We're Here!

Alain de Botton in The Art of Travel makes an interesting observation; “we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate.” Specifically, de Botton writes about how a travel book might tell us about travelling though the afternoon to reach a destination, but the reality is that many more things happened than simply travelling through the afternoon. In keeping with de Botton's thought, I could just say that we flew to London, but there was much more than just that in our epic 30 hours without sleep that eventually saw us falling into bed in Brixton, totally exhausted.

We woke up long before dawn to meet the requirement for checking in an hour and a half ahead of our scheduled flight to Calgary, where we caught our KLM flight to Amsterdam, where we caught our connector to London. Why such a convoluted flight path you may be wondering. That route is the result of searching out the cheapest flights we could find, on our own, on the internet. We wanted to avoid the boat people/refugee seat configuration of Air Transat because of the myriad stories we had heard about the lack of legroom. I bought great seats on a KLM flight; even paid for extra legroom (for both of us). So that decision, so easy at the time, resulted in a six hour (yes 6) layover in Calgary. Not so bad unless you miss your connecting flight..., but we didn't. We landed in Calgary and went to have breakfast and then spent the next several hours hanging around the departure lounge. What we failed to realize, is that Calgary is one hour ahead of Vancouver. I blame the aircrew. (Nancy blames me.) Normally the pilot comes on the blower just before landing anywhere, and he gives the passengers (now called “guests” on Westjet) the local weather and time and some flight info for those connecting on to somewhere else. Not this time. He landed, we got off (alighted as the say here in Kips). No mention of time! So, six hours later as we are strolling through the terminal, we hear the dreaded “this is the last call for KLM flight 678 to Amsterdam. All people who are not checked in will have their baggage offloaded and their seats cancelled.” We had a WTF moment, and then bolted through the airport to the gate, and we were the last people on the plane. Note to self, check the time on the clocks in the airport when you arrive.

After a severe brow beating by Nancy, we left Calgary. As we took our special seats with extra legroom (at some expense) the very nice air hostess apologized profusely when she announced that the entertainment gizmos in our seats were not functioning and then offered us new seats in the “comfort” section with working entertainment equipment. Of course we took her offer. After moving to the new seats we realized they didn't have the coveted (and expensive) extra legroom. By the time we got the nerve to complain, there was already someone else stretched out in our old seats, with her feet up on her carry-on suitcase, sound asleep. Of course we didn't want to be complete assholes, so we endured the next nine hours without the legroom I had so meticulously organized.

To top it all off, the newspaper they gave me, as we boarded, had a lengthy article about the recovery of the black box from the Air France airbus that crashed in the mid Atlantic enroute from Brazil to France. Of course I read the article with some interest since we were on an airbus. I learned that Air France and KLM are actually the same company, and that the company was particularly happy because they had never figured out why the airbus went down. Recovering the black box would enable the company to resolve the mystery of the crash and make the airbus safer in the future. It was another WTF moment! I sweated all the way to Amsterdam.

When we landed in Amsterdam, I checked the time; we went directly to the departure lounge for the connector and sat there. No problems! We got the right seats, on time, and had a relaxing flight to Heathrow, on something other than an airbus.

So, you can see how blogging that “we flew to London,” just does not tell the whole story.