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Published: October 18th 2010
Well I'm (Sharon) here at the airport in London getting a bite to eat while waiting for my flight to Chicago and then to Cincy. John is hopefully on his flight to LAX. It's been a crazy morning so I'll write up that part before going back to our last few days on the ship.
Since we had a 9:20 flight from Barcelona to London we were in an early debarkation group assigned to group Black #2 with a 5:15-5:30 debarkation so we set the alarm for 4:30 and figured we'd get breakfast at the airport. We got right off the ship (almost no line at 5:15) but when we got to the luggage area only found one of John's bags and didn't see either of mine. Finally found mine but his big bag was nowhere to be seen. As were the bags for 2 other people in the group (funny they were all red bags). so they filled out claim forms and they said they'd notify us at the airport if it was found before we left. So we boarded the bus and headed out to the airport with about 25-30 others. Once there they had the porters unload the luggage and when we checked in the terminal all the missing bags were there too. They hadn't had time to find them and get them on the bus after we left so must have already been on the bus or been on an earlier bus. We tried to explain that they didn't have to continue looking for the bags reported and they finally understood.
As it seems with most foreign (to me) airports it was a bit confusing trying to find where to go but finally found out we needed to go almost to the other end of the building where we waited in line for quite a bit of time. When checking in we knew we'd have to pay for the 2nd bag but they couldn't do that at the checkin counter so they held our boarding passes while we went over to another area to pay for the bag in the very old fashioned credit card transaction that had them manually entering stuff on forms and into computers and then copying #s for the computer to the forms etc. Not even sure how much they charged us. So then went back to the other counter while she processed that paperwork and then we headed thru passport control and security with no issues. The waiting area was very modern and not very crowded but when it came time to board the flight we found we had to go down flights of stairs and then board a bus and then up the old fashioned type of airplane steps. The had steps both at the front and back but not everyone listened so some had to figure out how to pass people in the aisle going the other way. The flight wasn't too bad but we were delayed a bit because we had to take a different pat due to issues in Paris.
Then in London we had to take stairs down from the plane again, and a bus to the terminal. Then thru many hallways to another line downstairs to a bus to get to terminal 5. At this point we were getting a bit nervous because John's flight was getting close. Then we had to go up stairs again and thru passport control and then security. At that point his ticket indicated he had about 10 mins till the gate closed but the B gates were quite a walk and then a sign that said the transit to them was 15 mins and they were paging final call for boarding. I told him to go on and waited to see if he came back before checking with Customer service to see if he made the flight. They weren't going to tell me at first but since the flights were booked together by the cruise line they did check and said he made it. Not sure how but hopefully they were right.
So I'll try to write up a bit more of our days in Rome, Florence, and Barcelona before my flight leaves but it may be a couple of days before we finish them.
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Janet
non-member comment
Welcome Home Sharon, Glad to have yo back in Ohio. Give me a call when you have had some rest.