Northern Europe

Up at 4:30 due to stuffy nose and travel jitters. Had a cup of hot chocolate to sooth my throat while mom had a piece of bacon and a pastry. We retrieved our luggage from room 10244 and said bye to Jovanie our steward. We waited in the lobby. Our disembarkation time has come and gone.

Holy Crap!! The line was insane people don’t know how to queue properly…if one person has stumbled or fell people would have been trampled. We had one young man behind is going, “why are all these people not follow in the rules? They are cutting line when they can see the end of the line back there.” Honestly it was so refreshing to see a younger person upset about how older people were acting it made the disembarkation madness worth it.

We got outside and queued again for our airport transfer. The first bus got full just as we got there so we sought out another on. It left half an hour later but we got to sit up front and the driver was funny. He kept warning the men that if the used the toilet on the bus they would need to sit down and proceeded to wiggle the bus back and forth.

Heathrow was a terror all its own. So many people did not plan their schedule realistically and many missed/almost missed their flights. I lucked out on Virgin Atlantic’s app and got mom and I better seats. Well they were until a couple with five young children parked two of them right behind us with the nearest parent five seats away. I like kids. I know it can be hard for them during a flight. But at least one of them decided to see if they could break the seat by kicking it. Mom asked/warned an attendant what was happening and we got moved to our own three seat row.

I lasted a bit longer in my original chair and politely and kindly turned to the child and asked him to not kick my seat. “I’m NOT kicking you seat.” I replied, “well if you see some one kicking please ask them to stop ok?” Smile and turn away…three minutes later the child is pounding the in seat entertainment system along with the back of my head with all ten fingers. I choose to believe he didn’t realize how obnoxious he was being as I retreated to the last bank of seats in the back of the plane, laid down and tried to sleep. Rest of the flight was pretty uneventful…having extra space really helped.

Next stop is Miami. Then on to Atlanta. And finally Myrtle Beach. Orrrrrr that was the plan. Our Miami to Atlanta flight got pushed back from 7:30 pm to 11:30 pm. We would get to Atlanta well after our connecting flight took off.

TLDR - we are in a comped hotel so we will catch tomorrow’s 7 am flight. They also gave us meal vouchers that added up to over $240. The hotel has a built in restaurant so we got sodas and a pizza. We didn’t really want anything but we’ve gone so long without eating I almost passed out at the Delta Counter (which may have swayed them in comping the hotel since they don’t usually do that…) but a number of people were surprisingly helpful and kind, the gate ladies, the TSA guy who checked us through then saw us as we left, the baggage wranglers, even the other travelers on the hotel shuttle and the employees of the hotel and its restaurant.

It’s about 10 and we’re getting up at 4:30 again so I’ll end it here. Here’s hoping we get all the way home tomorrow.Read more