A Kind of Not Good Way…
To start off a five week trip. But we’re all good now!
I am finally in Poland! It took a bit more effort than originally expected to get here, but we did make it.
The plan was to fly from Calgary to London starting at 9:30PM, landing in London, taking a 70 minute shuttle bus from Gatwick to Heathrow, hang out for the rest of the 6 hour layover, and then fly to Poland the same day.
Well, the flight to London (using Globespan airline… never again…) didn’t actually lift off until 4am. We knew we’d miss the connecting flight to Poland, so while still in the Calgary airport we called Expedia and had our flight changed to one early the next day, which was $200 more than the first. We’d have to find a computer and print our new itinerary number, or call Expedia in the morning for the number. Anyways, so the Calgary to London flight was delayed… at least we were all sitting together, right? Wrong, because when we got our boarding passes we were all scattered throughout the plane despite having booked seats online. We weren’t pleased! I was able to switch with one guy to sit beside Mark at least, so it was moderately okay.
When we landed at last, they wouldn’t let us off the plane. Odd, yes? Then the announcement came on. “Ladies and gentlemen… umm… I really don’t know what to tell you, we are very embarassed. The door of the airplane doesn’t fit the airlock and we have to back up to fix it. Please sit back down and fasten your seatbelts!” Sigh! Seriously, the only good thing about that flight was the sweet British flight attendants, hah! Anyways, when we eventually got off, we had to take the 70 minute coach to the other airport and then another bus to the Holiday Inn we stayed that night in (with annoying rowdy guys speaking a language we couldn’t identify).
In the hotel there was a TV and there was this crazy call-in gameshow that lasted for almost 3 hours with no commercials… and we pretty much watched it solid! It had _______ Day and you had to call in to guess what the blank was. 3 hours! And no one won, they had to reveal the answer! It boggled us, but the host was pretty amusing.
We found then, to our horror, that our Expedia accounts hadn’t changed to reflect our new flight, and the phone centre didn’t even open until an hour after our new flight took off. We were really stressed because we thought maybe the change didn’t go through and we’d be stuck in expensive London vs. nearly-free Poland for an extra week. However, everything went fine, they let us on the plane because we were listed in the computer system and everything’s great.
And Poland is amazing! Alex’s aunt’s house is massive with tons of rooms and Jen and my room has a great balcony. Poland is so green, greener than Alberta ever gets! It’s great, I love it here a lot. Tomorrow we’re going to Warsaw for the day. Super excited!
I hope the Globespan issue was the worst that’ll happen to us this trip and I’m glad it’s behind us! Still we’re all optimistic for what’s to come. Until next time!
