We travel frequently enough that we are accustomed to the notion that travel does not always go smoothly. In fact, it rarely goes "as planned" - but usually the bumps just make it interesting and while we may have moments of rush or stress we generally manage to make it to our destination on the scheduled day...and our luggage eventually follows.
The beginning of this trip seems to have been the perfect storm of travel snafus. We left our house at 11 am on Monday - having hoped to leave at 10:30. We were running a little late - things had taken us longer than expected and the fact that Daniel had worked all weekend while I tried to get us packed and ready to go didn't help. All of Daniel's trip prep was squeezed into Monday morning - and the additional fact that I had not just ended my school year on Friday but had ended my career at MCC entirely on Friday and moved out of my classroom had made for a very jam packed weekend for me as I had zero time during the week to prep for the trip.
By the time we were in the car (a one way rental, which was cheaper than parking our car in Miami for two weeks) and barreling down I-95 we were elated, relieved, a little tight on time, but unbelievably excited to FINALLY be on vacation. Daniel has worked overtime incessantly this spring while trying to wrap up a program he has been the lead software engineer of for the past six years while juggling graduate classes at FIT. I have been quite busy as well running a pilot 1:1 iPad classroom, conducting a practitioner inquiry study in my classroom to wrap up my masters degree, getting my kids ready for the AP exam, and making the agonizing decision to not renew my contract at my high school in an attempt to continue progressing in my career (see previous post if you are confused). Needless to say - we have been busy! Being able to spend time together - while conscious and not trying to multitask has been a rarity and we have been really really really looking forward to our blissful days together in Santorini. On Saturday we will be meeting up with the Hals and are sure we will have a wonderful time exploring Italy - but it will be fast-paced and busy and well, we really need our time to stare out at the Santorini blue before we are mentally, physically, and emotionally ready for hustle and bustle tourism.
So we got to the Miami airport a little late, so tight on time in fact that we had to do the major travel-savvy no-no...we returned the rental car without filling up on gas! Then we had a really hard time finding the TAP Portugal check-in counter - meanwhile Daniel is already complaining about the fact that we are once again traveling in the Miami airport (certain airports really piss Daniel off and are on his "banned list" - Miami has been skirting this one for a while...but mainly as a really sucky layover airport - it's always incredibly packed and the staff who work at the Miami airport are generally just RUDE). So we have to walk to the absolute corner of the airport - down through baggage claim and everything to actually find the TAP Portugal desk. When we do - there's no line! Maybe we will be lucky this trip! (No, everyone in the world knows not to fly TAP?)
We check in, push through a balmy Miami-temperature security line, and rush to the gate without grabbing anything from the food court. When we reach the gate it says on time. Whew. We can officially relax. The only other point of worry for our itinerary is that we have a tight turn around in Rome with a separate company. But we can't do anything about that now...
While I am off looking for food Daniel sees the little dreaded "Delayed" text pop up at the ticket counter. Dun dun dun... There are very few details at first - they mention a twenty to thirty minute delay. No biggie. As we start wondering if we will make our connection in Lisbon to fly to Rome, the check-in counter announces that there is something broken that they need to fix. Should be about an hour. Oh boy. It's 15:30 (when we are supposed to board) and we are now told it will be at least an hour or so, then boarding. In another hour they say the "fix" didn't work and that they need to "fix it better" and need another hour to do so. At this point we have gotten food and beer. In another hour they announce that the "fix" did not work. They now need a specific part to fix the plane and they don't know exactly where the nearest part would be. They are trying to call Lisbon to get them to look up if the next available part is in EUROPE or somewhere in the United States.
We now realize that we are screwed.
The problem is, that through all of this time, they do not officially cancel the flight. If they had, they could have started rerouting us and reissuing tickets so we could catch the last flights out that evening. The check-in counter has now turned into a flurry of people with smart phones running kayak in one hand and clenched waving fists in the other as the crush on the front desk truly ensues. Yours truly was hot in the mix. I had multiple ideas of how we could get to Athens or Santorini and had a list of flights that were still due to leave Miami with a two hour window.
Even though when we had spoken to a TAP Portugal employee earlier in the afternoon (say at 17:00 when we knew we were probably missing our connections the next day, but thought we were still Europe bound) he had assured us that TAP would make sure that we eventually reach our destination, even if it was through other airlines, because yes, it was their responsibility to get us to our destination on time.
He lied.
Back to the mad rush on the check-in counter. I started overhearing employees saying that there was only ONE woman working for TAP that night who actually knew how to reissue alternative tickets...and I had been steadily working towards the desk, but was not quite in front of her. I also was really starting to get the impression after about an hour that they were about to "call the flight" and officially cancel it - so I message Daniel and had him start pressing in on the side that had the lady who could actually rebook us. And then they officially cancelled the flight. At 20:30...for a flight that was supposed to leave at 16:10. I had a flight pitch ready for her - one that departed at 22:35 and would eventually get us where we wanted to go in the end. But she was convinced that no one was getting out tonight.
There were a lot of people who were trying to jump in the line from the sides and a mob of fifteen women traveling together from London who kept trying to use their brute force/influence of fifteen-women-yelling-at-once to be given more attention than the rest of us. There was mention of potentially being able to fly the flight the following day once the part was installed - maybe even in the morning if they could find the part in the US. A lot of what if's. So I stayed in line. I was not budging. They finally conceded that they would be putting everyone up in a hotel for the night, they would have a bus, a plan for us to eat dinner (it was now after 21:00...although don't worry they had offered us potato chips and coca-cola before this point to hold us over), and said they were dumping our bags at baggage claim. If your final destination was Lisbon you were at their mercy, but if you final destination was elsewhere you could stay in line for an alternative. Daniel went to get our bags and I stood my ground at the check-in counter.
When it was finally my turn I explained that we needed to get to Santorini and she just shook her head. Rome. No! I was pretty loud. I explained it was their fault we had missed our flights and that their customer service had said we would be taken care of. She said we would have to call TAP's customer service and work that part out but for now she could get me to Rome. Sigh. But - I left with a printout that had a flight number and a direct flight from Miami to Rome on June 4th - at 16:15 - 24 hours and 5 minutes after we were supposed to be leaving for our trip in the first place. June 4th we were supposed to be arriving in Santorini - there was this really REALLY amazing hotel that I found that only had availability on the 4th and 5th and had made an exception to their three night minimum to accommodate us. Daniel and I have seriously been emailing the link to this place back and forth to each other to keep our chins up. If we even somehow managed to make it to Santorini by the 5th we now got to enjoy our amazing balcony views in the dark. And for a few hours in the morning before we are evicted. HUGE bummer. But for now...we had no idea how we would actually make it to Santorini.
Print out in hand - with all the people in the line behind me glaring at me and cursing my name (honestly, it had gotten rough at that counter and I was a fierce advocator for myself...it was getting really competitive at the end and I heard all kinds of things being whispered as I triumphantly walked away) I met Daniel outside in the absolutely disgusting balmy Miami humid-heat and instantly soaked through my clothes. After waiting for at least thirty to forty minutes (so glad I physically ran to get there out of fear that I would miss the bus) we get to the hotel thinking - surely if it took us THIS long to get to the hotel everyone else is taken care of and here we are sitting at the front of the bus - let's jump in line and have an edge! ...And then we pulled up to the hotel...it was 22:35 at night...and there was a loooong line. AHH. Hurry up and wait. Oh my goodness.
So...onto a line in the lobby to attempt to get a room. Keep in mind it is 22:35 and I have already been standing in line since about 19:00 to make sure I was at the front of the line if the flight was cancelled. Daniel hit up the bar and then we traded and I babysat bags while he graciously waited in line. We eventually had a room and a voucher for dinner and a hotel restaurant that was slam packed. The concierge had mentioned to Daniel that room service was running for food -awesome. No more obnoxious people! We finally got to our room, ordered a meal, and started strategizing how on earth we were going to make it to Santorini. It was about 00:00 aka midnight by the time we got our food. We scarfed it down and finally got into bed at 00:35 with the idea that I would wake up at 3 am when the TAP Portugal office opened in Europe to negotiate out our flights from Rome to Santorini.
2.5 hours of crummy sleep later, I rolled out of bed with no idea what kind of a roller coaster phone call session I was heading into. YIKES. Overall I made 24 phone calls from 3 am - 13:00 and Daniel made 9. Some of the phone calls were thirty - forty minutes long and involved me being transferred up to six times.
Round 1 - first I called TAP Portugal and was told that we had to go to the airport to be helped. Then I was told to call back in forty minutes to talk to customer complaint department. Then I was told that they were only contractually obligated to get us to Rome. When I pointed out that they were contractually obligated to have a functional plane that operated in a timely manner I got transferred. Hence the six transfers phone call. We were getting no where. I also tried to point out that if we had to go to the airport to work out an alternative their employees should have never told me to get up at 3 am to call the TAP Portugal office. And that buy the time the airport office would be open to help me it would be too late to move our flights or to book alternatives. Through all of this I was advised a few different times (particularly when I mentioned that we had paid non-refundable amounts for our hotels and rental cars) that we should file a claim when we return home.
Round 2 - frustrated, beyond irate, and very discouraged we decided to shift to a different plan at about 4:30 in the morning. Daniel was up now - he had been for a while - it was impossible to sleep through the intense conversations I was having with TAP. We were going to find a way to get ourselves to Santorini, TAP Portugal be damned. We would file a claim when we returned from our vacation - but for now we had to actually set up flights that would enable us to have that said vacation in the first place. It was really all very time sensitive. For our flights in Europe we might be able to rebook if we called three hours ahead. We were scheduled to land at 8:10 in Rome on June 5th, so we had some wiggle room. I looked into rebooking our flights, but all attempts to do so through the computer were not working. We were debating between outright buying a new set of tickets that would fly from Rome to Santorini versus trying to rebook the flight from Rome to Athens and the flight from Athens to Santorini (two different companies of course). The flight from Rome to Athens was more expensive to rebook than to buy another ticket, so that was out. But...from what I was reading online we might be able to rebook the Athens to Santorini flight, but I needed to talk to someone in person.
Calling Aegean Airlines...there wasn't a US based number, you had to make an international call. My cell phone couldn't make the call. I tried skype, it wouldn't work. The hotel phone could make the call if Daniel went to the front desk and physically swiped our credit card. I was looking online and there were four seats left for these flights...and it was day time in Europe. I was super nervous. The front desk told Daniel it would be SIXTEEN DOLLARS PER MINUTE. No dice. We have limits. I tried to buy the whole set outright from Rome-Athens-Santorini online but the credit card failed. What?
So in the middle of all of it, our credit card was down to?! I had called Capital One to let them know of our travel plans. Sigh. I called them to work things out. I am not the "primary card holder" so they wouldn't actually speak with lowly me - seriously?! Daniel worked it out. Then I had an idea - maybe Skype didn't work because maybe I was out of $ on my account - I haven't really used it since China. Sure enough. I went to recharge the account - credit card declined again. AHHH.
Daniel called Capital One again and got it worked out. I set up Skype with the debit card in the mean time and went ahead and called Aegean Airlines. They could rebook us! They gave us the amount - it was still expensive but it would be cheaper than buying the whole set outright. I was opening my mouth to give them the credit card number when Skype dropped us. AHHHH. I think I remember literally yelling out loud. We were soooo close!
I called Aegean airlines back again. They could still rebook us. I gave him our credit card number and while he was running it the call was DROPPED AGAIN. I called him back. The card had been denied. Seriously?!? COME ON Capital One! I gave him our debit card - foreign transaction fees and all. (This was for the Athens-Santorini flight). Just as it was going through and I was going to get the confirmation number the call WAS DROPPED AGAIN. Daniel called Capital One again. Meanwhile I was also at the laptop booking the Rome-Athens flight, also on Aegean, but this one would be a fresh flight. I figured the airline could link them together when we checked in. Put all the info in and AGAIN the credit card was denied. COME ON Capital One! We finally bought the tickets online with our debit card - again hello foreign transaction fees - BUT! We theoretically had tickets from Miami - Rome - Athens - Santorini! It was 6:30 am. Daniel crawled into bed. I told him I couldn't sleep until I had the confirmation number for our Athens-Santorini flight. I called Aegean Airlines via Skype again and confirmed the flight had been rebooked. YAY!
I slept way better...for 2.5 hours. We had gotten a memo that all TAP Portugal people had to leave for the airport at 12 - we intended to leave long before that to avoid the crowds and the madness. We also wanted to get to the check-in counter of Alitalia and make sure we had seats on the plane. Daniel was really nervous that we only had stand by seats or something like that so we left the hotel at 11 on the shuttle out, missing breakfast at the hotel because it was so unbelievably busy (there was a wait to get to eat at a buffet...seriously). On the shuttle I emailed our hotel in Santorini to say we were not actually going to be meeting them in a few hours and then called and emailed the car rental company to say please do not meet us with a sign to take us to a rental car because...we won't be there. But we will on the 5th!
Once we got to the airport though the Alitalia desk was not yet open. I honestly don't know who we called first, but we ended up in this horrible cycle of phone calls between Alitalia, TAP Portugal, Travelocity, and Kayak-Travelocity (Which is different than just Travelocity - you knew that right?) in which one company would say it was the other company's job to actually book us seats and would refer us to the other company. We had tentative confirmation numbers but no confirmation that we actually had seats on the plane. When the Alitalia desk has someone show up we beelined it there and they told Daniel they did not have record of us on the flight. Panic deepened. We were in this frantic cycle of calling and calling and calling - every time I called Kayak-Travelocity I was given a different number/different office to call. We were really freaked out, starting to look up alternative flights to get up from Miami to Rome or Miami to Athens. So from 11:30-1 was full scale panic mode for the Hals again who were functioning on a granola bar a piece...and had not slept for more than 2.5 hours at a time since Monday morning. We were going to be on a flight and were going to do whatever it took. At this point though the Alitalia check-in had opened up (we were in line while using our suitcases as desks to hold all the different reference numbers and phone numbers we were working from). We looked ridiculous. We might as well see if Alitalia somehow had our info...Daniel managed to run up to the desk (off to the side) and ask the guy to pull our info one more time and came back with a thumbs up... could it be? Did we actually have seats on this plane after all?!
The guy next in line (a few ahead of us) had been on our flight, was rebooked just before me, and walked away with a boarding pass. I really started to become hopeful! When it came time to check in - we were issued boarding passes!!! We HAD SEATS! After clearing security (and actually sitting down and finally eating a real meal) we reached our gate to find that IT WAS ON TIME! And then, most magically of all - we got to board the plane and took off ON TIME! YAY!
We slept almost the entire ten hour flight. Really. We were absolutely exhausted. We had another snafu in Rome - we had a three hour layover but it took almost an hour to get our luggage. We had to walk upstairs to the Aegean check-in counter. When we did - we had to cut through the line for security...which extended from security out past three different check-in alcoves - it honestly was at least a half-mile long. I thought Daniel was absolutely going to lose it. The light left his eyes, his face got ashy, and he started muttering things about never ever making it to our magical Santorini. BUT somehow made it with five minutes to spare! We made it! And...endured a five hour layover in Athens - and...are now landing in Santorini! Turning my ipad off before they yell at me!!! :)
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