Travel Hiccups

I know a lot of people complain about the headache that is air travel, but to be honest, I rarely have issues. And I fly a lot. And in strange, foreign countries, on odd airlines. 

I choose to fly nearly exclusively on Delta or SkyTeam.  They've proven to me over the past few years that they rarely have, incidents, and when they do, they fix them. Also, the benefits of status aren't too shabby. 

I should have known getting back to Belgium wouldn't go smoothly. The exit hadn't flowed since the start. I was supposed to fly out over a week ago, but unexpectedly stayed an extra week to finish up on my condo purchase, puppy sit and deal with some health issues.

Is there anything cuter in life than a puppy belly?!

I finally boarded a plane yesterday heading to Atlanta scheduled to head on to Amsterdam and finally Brussels. The first flight was smooth. It was the ATL-->AMS that went wrong.  

I boarded around 7:30pm, got ready to sleep, started reading a magazine and soon fell asleep. As I fell asleep, I knew we hadn't taken off but didn't worry. They always board super early for international flights.  After what felt like a decent nap, I noticed we were still on the ground. Apparently, there was a mechanical issue, so I went back to sleep. Then I heard them announce that people could deplane if they'd like. I ignored it and slept more. Once I woke up, nearly fully rested, I noticed we were still on the ground. It was 1:30am.  

At 2am, they cancelled my flight and deplaned all of us.

2am check in to the hotel.  Feeling a little ripe. 

The next steps went fairly smoothly. As we walked back into the terminal, our boarding passes were scanned and each person was given a ticket with a hotel voucher. You could wait and rebook, but I figured calling would be faster. 

I headed to my assigned airport hotel (thanks Marriott for the great bed!) and called Delta in route. I got rebooked on a flight the next afternoon (technically later that afternoon) from Atlanta - - >New York - - >Brussels. 

But I did get to run into one of my coworkers unexpected in the airport. I look great, sans makeup and plus glasses. 

Check-in was super speedy.  I slept as late as I could and headed back to the airport. Now I'm delayed again due to bad thunderstorms in Atlanta. 

Atlanta closed down for thunderstorms. 

“​Will I ever get home?! ”

Luggage: 1, Me 0.

This was a long travel day, even for me. It wasn't the four flights that concerned me, but the three having very tight connections. I packed a strong carry-on already foreseeing the future that my checked bag would get lost in transit.

• Roanoke [ROA]-->Atlanta [ATL] 
• ATL-->Charles De Gaulle [CDG] 
• CDG-->Amsterdam [AMS] 
• AMS-->Zagreb, Croatia [ZAG]

The first two legs went uneventfully. I stopped through One Flew South in Atlanta for my favorite pre-flight meal, stocked up on some tasty snacks and even had an exit row seat to stretch out and sleep for my flight over to Paris. 

From the start, I was skeptically eying my transfer in Amsterdam to Zagreb. It was only 40 minutes and I needed to pass through immigration. I thought getting to Amsterdam would be easy, so I was dumbfounded when I heard my name over the plane’s PA system as we were about to depart from Paris. Anytime I hear my name publically announced, I automatically cringe. No good can ever come of this.

I raised my hand and the flight attendant told me I had to deplane. Deplane?! Confusion and frustration passed over immediately and maybe I wasn’t a model citizen in those brief moments. While walking past the stares and judgments from other passengers, I asked the flight attendant what was going on. He gave me a very weak answer that I was being escorted off because my checked bag hadn’t made the flight. 

When did it become customary to make me miss the rest of my flights because they had failed to get my bag on the plane? I understand upgraded security issues but I’ve had my share of lost bags even recently and never once been forced to also miss flights. Typically, I am the last person waiting at baggage claim staring longingly at the empty conveyor belt before I accept my bag has been lost in transit.

After a perplexing conversation with the Air France attendants at Charles De Gaulle, I was standing in the airport with no flight and no rebooking. A brief stop through the lounge was useless. I didn’t even grab a quick glass of bubbles to help with the stress. At customer service, I’m not sure if the woman hated her job or hated me, or both.  Without seeing any other options, I logged onto the KLM app and saw a flight to AMS and then on to ZAG that got me into Croatia only 1.5 hours after my scheduled arrival. These are the moments I’m so happy I have my credit card memorized. Simple. Easy. Booked.

I think desperation was written all over my face because the customer service woman finally offered to cancel my original flight to Croatia so I could recoup some money.
It shouldn’t come as a shock, but when I arrived in Zagreb, my bag was lost. Of course it was lost. 

After a few hours of work and a quick shower, I washed away my sorrows with a fantastic hotel dinner of grilled squid and veal washed down with a glass (or maybe two) of wine.

“Before bed, I washed my pants in the sink with fingers crossed they’d dry by morning.

Such a glorious life.”

Hitting the Road

I'm sitting in the Atlanta airport in the middle of one of my more aggressive travel itineraries. After less than 48 hours in Virginia for my mom's 70th birthday, I'm flying Roanoke-->ATL-->CDG-->AMS and on to Zagreb, Croatia. To make things slightly extra stressful, I'm tackling this on two separate tickets. My personal ticket to Amsterdam and then work picks up the end to Croatia. I don't expect to see my checked luggage when I reach the Balkans. 

I could get into who I am, what I do, etc. but that will have to wait for another post. I more want to get into the why with this post. I think it is the same why for anyone who posts details about their personal life online....I need a creative outlet. I have an absolutely amazing job, literally the kind of job that people fight their whole lives for. And I don't take that for granted. I get to travel the world doing a job that I love. I know it doesn't get better than that. But I rarely track my adventures or make them about me. I work in PR and my job is about telling other people's stories. I want this to be the outlet to tell my stories, my adventures, my life.

So I'm fueling up at my favorite airport restaurant in the world (One Flew South) with a seaweed salad, salmon hot pot and a glass of red wine all with the hopes that I can walk onto a plane at 3:30pm and fall into a deep, sound sleep for six hours before I tackle some very tight connections across Europe.

This will be my first time in Croatia and I only have two nights there, one being at an airport hotel. I'm excited to check off a new country from my list of the world and intrigued to see how it goes when I drive three hours on the country's only highway to my destination where I have journalists awaiting me immediately upon arrival. Oh, and I'm in charge of transporting a couple professional athletes. There is really little room for error on this one to justify my presence but that's one of the reasons I love this life. 

“Fortune favors the bold.”