Stephanie and I are writing this, safe and sound, but very tired, in Barcelona, Spain. This was certainly NOT one of the smoothest travel days we have had. Here is the recap of the long duration flights….
Well the weather outside was frightful, and we were in it. Today was our day of departure to fly to Atlanta, from Atlanta to Amsterdam, Netherlands, and then from there to Barcelona, Spain. The weather was the worst we have seen in weeks, and of course, it was the worst in Atlanta, where many flights were being delayed. Trying to be proactive, we called Delta to inquire about getting on an earlier flight to Atlanta in order to have a better chance of making the connection for the transatlantic flight to Amsterdam. We were scheduled for 65 minutes between our arriving flight from South Carolina to Atlanta, and the departure from Atlanta to Amsterdam. On a nice weather day, not a problem, but on a cold, rainy, foggy day, not so good.
The first person I contacted at Delta indicated it was not a problem to change, but something “had to be done manually” to change the ticket, so I was transferred to another person, who I had to re-inform about the issue, only to be told the entire booking would be re-ticketed at a new fare, for the small price of $3,000. This was due to the fact that there were currently “no delays at any of the airports we were traveling to”. This grateful offer was declined, and plan B was put into effect. We decided to try the same strategy at the airport instead of on the phone. We could see the weather was getting worse, and delays on the flights to Atlanta from South Carolina, and back were getting delayed by as much as 35 minutes.
We headed to the airport about 2 hours early (thanks to Mom for the ride) to try and get onto a 1:40 PM flight instead of our scheduled 3:27 PM flight. We were put on standby, but were also informed that this was a smaller regional jet flight, and due to the weather, they pilots had to carry more fuel and could not carry as much weight on the plane, passengers and baggage being the victims. While waiting at the airport in South Carolina for the earlier flight, we were informed at the gate that flight coming from Atlanta was actually delayed by 40 minutes arriving in South Carolina. So much for all of the additional between flight connection time! Then, based on what we had been told, the plane could not accept any more stand-by passengers. In fact, two persons on standby got on ahead of us, and then about 5 minutes later, they were coming back off, too much weight.
Fortunately, our original flight, also originating in Atlanta, had left only about 5 minutes later than scheduled, and by this time, was scheduled to depart South Carolina only about 45 minutes later than the ‘earlier” standby flight, with all of its delays. We thought all was looking good, and maybe we would make it on the original flights without any issues. Not.
We got on the plane in South Carolina, looked like we were set for an on time departure, and then we were caught in the dreaded “gate hold”, meaning we were being held at the gate in South Carolina in order to make a specific time slot going into Atlanta – weather based control. The 65 minutes we were scheduled to have between flights in Atlanta was counting down, reduced by 25 minutes of gate hold time. We actually did hold tot he delayed takeoff time, and made it to Atlanta, but I believe we landed on a runway closer to Alabama than to the Atlanta terminal, after a LONG taxi, we arrived at the terminal, de-planed, and rushed from Terminal B to Terminal F, the international terminal. We made it to the gate as the last of the boarding passengers was loading. Fortunately, even though we were near the back of the plane, and would have been loaded fairly soon in the boarding process, we still had some overhead bin room available for our three different carry on/personal bags. Since it had been a rush to get to the connecting plane to Amsterdam, we were now just hoping our checked baggage would also make it.
At this point in time, the pilot addressed the passengers and informed us we were going to be 30 minutes late because we were now waiting on a replacement co-pilot, one had gotten sick. This was actually good news to us, it increased the chance of our checked baggage getting on board. The 30 minutes ended up being over an hour, now delaying our arrival in Amsterdam by that same amount. No worries, we had over two hours layover in Amsterdam for our connection to Barcelona, it seemed all was finally going our way. The flight to Barcelona was about 7 hours, 40 minutes, and was without incident. We had a small dinner, made a couple of adult beverages, including fresh home grown key limes, and watched some movies on the seat back TV’s. We do have to say the system and remote used on these Delta planes was horrible. They actually had to reset the system after about an hour, some passengers were having video issues. The meant everyone else had to start movies over, fast forwarding to their previous point in the movie. The remotes were just horrible, the buttons just did not work correctly.
The flight had a few bumpy spots, but overall, it was fine. We did not get much sleep, it just seemed too cramped, more so than on other flights. We landed in Belgium, well it was Amsterdam, but again ,we had about a 15 minute taxi to the gate, resulting in our time between connections being only about an hour instead of over 2 hours.
Although we did not have to collect our bags for any customs like in the U.S., they were checked through to Barcelona, we did have to go through immigration, then back through security, which ended up being quite an event. I have never had to take all of my camera gear out of my camera bag, but I had to remove any electronic devices, power supplies and lenses and place them in a plastic bin. Oh well, better safe than a terrorist.
After all of that, we made it to our connecting gate about 5 minutes before boarding was started, almost 40 minutes after getting off of the plane in Amsterdam. Stephanie had to gate check one of our carry on bags, apparently they considered her backpack as one, and the actual carry on as another. Yes, we did end up taking two checked bags and one carry on, we just needed a little more room for the shoes, and some other items, including some change of clothes, which ended up as being a great addition, as explained later.
We boarded for the two hour flight to Barcelona, and we thought all was going our way, certainly we thought there was enough time between all of our flights for our checked baggage to make it to Barcelona. The flight was smooth, and arrived on time, flying along the Spanish coast before heading to land the airport.
We got off, and headed to baggage claim. First one small set of bags was unloaded, then another and out came our gate checked carry on, then another load of bags, but not ours, and we were still waiting. Then the belt stopped, and we were one of the few passengers remaining without our bags. Two different gentlemen who had flight connection and re-route issues coming from Detroit had no bags, as well as one local man from Barcelona was missing his bag. We were not happy, but at least we were not getting on a cruise ship today like the other two gentlemen from Detroit. They were on a Royal Caribbean ship leaving at 5 PM.
We all headed to the lost luggage station. Our bags were supposedly in Amsterdam, they had apparently not made it on the flight to Barcelona for some reason. The bad news, there was not another flight to Barcelona from Amsterdam until tomorrow. The bags are supposed to be delivered to the hotel in the morning. Luckily, we had the extra carry on, and we had packed a change of clothes in that as a precaution. We both got a small bag of toiletries, some socks and a 2XL t shirt for our troubles. We do have travel insurance, so we may be able to get some additional items while waiting on our bags to arrive tomorrow.
After all of that additional stress, realizing it could have been worse, the two gentlemen on the cruise ship were not getting their bags until tomorrow in their next port of call in Cadiz, Spain, and they had nothing at all.
We took the Aerobus service from the Barcelona Airport to a bus stop about 3 blocks from the hotel. It was easy to find the hotel, thanks to having used Google Earth to see the buildings and familiarize ourselves with the walk from the bus top at the Placa Universitat to the Hotel Jazz. We checked in and informed them to be on the look out for our bags tomorrow morning.
After freshening up, we headed out to find a grocery store fro some refreshments, Diet Pepsi and wine, a replacement corkscrew (it is on our checked baggage) and some lunch. We just stopped st one of our favorites, Gyro sandwiches. After the late lunch, and visit to a nice large grocery, we walked down the Las Ramblas street to the port and back. This will be our route on Friday when we head from the hotel to the cruise ship. Las Ramblas was nice, all of the vendors were selling their wares. It was very cool and windy, about 45 degrees with a wind chill of 38 degrees.
It had been a long day, with not more than a couple hours of poor sleep, so we headed back to the hotel and arrived about 5:15 PM. After refreshing with nice hot showers, we opened a bottle of wine and wrote this post. We took a few pictures today, and will try and post some tomorrow. I know we will sleep well tonight, probably waking up much earlier than we will want due tot he 6 hour time difference.
We have reset the clock on the blog to reflect our current time in Spain, and for the next several days both here and on the cruise. My spell check helper is sound asleep, so blame any typo’s and really poor grammar on being tired and on Stephanie, this is not proof read yet.