Travel day —Home again

Yesterday was the day that makes you wonder whether you’re crazy to keep on traveling. We had a 7 am flight from Florence to Madrid. Though it was all booked on one ticket with American, that first leg was on Vueling, which is a low cost airline. That’s fine but for some reason they were unable to give me my boarding passes for the rest of the trip and told me that I would have to get them in Madrid. And then, even though we had business tickets, the lounge wasn’t an option because our first leg was on a low cost. Not a huge deal, but things were crazy crowded and the coffee was very bad. Probably wouldn’t have been much better in the lounge though.

Once in Madrid, getting those boarding passes was not easy. There is one, yes only one, customer service desk in T4 where these boarding passes could be obtained. The line was slow, and the Iberia customer service representatives did not have an endless reservoir of patience. Luckily we had about 3 hours in between planes, so we were able to navigate it and still had about an hour in the lounge to gird our loins for what was to come next. Joe had a banana and a glass of white wine, interesting combo. The one advantage of this segment of the trip is that since we went through security in the Schengen zone (Florence), we didn’t have to go through security again to get to T4 and our international flight in Madrid.

The Iberia flight to Boston was fine (why Boston, you may ask - well it all had to do with the cheapest business tickets I could find!). But once in Boston things got hectic and confusing again. I couldn’t recheck our luggage in the international terminal — even though we had carryons, I always check them on the way home. Since our ticket was booked on American, we had to take the luggage over to the domestic terminal. This requires a ride on a transfer bus that seems to come whenever the driver feels like making the rounds. In fact I remembered from one of my caminos flying from Boston and having to ask a car rental bus driver to take me over to the international terminal because the clock was ticking and the transfer bus was no where to be found. Note to self: no more international transfers in Boston. But we made it to Terminal B, checked in again, got through security again, and got to our gate. Our Iberia flight had been 40 minutes late, but luckily (at least for this leg) our flight from Boston to Chicago was also late. So we made the connection.

Once in Chicago, we had about 30 minutes to get from L gates all the way to the end of G. Joe got a good cardio workout, probably the best he’s had in a long time. As we were walking down G, we heard an announcement that our flight was in final boarding, so I ran ahead, let them know we were here, then ran back to luckily find Joe making his way towards our gate. We made it, got to Champaign, and thought nothing about having to sit for a half hour waiting for the Uber to get home. That was a luxury!

I don’t expect anyone to really read this rant, but I do like to have a record of it so I can remind myself that we can deal with really bad travel days. Joe suggested this morning that I start planning another trip to Italy, but I think I’ll wait a while for that.Читать далее