Day (or two) from Hell

The itineray was suppose to go like this.....

Leave Nashville and fly to Philadelphia, nice but not too long of a layover in Philly and then straight on to Barcelona. This is how it actually went...

We had a 2 o'clock flight to Philly and around 10:30 or so the dogs were safely at the kennel and the car was packed. We were killing time in the house waiting to leave. The kids kept asking and asking when we were going to leave and I will admit I wanted to get on the road too since that meant we were officially starting our vacation. So Raif and I talked it over and thought we might as well just get going. We could have a nice leisurely lunch at the airport and let the kids run themselves ragged at the little play area. My wise friend Cindy always advised me to get there early and run the kids into the ground before getting on a really long flight and so we took her advice (which as you will see saved us, though not in the way it was intended).

We got to the airport, checked in and found our gate by the time 12:15 rolled around. We were walking to the airport O'Charley's when I heard something in the airport that I have never heard before...

"Will the Erim and Parsons families please go to Gate 63 IMMEDIATELY for some urgent information regarding your trip to Barcelona."

Oh. Fuck.

So we high tail it to Gate 63 where the lady behind the desk kindly informed us that due to mechanical problems the flight from Nashville to Philly was CANCELLED. They were rerouting us from Nashville to Charlotte from Charlotte to Philly to catch our flight to Barcelona. Oh and by the way the flight was leaving at 12:30 - they were in final boarding as she spoke to us. No time for lunch, no time for a snack, no time to get anything except on to the plane. Then she handed us our 6 boarding passes. All middle seats, all randomly scattered through the plane. Not going to work with a 4 year old and a 5 year old so she spent the next 10 minutes trying to remedy that situation. Thankfully there were a couple late check-ins that she was able to boot out of their seats and so at least we got to sit next to the kids and my parents got the random middle seats.

I also might have forgotten to mention we had only 30 minute layovers in Charlotte and Philadelphia.

We got to Charlotte with 20 minutes to spare - enough time for me to run and get some stale and tasteless bagel sandwiches to eat on the plane at the nearest food kiosk while Raif went to haggle with another airline attendant about how we couldn't take 6 middle seats again.

We were once again the last people on the plane and we nervously watched the clock as we pulled out onto the tarmac and stopped.

"Good afternoon everyone, this is the Captain here. We have a little traffic jam ahead of us. We are 10th in line for departure and our usual 20 minute taxi time has probably been stretched into 40 minutes. So sit back we will be in line for awhile."

Hmmm, 30 minute layover, 20 minute (minimum) delay. Another. Fuck.

And so for the next hour and a half, I probably asked Raif a million times what time it was and when our flight was leaving. As we started our descent into Philly I went to talk to the helpful (note the sarcasm here) flight attendants. Surely, I asked, they would hold an international flight for people who are 10 minutes late? That depends, they said. Sometimes they held flights, sometimes they didn't and they saw no rhyme or reason as to when they did or didn't. Surely, you could call ahead for us,tell them we are coming. Yeah, they don't do that. Surely, there was something they could do. Well, they had one seat up near the front of the plane, someone in our party could take that seat which would shave a couple minutes off the time getting off the plane and then they advised us to run like hell. What were our chances, I asked. They said a little under 50/50.

Sweet.

So Raif took the middle seat and the wheels touched the tarmac 10 minutes before our Barcelona flight was suppose to leave. Every time the plane stopped as it approached the airport my stomach lurched. The moment that door opened Raif was out of that plane like a bat out of hell. The kids, grandparents and I soon followed reliving the airport scene in "Home Alone" where this mass of kids, adults and bags were dashing through the airport, but we made it (much to the chagrin of the woman who assumed that our six seats were empty and had already appropriated them as her own personal bed on the plane), but just barely. We weren't even in our seats when they shut the door and were already talking the "crosscheck" jargon before we had stowed our bags.

Oh yes, the bags.

As you can imagine, while we were in an obvious hurry to get on the plane, the baggage handlers felt no such urgency. When we arrived in Barcelona I gave them a 20% shot, if that of making it. My husband was more optimistic and even as the overhead sign clearly indicated that the last bag from Philly had been put on the carousel he continued to watch, I think attempting to use the Jedi mind trick to will them across the pond. But at last even he finally realized that they just weren't there.

It is one thing to lose your luggage but it is quite another to lose them in another country where the woman in charge of finding them doesn't have a firm grasp on your language or you on hers. So we sat for almost an hour as she did paperwork and tried her best to communicate with us. There was only one flight a day from Philly to Barcelona and she assured us that we would have our bags at the same time the next day and so we headed to our hotel a little lighter than we planned.

Luckily I had packed the kids bathing suits in my carry on so we let them play in the Mediterranean while we made sure that we stayed upwind of each other to avoid the stench we seemed to have gathered over the last 15 hours of travel.

Before we went to bed, my husband had the brilliant idea of hand washing all of our clothes in the sink so the next day (we weren't expecting our bags until around 11) we would be slightly less caustic. The clothes were indeed fresher the next morning but also still soaking wet. So for the next hour or so, Raif in our room and I in my parents, used the two weakest hair dryers in existence to dry our clothes by hand. After an eternity and still only having dried the kids clothes I gave up, said fuck it and put on my wet clothes. (And I will leave it to your imagination of what we looked like while drying all these clothes).

But our story does have a happy ending. The clothes did indeed arrive on the next flight and we boarded our ship fully outfitted and ready for our adventure.