Our Excellent Italian Adventure – Part 11
Around this point of our Italian Adventure, I expected to be wrapping up our story and telling you how great everything was.
Unfortunately not so.
The original plan was to fly to Rome today from Milan, then connect to London where we would then get our final connection back home to Vancouver from there.
Everything seemed to be on track until the small matter of the air traffic controller’s in Rome going on strike about 90 minutes before we were scheduled to leave Rome.
As you might imagine, our travel plans took quite a beating from that point forward.
Just Like the Amazing Race
We were informed by the nice people at the British Airways counter that the air traffic controllers would be on strike between noon and 4PM. As our flight to London was scheduled to leave at 1:30, we seemed to have just missed the boat as all flights up until noon seemed to have departed on time.
We were given two choices: we could wait until about 4:30 and catch our postponed flight to London. This, of course, would mean that we would be missing our connecting flight to Vancouver. Since British Airways only flies to Vancouver from London once a day, we would have to stay in a hotel overnight in London.
The second option would be to stay the night in Rome and catch the 1:30PM flight the next day. Both options would mean getting back to Vancouver one day later.
Wait! It gets better.
The polite people at the British Airways counter were also quick to tell us that since the delay was being caused by factors outside of their control, they would not be compensating us for the extra hotel charges.
Before we wanted to commit to anything, we wanted to see if there were any other way of getting to Heathrow airport on any other airline – perhaps at another airport in Rome. To determine what our options were we found an Internet kiosk in the airport and started to check several travel web sites like Expedia and Travelocity. We then started hitting the web sites for all of the discount airlines in Europe that we knew of like Easyjet and Ryan Air.
Unfortunately, unlike on the show the Amazing Race (where everyone almost always seems to be able to find another flight option), there were no better choices available to us.
In the end we decided that it would be best to depart Rome today and get to London to spend the night. We actually thought for a minute that we could get into our hotel by around 6:30PM (we would gain an hour flying to London) and maybe even have a night on the town in London. How great would an Excellent Italian and British Adventure be?
The illusion of this night on the town ever happening pretty much evaporated right around the time that we were still sitting in the boarding gate (not even having left the Rome airport yet) a full hour after it was scheduled to leave. Our hopes further crumbled as we sat in the plane on the runway for another 60 minutes before we even took off. By all estimates, we probably won’t be getting to Heathrow until around 8PM.
A New Low in Airline Cuisine
We assume that due to the fact that the plane was in a hurry to leave the Rome airport as soon as possible that there wasn’t the proper amount of time needed to stock the plane with it’s normal food for our dinner.
As a result, we had another unprecedented event occur of us being handed a blue box as we walked down the jetway before we stepped onto the plane.
Air Chef was proudly emblazoned onto the top of the blue box.
Just the words air chef got me thinking of someone looking like Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee working furiously in the back of the plane putting together our evening’s fare. Unfortunately, it was not to be.
The contents of the air chef box was a dry, tasteless object that some people may refer to as a sandwich. Along with it came a small orange juice and a package labelled as Grancereale. This ended up being some cookies that might taste like something you found in the back of your pantry 2 months past it’s expiry date.
Nonetheless, we were hungry and nothing better seemed to be in sight so this was going to be it.
A Night in London
Under normal circumstances, it would be great to visit London. Peter and I have cousins who live here (whom Peter has never met) plus there all the interesting things to see and do here.
Staying one night in London because your flight was delayed and you missed your connecting flight home is none of that.
Worse yet, we were all mentally prepared to get home after being away for 3 weeks and having to spend one more night in a hotel is really unbearable.
We collected our bags from the airport and booked a night in a local hotel. While cheap by London standards, the hotel is costing us a small fortune (almost double the daily rate for our Milan hotel) for just the one night.
We’re all pretty bushed and I suspect that we’ll all be getting to bed fairly early tonight. Tomorrow, on the other hand, is another story.
We have a 5PM flight out of Heathrow airport tomorrow and are only about 10 minutes from the airport. Who knows if we’ll be able to sneak a visit into London tomorrow?
Baden
PS: In case you’re wondering about the significance of the picture above, I’ve added another “Runs SAP” picture to my collection from Heathrow airport.
See my previous article on My SAP Collection.
