just the bad stuff

For those who can't wait for me to go through all the good parts of my holiday before they find out the bad stuff;
here it is

There were floods in Yorkshire, so I went to York. The only bad part here was that every day started wet and ended dry or vice versa. Oh, that and the river rose and flooded the walking path along side it so I couldn't stroll along it.

When I got back to Scotland everything was hunky dory. Actually the only bad part in Scotland was when I went to Fort William with the intend of going on a seal cruise when I got there. The tourist place gave me a map and when I said, "so I go to the pier to get on the cruise?" they said yes....the only pier on the map was a commercial one at the other end of town, across the busy road, with big "no access" signs on it...and was the wrong one. By the time I'd figured this out, found a local to point out where I should go and got back there...100m in the other direction from the tourist centre...it was too late. I watched the boat set off as I stood at the ticket gate.

Things started to get curly when I got to my hotel at the airport...or rather, got off the train, failed miserably to find a courtesy coach and walked with all my luggage in the increasing drizzle to the hotel i could see in the distance.

The hotel had a sign up saying get to the airport terminal 30 minutes earlier than you planned. Also, there was no courtesy coach to my terminal anymore as the police had road blocks up after the bombing attempt. This meant I got up at 3am and walked with all my luggage, the 400m to the terminal. And then they didn't open check-in till 1/2 an hour after i got there.

All was going well and the call to go to the gate was fine...then just as we were about to go through, they stopped us as the plane had been found to be un-flyable. It took them 45 minutes to find another plane, decamp all oour luggage and the in-flight service stuff and reload. Then they put us on board and told us that it would be another 45 minutes till they could take off. At this point I realised i would miss my connection....and I did...by about 15 minutes.

They gave me a handwritten note to go to transit services in Frankfurt & my luggage was supposed to keep going without me. I don't know what I would have done if you need a visa to go through passport control as this was my only option. If I'd arrived in time I could have nipped up the stairs and gone straight to the next gate.

With my shiny entry stamp in my passport, I found that my luggage hadn't gone through and if I hadn't checked, I would have left it behind in Frankfurt. I then went to the info desk and said "please do any of you speak english". One guy popped up "yes , goodmorning, goodevening, goodbye" Then he asked "how can I help you?" Apparently the directions the plane had given me were wrong, but he put me straight and I circled a desk twice before deciding that I would just talk to the person near the FlyBe sign...who was the right person.

Result:
China Air won't let you fly another airline at their expense to catch up to your next connection, so i lost that too
They only fly one plane a day and all the future flights were fully booked so I had to waitlist.
the lady said I could be there for a week
Flybe put me up in a hotel in the middle of nowhere (which if I'd had to pay for it would have cost me over Au$300). - I had no assurances that they would continue to look after me if I couldn't catch the next plane.

This meant there was nothing to do - though by this time I was so stressed I just wanted to curl up in a ball. I had three meals at the hotel, the first two weren't anything to sneeze at and by the third (breakfast) I was so wired I couldn't swallow solid food...and it was really nice too.

I went back to the airport and hung around waiting for the check-in to open....stay tuned for more.