An Ever Expanding Adventure

THURSDAY 17 JANUARY Well I’m having wee adventure! Yesterday afternoon I was scheduled to fly out of Glasgow for Amsterdam on the 4.30pm flight. My mum, sister and I left home and headed out for lunch then they took me to the airport. I said my goodbyes at 4pm and took my seat on the flight to Amsterdam. About 20 minutes out of Glasgow, the captain’s voice comes over the PA system saying that we have a technical problem with the de-icers and that since the weather in Amsterdam is freezing, we’re turning back to Glasgow to resolve the problem if possible. So we get back to Glasgow, and sit in the departure lounge for about an hour and half while they try to fix the problem. Eventually we were told that the problem wasn’t going to be fixed that night and that we should retrieve our luggage from the carousel downstairs and go to the KLM Servisair desk to be rerouted. So 7pm finds me standing almost at the back of a long queue – and it took till 10.30pm to get to the front of that queue. With Amsterdam being a transit stop for flights all over the world, you can imagine the nightmare the staff had trying to get people on other flights. I spent last night at the Ramada Hotel at Glasgow Airport, courtesy of KLM and I’m still there this morning as I write this. I have a new itinerary with a completely different route and airline. I was meant to fly Glasgow/Amsterdam /Singapore/Brisbane – arriving there at around 10am on Friday. Instead I’m flying to London at 2pm this afternoon, out of London on Cathay Pacific at 10pm tonight to Hong Kong, 5 hours there, then on to Brisbane. I’ll get into Brisbane at 10.30am on Saturday morning but I still have to rearrange my flight from Brisbane up to home. I’ll be able to do that when I get to London. The upside to all of this is that I met some lovely people in the queue and ended up in the bar till 2am this morning with one couple. It was the old small world thing – the couple in front of me knew someone I went to school with – who I haven’t been in contact with for many years. The couple behind also had a friend who married someone I went to school with (and I hasten to add that I went to a very small primary school, and a not very big secondary school). Both these couples were on their way to Dubai via Amsterdam and they’ve been able to be rebooked on a direct flight to Dubai today with another airline. I don’t have internet access here (unless I pay for it) so I thought I’d put together a bit of a post in Word and I’ll cut and paste it when I get access – heaven only know when that will be! But I’ll be back…… SATURDAY 19 JANUARY Well the wee adventure has now turned into a much bigger adventure. I got to the airport and had been upgraded to business class to London so was sitting rather comfortably in the British Airways Terraces Lounge when the announcement was made that due to a serious incident Heathrow was closed till further notice. So the upshot of that was that I once again had to retrieve my luggage from the carousel and make my way back to the Servisair counter. One and a half hours later and phone calls to Amsterdam and I’m rebooked yet again for the following day. The difficulty was that there were no seats on flights into anywhere in Australia – they could get me to the Far East but got stuck trying to find a seat after that. Anyway the revised itinerary had me once again flying from Glasgow to Amsterdam, then to Tokyo then Brisbane – but what an ugly connection – into Tokyo at 10.30am and not out again until 10pm! So here I am now in Tokyo – and that wasn’t without a few scary moments – I had to transfer terminals then check in to get my boarding pass. When I did that they couldn’t find my reservation on the system. So I headed over to the Qantas Club (the one benefit of all this is that my flight to Brisbane is via Qantas and I’m a Qantas Club member which makes long hauls much easier) – the Qantas Club lady took me to another Transfer Connection Counter who again couldn’t find my reservation and sent me to take a seat – that was an uncomfortable 20 minute wait – wondering if I was going to have to stay in Tokyo (that was OK) but thinking ‘when in the hell am I going to get back to Australia – I’m due to start work again on Monday!’ However they turned up trumps and I’m now the proud possessor of a boarding pass and I’m sitting here in the Qantas lounge with a glass of chardy to restore my equilibrium. I still haven’t got internet access – but will sort that out shortly I hope and then I’ll be able to post this. And I still have to sort out my flight from Brisbane to home – that’s going to have to wait till I get to Brisbane I think! Ok I’m off now to see if I can get this laptop of mine to talk to the internet – I get wireless connection but then it won’t fire up – think I’ll reboot and see if it helps. So farewell for now my friends – my next post should be all about a porky lady getting back on the straight and narrow! Take care Love Z xx SUNDAY 20 JANUARY And just one more of those funny coincidences – just before I was ready to leave the Qantas Club in Tokyo – who do I see but Zac who’s office is next door to mine at work. He’d been on a snowboarding holiday in Japan and couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw me walk past on my way to the ladies and he’s thinking to himself – Didn’t know Anne was coming back via Tokyo!! I'm now in the Qantas club in Brisbane waiting for a flight home. I've finally got internet access so thought I'd quickly post this.