Advertisement
Published: September 9th 2008
Edit Blog Post
my bed in heathrow airport
so bad for the back, so smelly, but so happy to have it. most just had the floor! Quick short entries, the only way... and Ive got some serious catching up to do here!! Also photos will probably come after blogs, they take a while to set up and upload.
Tim version
* Didnt get to Portugal due to delayed flights and bad weather
Verbal Diahhorea version:
Portugal day 0, 31st August. No, this isnt some nerdy numbering scheme! Instead its because I was meant to hit portugal but didnt due to a whole lot of shit, which Ill now explain but without too much painful detail I hope...
Starting in Belfast City Airport, Belfast, I head about poor weather conditions for Belfast and London. Didnt seem to be affecting Belfast so I crossed my fingers it wasnt bad in London... First call thuogh, the plane is delayed an hour and a half. Shite. Ive got time between connections but not all that much!! By the time the plane arrived it was probably 2 hours, and another maybe 20 minutes until it took off, so we are real late now, my connecting flight is in danger at London heathrow, and the guys im flying with now BMI are real bad at communication. We fly for however long, get to heathrow and the pilot gives us the "10 minutes until landing" call. I´ll be cutting it real fine but it is doable... then the next part comes. We dont freakin land! He puts the plane into a holding pattern for what must have been a good 20 minutes without telling anyone! (holding pattern means going around and around in the sky without losing altitude, waiting for a free time to land or for weather to pass or whatever is the holdup). 35-40 minutes later we hit the ground without any apologies or explanations for the extra time taken.
Ok, inside the airport now... Im probably on or just past final call now I think for my connecting flight but hopefully my next flight is delayed and waiting... so what happens next? baggage collection trolley isnt working properly! It takes two long painful goes to get all the baggage and mine is at the end of the second lot. Oh yeh, baggage belt was playing up too... I ended up getting out of the baggage claim around 6pm, when my connecting flight was meant to head off at 5:30 so im screwed.
I rang Iberia (my connecting flight was with them), they said they could do nothing and it was Qantas that had the power... I rang Qantas, they said no not us, try Lan Chile... lan Chile didnt answer the phone. I run to the Iberia desk, explain it all and fall in love with the Venezuelan accent of the girl behind the counter, and go off floating on a cloud after hearing her to BA to get to this flight thats just leaving. BA shut me down though, as I got there in about 3 minutes but they said they closed the flight while I was doing the run... so they set me up on an Iberia flight in the morning.
Sleeping in the terminal... lotsa smelly unhappy customers but not the worst sleep Ive had. You get to see an interesting social mix when this kinda shit happens. I forgot to mention that London Heathrow is experiencing a shitstorm of bad weather and nearly all flight s are delayed and tonnes cancelled. One of the best is an African couple where the man is 5 foot nothing and skinny, the wife is 7 foot tall and 4 foot wide, and when she hugs him she lifts his feet off the ground and I swear I see him struggling for air but still trying to smile sweetly to avoid death.
Morning comes and Iberia switch me to a TAP Portugal flight, or so they tell me. She changed me to a direct Lisbon flight (instead of heathrow madrid Lisbon) so I was happy but yeh, another change... thank fuck I look at my ticket coz she has actually switched me to a BA flight in another terminal! She had already run back off into the angry crowd of delayed commuters so I wasnt gonna tackle that shit again so I did a runner to BA... ahhh bliss =) it may as well have had palm trees, fountains, and beautiful girls feeding me grapes... BAs area was happy, quiet, and within 5 minutes I was through to departures catching up on sleep in a good place.
The flight was brilliant but I will explain that in the next thing I write up... my internet time, it is up. Ill stick up the classy photo of my sweet sleeping spot either on this one or the next one.
All in all a hectic night but glad I had it =) I cant be unhappy, this trip is just too damn good! A few hiccups are expected and this couldnt have happened in an easier place and im a bit wiser for it. Ill try and do the first few days of Portugal tomorrow morning...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.037s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0184s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb