We landed in London on a foggy morning. As soon as I turned on my phone service, I was greeted with a notice from British Airways that our outbound flight had been cancelled. There was a long "queue" at the rebooking desk. Despite 16 counters being opened, it took us a little over an hour to get rebooked on a flight leaving five hours later than our original flight 7:35 pn. They also placed us on standby for a flight at 4:40 and told us we were numbers two through five on the list and with a bunch of flights being cancelled, we had a good shot at getting on board.
Perhaps other airports to this, but I had my first experience with an airport that doesn't pre-assign gates. There was a huge board with all the departures over the next 2-3 hours. By each, it would say approximately what time they expected to assign the gate. When we looked for info on the 4:40 flight, we saw that it was running late (surprise) and that they expected to advise of the gate around 5:03. We were all tired and ready to chill, so we found a gate without many people and sprawled out for some naps. Around 3:30, Shirley and I decided to go get some food with the food vouchers the airline provided. There was an interesting Ramen house on an upper level, so we headed up and ordered some noodles. We had wandered a bit and it was nearly 4:00 when we placed our order, All of a sudden, the info on our flight changed: it was now scheduled to depart at 4:53 and the gate would be posted at 5:03.
We cancelled our order and went back to where we had left Terry and Chloe with the luggage. We were in the right terminal (there are multiple international terminals), but were at the opposite end. We worked our way through and got to gate A19. At first we just sat expecting they would call our names if they were able to board us. But as the plane began to fill, our names were not called. I went up to the desk to check and was told "oh yes, you are on this flight." Not only that, but they even had four seats together. Things were beginning to go our way.
Somewhere earlier in our time in London, we had decided that we were too tired to attempt to drive the 263 km to our hotel in Erfurt that night. We booked a place near the airport and decided we could leave in the morning.
That decision proved to be providential, as our luggage didn't catch up with us in Frankfurt. Hopefully it will by morning...
When we got to the rental counter, we learned that Kurt's reservation had been cancelled a short time before. We were able to convince the attendant that he was coming and he informed us that it had been restored. We are now driving a 9-passenger Mercedes Vito--much like the US Sprinter model. Ours is a diesel with a manual transmission. Nothing like hopping on the autobaun in the rain and dark to help you recall how to drive a stick shift.
As for the others in our party:
- Joy arrived as scheduled and ended up taking a train to Erfurt to meet up with Donovan and Jess.
- Cody and Cayden (from Spokane) and Cherry (from Portland) all got to Chicago and as I write this are in the air heading towards Frankfurt.
- Jennie and Kurt with the later schedule should be nearing Chicago.
- Debbie was not able to match Kurt and Jennie's itinerary. She will fly out on Friday and catch up with us in Munich on Saturday.
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