Beleaguered by Babies and Bumped Off a Flight

Looks peaceful - right?

I began my trip to Spain with an overnight flight to London Heathrow that started so easily and peacefully that I never dreamed that my whole journey would be fraught with one "challenge" after another. Firstly, when checking in on-line, I had a few seats from which to choose so I picked one that was fairly close to the front thinking this would be a pretty good location. When I boarded, I found out that it was a HUGE mistake because I should have remembered from previous flights that the seat that I chose was one row back of the bulkhead seats. Those are usually reserved for families with very small children. That was definitely the case – every seat in that row across the plane was filled with parents with very small children who needed bassinets. But in reality, they didn’t need bassinets because their babies screamed (not just normal crying) throughout the whole 7+ hours of flying and their parents were definitely using the “cry-it-out” policy for the entire flight. I know that experts say that it can’t be possible for a child to cry or scream for that long but the one in front of me tried to prove those experts wrong.

There were 3 or 4 of “the little darlings” and they took turns to make sure that at least one of them was screaming for every minute from boarding to disembarking. As if these deafening, piercing screams weren’t enough to make me scream, there was a willful and loudly vocal toddler behind me who was driving his mother (and me) crazy with loud shouts of what he wanted or didn’t want to do. He didn’t sleep either!

I know neither the parents nor their babies are to blame but Megan McArdle of The Atlantic proposed a perfect resolution in a recent article: “for every hour the infant screams, the parents buy a cocktail for every passenger on the plane”. I can’t think of a better resolution! The babies might not have stopped but we would have had one plane load of happy passengers.

Thinking that most plane food is pasta for dinner and rolls for breakfast, I ordered a “healthy” gluten-free diet so the dinner was just OK (what can you do to ruin rice?) but service was really marginal. The flight attendants were too busy trying to get bottles and food warmed, etc. for the screaming children so the rest of us were left to “enjoy our plastic dishes and utensils” for an extremely long time. Breakfast was totally unrecognizable. I had a “brick hard something or other” in place of bread and a yogurt. I couldn’t even break the brick “thing” and I don’t eat yogurt, nor do I drink airplane coffee so I had an orange juice for breakfast.

Finally, after a long sleepless night, I arrived at Heathrow early and caught a bus to Gatwick airport for my flight to Madrid. Traffic wasn’t too congested, especially considering it was 7.30 in the morning so I thought things were looking up. I eagerly made my way to check into my Easy Jet flight to Madrid 3 hours early. The women at the check-in counter told me that the flight was oversold so

that since I didn’t pay extra for a seat and others did, every seat was sold and I wouldn’t be allowed on the flight. I’d not flown Easy Jet for several years and back then you didn’t pay extra for seats. Silly me – I thought buying a ticket meant that I got the seat too. They told me I could come back 2-3 hours later and they “might” be able to get me onto the next flight at 5.00pm. I thought perhaps I could at least get rid of my bag – Not So. By then it was 8.45am so only eight hours to wait to see if “maybe” I could get on the 5.00pm flight.

Not relishing an 8 hour wait, I made my first priority some breakfast. With a full tummy, I found an Internet spot and logged on to try and contact the Easy Jet customer service with regards to my being “bumped off” my flight. No luck. I had a phone number but this meant that I had to find a store in the terminal that sold sim cards for my phone. Although my phone works internationally the calls are expensive and who knew how long I would be on the phone with customer service. It’s cheaper to purchase a sim card in the country I’m in! While dragging my bag from one end of the terminal to another, I found a phone store but paying with my UK credit card required a pin number. I thought that my pin was the original one that the bank issued. Not so! I finally gave up and paid with a US card. At this point, I was beginning to think that no matter what I was trying to do I’d have a challenge.

During a very long call, Easy Jet customer service took all of my information, placed me on hold, came back to ask the very same questions and placed me on hold again.  They then told me that I needed to reply to an email that they would send to me in order to get compensated for being bumped off my flight.  My next call (in Spanish) was to my hotel in Madrid to tell them that I would be arriving late, time unknown, but please hold my room. (yet another challenge – I do love a challenge but not several of them in a row with no sleep)

I went back to check in 3 hours after arriving at Gatwick only to be told to come back in 3 more hours to determine whether or not I could get on the 5pm flight. Back to the Internet zone! What else do you do during an eight hour wait?

Yes! At 2.30, I was able to finally check in and check my bag – for an extra 30 Euros! They charge for everything!! What started out as a cheaper flight was turning into a flight that would have been the same amount on another more reliable and less restrictive airline. Easy Jet charges for absolutely every extra thing you can imagine – you pay extra for seats, extra for checking each and every bag, extra for carryon bags over a certain size. At least with my bag checked in, I was able to move around the terminal easier!

I finally arrived at Madrid airport and quickly passed through passport control as an EU citizen only to wait forever for my bag to come out. Everyone had left but one couple and me and there were no more bags coming out. This was déjà vu from my flight in February when my bag didn’t arrive. I turned around to head to the lost luggage desk when I spotted a couple of bags on another carrousel but no people waiting there. I went over to check them out and there was my bag and the bag belonging to the couple. No idea why they were on a different carrousel but thank God they were there!

At this point it was nearly 10pm in Spain (4pm at home) so I’d been traveling for 24 hours when my trip should have only taken 16 or maybe 17 hours. After a very expensive taxi ride, the hotel staff was extremely warm and welcoming and my room was waiting for me. Exactly what I needed! I didn’t bother unpacking but just fell into bed and fell asleep immediately – only to wake up a couple of hours later. Nooooo! I have to have some sleep! Fortunately, I didn’t have anything to the following day until 5.00pm so I went sightseeing.

A Riot of Color Has Been Bombarding Our Senses

The area around us is now blazing with color. I don't remember the last time we had so many brilliantly red, yellow and orange trees. Thankfully the rain and some recent winds haven't blown the leaves off before we are able to admire them everywhere we look. I keep thinking that the colors are more vivid and there seems to be more of them this year but then I wonder if I'm already missing the changing of the seasons since autumn has been one of my favorites. We had the pumpkins out front and welcomed a good number of little "creatures" for trick or treat and I realized that I'm going to miss that too.

We’ve had an autumn packed with work, visits from UK friends and house renovations but as a belated anniversary and my birthday trip we took a trip to Longwood Gardens for a chrysanthemum festival. The highlight of their exhibit was one plant that had 1,416 blooms – the biggest in Northern America. There we saw so many varieties of chrysanthemums and colors that you don’t normally think of that it’s hard to imagine that they originated in China hundreds of years ago and the first ones were only yellow. This link will provide you with some of my favorites https://picasaweb.google.com/102840684536112573599/LongwoodGardens?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCPD40qyS8qCQVw&feat=directlink.

One of my treats to myself this year was to take a Vegan ‘holiday cooking’ workshop. It was really good fun and packed with oodles of nutrition information and recipes. I won’t get to try them out at Thanksgiving but they’ll be waiting for me when I get back. The stores are already getting stocked for Christmas, nearly crowding out the turkeys that instantly say it’s Thanksgiving time. I’ll be missing that holiday this year since I’ll be working in Spain but since I spent several years in the UK, it’s importance to me has lessened.  I’m taking a few things representing Thanksgiving so that I can explain the holiday to the Spaniards. I’ve realized that by the time I return in December, it will be only a short time until Christmas.

I probably won’t be posting a blog for another month as my schedule for the month that I’m in Spain followed by a few days in the UK will be packed to the brim. I hope that all of you Americans (and ex-pats) who celebrate Thanksgiving have a great holiday and enjoy the time with your families. For those of you in the other countries, whatever the season is now in your part of the world, remember to take time to enjoy what you are currently celebrating. Although the season will come back you might be in a different part of the world next year and everything will be totally different. Enjoy the moment!