Entry one: Airports are not as fun to live in as Tom Hanks led us to believe...

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Well here we are in Belgium! We have been here for about a week after the longest "day" of travel I have ever experienced. We left Winnipeg at 9am on July 4 and from there headed to Montreal where we had a nine hour layover before heading to London. We had every intention of checking out Montreal but soon found that to be easier said than done. It cost fifty dollars return to go into Montreal on the airport coach and we were informed that if we wanted to be back for our check in time we should not even bother trying. So we sat around for about five hours until 5:30 and then went through security where we found more comfortable accomidations to wait the remaining four hours until our flight. Well, as if a nine hour wait was not enough our plane ended up leaving over an hour late! This was the beginning of a building hatred for British Airways.

But we were happy that we were finally on our way over the ocean although there was the nagging concern that we left an hour late and we only had two hours in London to catch our flight to Brussels. But none of those concerns mattered because I was on a plane where you could choose your own movie on your own t.v. screen -- all my family knew how excited I was about that. But alas, just my luck mine was the only tv on the whole plane of three hundred people that was broken. My hatred for British Airways just kept growing...

Fast forward six hours to our arrival in London... We landed in London with a mere 45minutes to catch our connecting flight to Brussels. As if that was not bad enough they had us sitting on the tarmac for another 15minutes beacuse they were not reading for us! Now please explain how they could not be ready for the plane that should have landed over an hour before hand? When we finally did got off the plane the race was on {and after sitting for six hours running was not easy}. We were allowed to go through the "fast track" security where the man infront of us insisted on asking the stupidist questions and holding up the line! But we finally made it to the screen where the gate numbers are posted and beside our flight was one word: CANCELLED!Strike three for Bristish Airways.

British Airways gave no explaination as to why our flight was cancelled but we were told that we could not get on another flight until 2 in the afternoon {it was currently 10:30am}. So we resigned ourselves to another wait. But alas 2pm came and went with no information about our flight! Finally at 2:15 we were told it would leave at 2:45, then at 2:50 we were told it would leave "soon" and finally by 3:30 we were on the plane at which time we were told that it would be a rough flight and we had to wait for someone to come and boost the air conditioning for the cabin! We finally landed in Brussels five hours after we originally were supposed to. Needless to say our hatred for British Airways grew so large that it is a good thing that we have eleven months to forget this experince before we have to repeat it!

Well sorry for all the text and no pictures but we have basically spent the past week eating pastry, hanging out with Matthew and Carter {my cousin´s kids}, and hanging out at the beach on the North Sea.

Tomorrow we are beginning a journey to Paris. We ware taking the train to the Belgium coast and then we are riding bikes all along the coast to France, into France to Rouen and then follow the Seine into Paris where we will be for the end of the Tour de France! Wish us luck!

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[lawrence anderson]

forwarded this blog to anne ryan
Have fun kids...