Frustration with a silver lining

Becky told me that the family had taken a poll while I was dealing with the flight cancellation, and they all agreed that they would rather sleep in the airport that night than go back to the Fomule 1.  Good thing neither of those things happened.

July 1, 2018

You know, I was thinking to myself recently that nothing had really gone wrong with our trip so far.  How could we go this long on this kind of crazy trip and have everything work out so well?  I mean, we did misplace an auto route ticket once and probably had to pay too much for the toll, but that was about it.  We’ve had some sore feet issues, but nothing that really made us miss anything. 

That came to end today.  It started out as just kind of a not so fun day because we had to get up in the hot Formule 1, consolidate all of our stuff to get airport ready after three weeks and clean out the car, fill it up with gas, get to the airport, turn in the car and get to the Icelandair check-in desk.  Of course, those are all first-world problems and while not enjoyable, they are part of traveling.  We arrived at the Icelandair bag check early – about a half hour before it even open for our flight, and that’s when things started going south.

Another passenger in line informed us that the flight had been cancelled, and then we had to wait a while to speak with workers who told us there was a mechanical problem and at first informed us that they could help us one at time re-book flights, or we could call the Icelandair number ourselves.  After several unhappy customers including myself banded together and pushed for more assistance than that, they got on the phone with supervisors and although it took several hours, they eventually got everybody re-booked, got hotel rooms for everyone who needed them and scheduled a bus to take those of us those of us who needed a ride to the other Paris airport. 

We were at the Orly airport, and when I first found out that they were trying to schedule us for tomorrow, I checked and saw that there was an Icelandair flight that was leaving in about 3 hours from Charles de Gaulle airport and had room for the four of us.  I asked the workers if they could change our flight and give us a taxi voucher.  They said that the ride would be at least an hour and I might not make that flight even if they could work it out.  If I chose to try that, I would be on my own if we didn’t make that flight.  We decided to go with the safer bet and see what they would work out for us.  In the meantime, I had used the spotty Internet connection to find out what the responsibilities were for airlines on cancelled flights in the European Union. 

At first I was annoyed that they booked people who were only stopping in Iceland as a layover first because by the time they re-booked us, there were no more tickets for Iceland and all they could offer us were direct tickets on another airline home to San Francisco.  This was poor planning on their part because I spoke with other passengers who would have been happy with a direct flight home who would still have to fly through Iceland the next day, and people like us who wanted to get to Iceland couldn’t get there.  I was told by the workers that I can submit my receipts for our AirBnB and car rental in Iceland, and Icelandair would have to reimburse me afterward.  With that in mind, I decided that it was actually better to go home than to try to stay just one night in Iceland.  The whole point in spending two nights was that we would have the whole day in between to explore, and that wouldn’t happen with only one night.  We were given the option of either a morning or afternoon flight the next day, and we chose the afternoon so we wouldn’t feel rushed getting up and to the airport.

So we were annoyed but resigned to spending one more night in Paris and then going home tomorrow – a day earlier than we had planned.  After spending close to 5 hours in the airport, we finally had a bus that would take us over to a hotel near the Charles de Gaulle airport.  It was a bit of a walk with all of our luggage to get to the bus, but we were happy to be on our way.  I talked to the representative from the airline as we were getting on the bus about dinner tonight and breakfast tomorrow morning because I had seen online that the airline was supposed to take care of that.  He said he would look into it while we were driving over to the hotel.  We were frustrated and disappointed when we left, but about 45 minutes later when we arrived, you could have felt the relief from my family as the bus pulled into a 4-star Marriott.  It was far and away the nicest hotel we had ever stayed in Europe and was a far cry from the Formule 1 last night.  We had large rooms (one for Becky and I and another for Alex and Katie), and we learned when we checked in that both dinner and breakfast had been taken care of. 

The dinner was a fixed menu in their restaurant, and while Katie was not a fan of the sea bass, it was good and we all enjoyed the gateau de chocolate for dessert.  The beds were really comfortable, and the rooms had air conditioning.  While I still would have preferred the two nights in Iceland, at least we had an enjoyable last night (we hope) in Paris.

July 2, 2018

We slept in this morning, and Alex had time to get a work out in the hotel gym.  The breakfast was a buffet that was a mix of French and American cuisine – complete with an omelet station and other American foods along with several French cheeses, breads, etc.  We checked out of the hotel at noon and had a shuttle that dropped us off at the CDG airport.  It was a much more relaxed and enjoyable day than yesterday.

Our flight left a little late but not too bad.  Because of the cancellation yesterday, our tickets were switched to Air France, which turns out to be better than Icelandair.  The seats seemed a little roomier (although that could just be my imagination), but the services and entertainment options were definitely much better.  On the way here, we had to pay for pretty much any food on Icelandair, but we had two free meals as well as snacks on the Air France flight.  I still would have preferred the two days to explore Iceland, but they way things turned out had some perks as well. 

Even though Dee had gone home a week and half earlier, she actually finished off the trip with us as she picked us up at San Francisco airport.  After a short stop to make the kids happy with an In-N-Out burger, we made it home without any hiccups.  Except for Zac who is still in Switzerland for three more weeks, our European adventure is now complete.  I’ll have one more post with some final thoughts – not really something anybody else needs to read, but more for myself and the family when we look back on this years from now.