She had done, and had given her the envelope with a €50 note in it that she’d prepared.
 It was Pauline who led the Manchester Airport party out to the coach. I held back, took the photo below, then joined them.


Tuesday 29 July 2025 06:31:00
Staircase in the hotel lobby

Janet and I sat in the second row on the right side. Others sat farther back.


Tuesday 29 July 2025 06:39:38
Last sight of the Regina Palace Hotel on our way to the airport. The driver “Vitale” is hidden from view below in the “cockpit”.


Tuesday 29 July 2025 08:03:57
Caught in slow-moving traffic in the environs of Milan

On the way, I realised that my memo pad was missing. The pen was in my pocket, but not the memo pad; nor was it anywhere to be found. Janet gave me an almost used-up one with a single page in it. The first thing I wrote in it was “8”. That was the area in the baggage-drop location for easyJet passengers, Pauline told us. As we proceeded, my need to pee was becoming most urgent and pressing; but at last (ca.08:30), we arrived! So the first thing we did after alighting from the coach (and waiting, waiting, waiting for our cases to be retrieved by Vitale: perhaps the farthest back in the luggage hold and so the last be to dragged out), was to hurry across the pedestrian crossing into the terminal to find toilets. Such relief! Then we found the baggage drop-off location “8”, as Pauline had told us. There were many people making slow progress through stanchion-and-tape zigzags, but we went straight to the sign marked “Speedy Boarding” and showed the man on duty there our boarding passes, which had “Speedy Boarding” and “easyJet Plus Bag Drop” printed on them.


And so we were let through directly to the check-in desks, and only had a very brief wait till our turn came at one of them. We each presented a passport and a boarding pass in turn, and for each I lifted a case onto the conveyor. The barcoded tag that the clerk attached to the handle of the case did, in fact have a layer that he peeled back in order to stick its two ends together. That’s what I’d been vainly looking for at Manchester Airport on 22 July.
 We were unsure of where exactly to go after that. We went to some desks marked “Customs”, but there didn’t seem to be a lot going on there; anyway, we decided to go in the opposite direction and did eventually find our way to Security. I took off my jacket, pulled my wallet out of the trouser pocket, removed my belt, and put all these in my rucksack. As at Manchester Airport, we didn’t have to remove liquids and electrical/electronic items from our bags before placing them on trays to be conveyed through the scanner. The tall scanner that each of us passed through wasn’t as sophisticated as those at Manchester; we had to hand over our walking sticks to the man overseeing the operation, which he took around the scanner, then gave us them back.
 The seemingly interminable maze of duty-free shops (how I’d have loved to have taken a swing at the stacks of perfume bottles etc. with my walking stick!) and other niggling things at Linate airport conspired to make me feel ill tempered; e.g. I needed to pee again, but the signs seemed to be leading me nowhere. The fact that we had to stand at a little table — that there was no seating — to drink the soft drinks we bought, was one of the contributing factors to my loathing of Linate.




Tuesday 29 July 2025 09:26:32
Refreshments at Linate Airport

Janet also bought a prosciutto baguette for me to eat on the plane, and a couple of clear plastic tubs of fresh fruit for herself. I typed “EZY1986” into the browser on the phone (10:07),[i] and found that our flight would leave from Gate B27; so we headed in the direction indicated by signs suspended from the ceiling. We arrived at a passport control barrier. Although there was only a moderate queue of people waiting, a woman to the left of me beckoned to me to go a different way; so we followed her to a passport control station with only a very few people waiting. Note for the future: a walking stick is essential equipment to carry at airports! Our departure location and date were stamped in the passports, and we proceeded to the “gate”. Here, we joined the short queue at the “Speedy Boarding” sign, presented boarding passes and passports, left the building, and boarded a shuttle bus.

[i] 10:07: “09:07”, according to my computer’s browser history, but the computer’s time was set at BST, not CEST.

Tuesday 29 July 2025 10:39:19
On the shuttle bus to the aircraft

From the bus we walked a short distance and climbed the boarding stairs at the front of the Airbus A319 aircraft. As on the outward flight, I sat in “2D” (Janet’s allotted seat) and she sat in “2C” (mine) (ca.10:50). When the cabin door was closed, Janet remained the sole occupant of her row (A B C) and there was only one other in mine (F). We started taxiing (11:07), then stopped (11:12); we started moving again (11:14), turned onto the runway (11:15), and took off (11:16). When the “fasten seat belts” sign went off, I moved to the window seat (A).


Tuesday 29 July 2025 11:26:58
The north-eastern end of Lake Maggiore, seen from the port side window, row 2


Tuesday 29 July 2025 11:27:52
View of the Alps above the clouds

When the catering trolley came by, I asked for a little bottle of prosecco @ €9; and I was persuaded to “Take two for €14.50”.

I also had a little canister of Pringles and a packet of M&M’s. I got out of my rucksack the brown paper bag containing the prosciutto baguette. Janet bought a can of Fanta zero sugar, and there was “€1 off any snack with a drink”.




Tuesday 29 July 2025 11:35:54
Refreshments


Tuesday 29 July 2025 11:41:53
Cloud formations: flat ones and fluffy ones


Tuesday 29 July 2025 11:43:40
Refreshments


Tuesday 29 July 2025 11:49:01
Cloud formations: flat ones and fluffy ones

Fields divided into strips, perhaps in northern France, reminded me of Form 1A at Fleetwood Grammar School, when Mrs. Salmon told us about the “feudal system” in mediaeval England, with the lord of the manor presiding over a three-field system (two fields cultivated, one left fallow each year), with the fields divided into strips, each cultivated by a serf and his family.


Tuesday 29 July 2025 12:07:07
Fields divided into strips


Tuesday 29 July 2025 13:11:24 (CEST)/12:11:24 (BST)
Approaching Manchester Airport


Tuesday 29 July 2025 13:13:09 (CEST)/12:13:09 (BST)
About to land at Manchester Airport

We landed at Manchester Airport at 12:13 (BST);[ii]—

[ii] I wrote in the memo pad “13:13 CEST”.

Tuesday 29 July 2025 13:15:27 (CEST)/12:15:27 (BST)
Taxiing at Manchester Airport

—stopped (12:16);[iii] started moving again (12:19);[iv]—

[iii] I wrote in the memo pad “13:16”.
[iv] I wrote in the memo pad “13:19”.

Tuesday 29 July 2025 13:20:46 (CEST)/12:20:46 (BST)
About to come to a halt at the terminal

—and finally came to a halt (12:21).[v] The boarding stairs were brought; the door was opened; and we were among the first to descend and walk to the nearby terminal.
 There were huge queues for Passport Control, a solid mass of hundreds and hundreds of human beings with barely perceptible movement worming their way this way and that around the many, many tape-and-stanchion zigzags. But we were waved to a tape-and-stanchion lane that was almost unoccupied. Again I say: a walking stick is essential equipment to carry at airports! However, I pointed out to the official that we’d already booked “Passport Control FastTrack”,—

[v] I wrote in the memo pad “13:21”.

—so we passed through an adjacent QR code barrier. The Border Force officer asked me where I’d come from, and my mind went a blank; but Janet, coming up behind me, told him “Milan”. And so we were officially back in the UK (12:31).[vi]

[vi] I wrote in the memo pad “13:31 CEST”.

 Thence, to baggage reclaim. No, perhaps to toilets then to baggage reclaim. We found the carousel signed “Milan Linate”, on which there were many items. One of our cases appeared fairly quickly; I retrieved it, and took it to where Janet was sitting. The other took some time, but eventually it was spewed out of the feeder conveyor onto the carousel. We walked through the Customs glass cages which had their doors open; and straight away I saw G— B— waiting for us by the exit. He took our cases, and led the way to the vehicle (boarded, 12:52).[vii] Again, Janet sat in the front and made conversation, while I sat behind and could only hear some of it.

[vii] I wrote in the memo pad “13:52”.

 We stopped for a pee at the “Moto Doncaster North” services (14:30–14:40):[viii] G— stayed with the vehicle), and I, feeling very thirsty, bought a bottle of Fanta Orange, which I drank after we set off again.… We arrived home (15:28).[x] I brought in the wheelie bins, refilled the bird bath which was bone dry, and carried the suitcases upstairs: a task somewhat less difficult than bringing them down (to 15:47).

[viii] That’s what I wrote in the memo pad: “14:30–14:40”. Perhaps by now I’d reset my wrist-watch to BST. A journey time of ca. 1 hour 40 minutes From Manchester Airport to there seems reasonable, judging by plotting the journey on Google Maps.
[x] 15:28: according to my memo pad. There’s no point in continuing to footnote timings from here on.

 Janet opened one of the suitcases, so that I’d have my computer, shaver, medications, etc., available, then reluctantly but out of necessity went to Asda.… I set up the Samsung computer, connecting it to the Sonnics SSD, which I’d intended to take with us but forgot to do so. I switched on the mains connection to the three electric clocks, two in our bedroom and one in my room, and set their time. I switched on the internet hub, the Samsung computer, etc., and sat at the latter (16:08).….
 Janet came home (16:39).… Copied 18 photos from the camera’s SD card to “This PC” › “Pictures” › “DCIM” › “20250729” on the Samsung computer (18:04–18:05); but I saw that 15 of these were from 25 July and had already been copied, so I deleted them (18:06), and that one was from 28 July, so I moved it to the folder “20250728”. With the SD card now back in the camera, I checked that every image on the camera had its counterpart in the Samsung’s “This PC” › “Pictures” › “DCIM”. I noticed that one image was the first of two attempts to photograph something, which I’d neglected to delete from the camera at the time, so I deleted it now from both camera and “This PC” › “Pictures” › “DCIM” (18:39). Then I deleted all the images from the camera (18:41).… Copied today’s 17 photos from the phone to “This PC” › “Pictures” › “DCIM” › “20250729” (18:53). I spent a long time trying to identify the lake that I’d photographed from the aircraft window earlier. In the end, I realised that it was the north-eastern end of Lake Maggiore. The reason I didn’t identify it sooner, was that it was taken after take-off and ascent were completed and the “Fasten seat belts” sign had stopped being lit. For it was then, that I’d changed to the port-side window seat; and I was assuming that we’d travelled further than the Italian–Swiss border.
 Janet got ready for bed.[xi]… I copied the eight folders of photos from “This PC” › “Pictures” › “DCIM” into the folder “2025” on the Sonnics SSD (19:55–20:00).…

[xi] According to her holiday journal: “Had a shower and was in bed at 7.50pm.”

 There was… a reply from Andrew, sent yesterday, which had not come to my attention till now:

From: Andrew K—
To: [me]
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2025 at 09:55
Subject: Re: Greetings from Stresa

Hi John,

Thanks for the great photo, the mountain certainly looms over the town.
I hope that you are both having a lovely time and that the weather is good.…

Andrew

Sent from my iPhone

I just replied with a “” (21:36).
 …Shut down the computer (21:50);… cleaned teeth; retired to the bedroom (22:01).

[2025]