Thursday, October 26, 2006

We're Not Leaving on a Jet Plane...

Despite our best efforts to make it to the airport on time last night, we were just a little too late. We had tickets for the 22:25 flight from Vienna to Tirana, and had left our hotel in good time. However, there is construction work on the highway between the city and the airport which meant that our normally 15 minute taxi ride took more than an hour and then when we arrived at the terminal there was a long line at the check-in counter. We stood there for a minute then decided to run over to the much shorter business class line and give it a shot. This turned out to be 'not such a great idea' because though there were only 3 people in front of us (compared to the 50 in the other line), by the time we were at the front of the line the economy line was actually empty. So we wasted 25 minutes in the line and the check-in clerk told us we could not make the flight. We argued and argued but she wouldn't budge. She sent us over to ticketing to change our flight for Thursday morning. Again we were unlucky- that flight was full with a waiting list. We tried again to convince the girl to let us on the flight which had just started boarding. Peter's colleague who just had a carry on was finally told to "Run!" and get to the gate, but because we had luggage there was no way we could make it. We were out of luck.

So here we are, stuck in the airport hotel until tonight's flight at 22:25. It's a really lovely hotel and they'll let us have the room til 15:00 which is nice, but then we still have 7.5 hours to wait after that. I guess we'll get to read a lot of those books we bought. In fact, I think I'll run over to the airport bookstore and do some more 'stocking up'!

3 comments:

Ginnie Hart said...

This is a GOOD example of Mercury Retrograde, Kim, starting to suck us into its clutches. If I told you what haopened to me yesterday once I arrived at the Atlanta airport from Paris, you'd get the picture!

You at least have books to read and a good attitude. So much better than the alternative!

verniciousknids said...

Oh that's awful...happy reading!

MsDemmie said...

Ouch .........

Hope the rest of your holiday is enjoyable - look forward to seeing the pictures.