Our flight was scheduled to leave Vancouver around 5:45pm (Vancouver-time) and so, for me, the afternoon hours were filled with long hugs and copious amounts of tears. I’m excited and thrilled to be going to Greece for the semester – the going part is easy! – but it’s difficult to say goodbye to the people at home. I’ve never been good at leaving.
I was a little worried about getting through customs since I have a larger-than-normal carry-on bag filled with the medical stuff I need to stay alive in Greece for the next three months or so! Here's a picture of everything I am bringing to Greece -- the only bag being checked is the big black one:
My anxiety was completely unjustified, however, and customs in Vancouver was a breeze – as was boarding!
We all found each other at the gate and spent a few minutes chatting before splitting up again (we hadn’t managed to get seats together on the plane).
Our flight was delayed for about 20 minutes because two individuals had checked in and then decided last minute that they actually didn’t want to go to Heathrow. The airport staff were then obligated to remove their luggage from the plane and so the rest of us were stuck waiting – le sigh.
The delay that had at first seemed like only a slight annoyance eventually led to quite a bit more trouble, however, when we arrived at Heathrow and made it off the plane at 11:15am (London-time) only to discover that we were not going to be able to make our connecting flight to Athens. The gate for boarding our flight was closed at 11:30am. We probably could have made it only five minutes or so late (the flight wasn’t scheduled to leave until 11:50am anyway) if the airport staff hadn’t had to deal with so much bureaucracy getting us through the fast track and to the appropriate gate but alas – at least 15 of us (six of us heading to Athens together and a few other passengers making the same trips for holidaying purposes) missed the connection because apparently British Airways staff are willing to delay an entire plane for twenty minutes to appease two people in Vancouver but are not willing to delay a similar plane for five minutes to appease 15 people in London...
On a more cheerful note, at least we were together. Time for some bonding!
We insisted on being booked onto an “Olympic Air” flight leaving at 4:30pm rather than waiting for the next British Airways flight (which wasn’t leaving ‘til 9pm) and were assured by the British Airways staff that our luggage would be safely transferred along with us on this new itinerary as long as we gave the Olympic Air people our luggage tags to ensure that it could still be tracked, etc.
We meandered our way to Terminal 2 from Terminal 5 without too much trouble, made it back through security and had only to pick up our boarding passes before we were going to be able to use the washroom, grab some food (they’d given us £10 food vouchers because we complained that we’d starve if they didn’t...), and unwind a bit before completing the final leg of our journey. The guy at the desk who was giving out boarding passes was quite concerned about our luggage and didn’t seem to think that British Airways could be trusted to safely deliver our luggage to the appropriate place unless they’d planned on re-tagging each bag and giving us new luggage tags with flight numbers and destinations associated with our new flight plans. He insisted that we go back through security and bus our way back to Terminal 5 to speak with British Airways again before continuing on...
So we followed his advice and were assured by British Airways people that our luggage would make it and that the guy we had spoken too had been misinformed or was simply an idiot. They never actually said that but it was more or less implied. In any case, tired and weary and deeply frustrated, we all headed back AGAIN to Terminal 2 where I got stuck at security (the SAME EXACT check-in point where I’d gone through only half an hour earlier) and was not allowed to bring my contact lens solution on the plane with me. Bah. Tears didn’t help (for once) and so I’m wearing glasses ‘til we get to Athens because I had to take them out and use the solution I could before they threw the rest of it in the garbage.
Apparently the entire staff at Heathrow switches over around noon because there was someone new at the Terminal 2 check-in point as well! She was MUCH more helpful than the guy we’d spoken with earlier and even walked into the terminal to find us half an hour after we’d arrived to assure us that the luggage stuff had been dealt with; she’d been able to confirm that all of our bags were, in fact, going to be on the same plane as we were. I will let you know if this is actually true when we get to Athens... It does look promising though!
And now... here we are. On a plane only half-full. Which makes for great sleeping arrangements – I managed to get in a good 1.5 hour nap sprawled across three seats before they came to serve what I imagine was supposed to be food...
And that’s where things are at. We’re all a little disappointed that we missed our big group dinner at Geoffrey’s (professor running the trip) favourite restaurant in Athens buuut I think we’re all pretty grateful for the fact that we weren’t alone to deal with all of the mishaps and craziness that ensued! Here we are together, enjoying a few minutes of peace and relaxin' in Heathrow:
Much love friends!
Shannon
----
EDIT: Upon our arrival in Athens we were disappointed to discover that Simon's main bag had NOT, in fact, arrived with us. It's Friday today (three days after we got here) and his bag arrived at our hotel at 6am this morning. We leave for Kefalonia at 11am. Whew!
No comments:
Post a Comment