Flight home canceled

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We are scheduled to fly back to the US on Monday Mar 22. Today we received an email from Expedia telling us to "call them immediately concerning our flight." After calling, we found out that the first leg of our flight (from Milan to London) had been canceled due to the British Airways strike. After calling Expedia we learned that many of the shorter flights scheduled between Mar 20 and Mar 22 were being canceled however the longer flights were unaffected. So our flight from London to San Francisco was fine - we just didn't have a way to get to London.

Per Expedia, we had 2 options - rebook our return trip for April 3rd (!!!!) or book a new Euro flight on a different airline (which we would have to pay for b/c BA wasn't refunding our Europe leg) that got us to London in time for the SFO flight. Our other option was to travel by rail to London. The trip by rail was about 22 hours. Yuck, we did not want to spend the whole last day of our trip sitting on a train. And the flights on the other airlines were really expensive due to the short notice.

After researching and considering our options for about an hour, it turned out it didn't matter - we received another email from Expedia telling us to, once again, "call them immediately concerning our flight." Uh oh, this couldn't be good. Sure enough British Airways had canceled our flight from London to San Francisco so now we had NO way home. We could either fly home on April 3rd (extending our trip by 11 days) or pay $3500(!!!) for a Milan-SFO flight on another carrier. Neither BA nor Expedia would reimburse us for either the 11 days of hotels or the $3500 for another flight. It was our problem. Nice.

Luckily I had signed up for a Yahoo! Voice account in case we needed to make phone calls while we were travelling. Good thing because it took about 6 hours of phone calls in order to get another flight. Had we made these calls through our cell phones it would have been 0.99 cents a minute -- a hefty bill!. With Yahoo! Voice it was only 0.02 cents a minute. Word to the wise -- get Internet phone service for travelling.

One small hiccup -- Yahoo! Voice calls are internet calls through our PC, and the network connection we were on was less then optimal. Of course if the network connection dies, the call dies, and you then need to call Expedia again where you get a new agent and have to start all over again. After being on hold forever we were praying the connection stayed active, which, thankfully, it did.

Also, the only power outlet that we could find in our room that actually worked was the one in the bathroom - so every time the battery in the laptop started to die Michelle had to run into the bathroom in order to keep the call alive and let the battery charge.

It was pretty funny to watch and we couldn't help but laugh about the situation. After 6 hours (!!) on the phone with Expedia support (through several levels of escalation - eventually their corporate office), and after being consistly told there was NOTHING available sooner than April 3rd, we finally got another flight scheduled for March 23 -- one day later than our original flight. Not sure how this flight suddenly opened up but we weren't arguing!

So now just keeping our fingers crossed that this new flight doesn't get cancelled...

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Photos

Still on hold
Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

The only room with power
The only working power outlet was in the bathroom!