Tuesday, July 26, 2011

The Loooooong Trip Over-Part Two

See Part One here


Ok, to finish off the trip...

After United guy ditches us, we go to the Customer Service desk which turned out to be zero help!  "Sorry, United is not answering the phone, there is nothing I can do".   SO we decide to check into a hotel and come back in the morning.  I mean, what else can we do?
18:30-Go see hotel guy at airport who is very friendly and helpful.  Hooks us up with a Holiday Inn Express.  Gives us directions and a pamphlet. 
19:00-Off to find hotel! I decide to just do exactly what the hotel guy says direction-wise...which get us lost.  Then I decide to actually look at the pamphlet and see that hotel guy left out one piece of information in his directions.  So we back track, fix the mistake and arrive at the hotel. 
19:30-We arrive at a 4-star Holiday Inn and what we booked was the 3-star Holiday Inn Express! YES, the hotel guy gave us the WRONG directions and the WRONG pamphlet.  Holy cow.  We try to just stay there except when you book through the airport they charge you 8 Euros and that is non-refundable plus we had already paid 33% of the other hotel (yes, also non-refundable).  Can we PLEASE arrive in America and never ever leave? 
20:00-So, back to the airport and back to the hotel guy to get correct directions.  Which we do. 
20:45-Finally, arrive at the correct 3-star hotel.  Eat expensive frozen pizza and drink overcharged cola.  Crash. 

Saturday:
7:00-Get up, shower, eat
8:30-Head to airport. 
9:30-Arrive at airport, wait in line, find out that we can come back to try to catch a plane via stand-by, but since we don't have our stuff, it's going to be hard to go back to the hotel and get our stuff and still make the plane.  But we sure are going to try!  We have to be back by 11:25 at the latest.
10:15-Back at hotel.  Rush around, pack, blah, blah, blah. We went ahead and checked out because we had booked two nights in case they were full, but were very optimistic that we would catch a flight.  Guess what?  When you book through the airport, you can't check out early! Well, you can, but you have to pay for every night you requested.  So we got to pay for a night in a hotel we didn't use!! Oh, Europe, your customer service skills are wearing me out. 
11:15-Arrive at airport! We made it! Yay!!!
12:25-Sitting on a plane, sitting on a plane (just sing that phrase in your head over and over and you can imagine how happy we were)
8 laters later with a time change, we arrive at the DC airport.   It's like 13:30 or something local time.   Our next flight was booked for 22:30, but turns out there is a flight that leaves from DC to WV (our destination) at 15:00 or something, but guess what?  Because we were assigned the 22:30 flight, we cant switch! America, you disappoint me.
Anyway, we killed 8 hours on a plane with a toddler, then 8 hours in an airport with a toddler, then a short 1 hour flight and then fianlly arrived in WV to visit Hubby's family.  We survived and she actually did quite awesome considering what we put her through.  Kids are so amazing!

All in all, it sucked, but it was just a trip and I've certainly dealt with worse! But, I'll tell you one thing, I aint flying United again unless I have to!

1 comment:

Stacey said...

I'm glad poopy pants was patient with you and Europe and all that :)