Allison's Wonderland

Stress. This is what happens when I fly. I become this word and a whole lot more when it comes to airports and flying. I love to travel, but my curse is I hate to fly. I become a nervous wreck and I get snippy at everyone. You can ask some of my previous travel buddies. :)

London Heathrow - 11-2-2011
What can I say about London Heathrow? Well for an airport its pretty nice. All the shops you could ask for. The security sucks though. I guess I should've emptied all my liquids into a nice little baggy, but that's too much work. So I had to wait double the time for this old little British woman to search through my purse that needs a serious cleaning out. Oh well. Now I'm sitting here in the Terminal bored and ready to board. My gate hasn't shown up which is weird. I thought it would've by now since it is an hour before departure, but whatever. :( When I was on the plane coming to London this woman was getting her bag out of the overhead compartment and farted right in my face. There is nothing worse than stranger farts in your face. Like seriously...that' gross. If you're going to fart at least do it while you're sitting in your seat. Not in some innocent bystander's face. Yuck. Anyway, I guess I'm signing off. I need to check the screens again and see if my flight is flying.

The Fiasco
Okay, so you know how I said I was sitting in the airport waiting for my flight to go? Well I'm an idiot. London is a little confusing if you don't pay attention to signs very well. I'm sitting in Terminal 4 waiting for my flight at gate 23. The sign says Allitalia to Milan Linate at 09:35. My ticket says BA Milan Linate at 9:30. Well I didn't think anything of the time, because a lot of times they get that messed up on the ticket that you previously get before your destination airport & I thought BA was just a couple of letters. I had a bad feeling about something going wrong at Heathrow. I wait for everyone else to board in front of me as I don't understand while everyone herds up at the gate when there's perfectly good seats right by. People are just so eager to board the plane. So I get up to the front and instead of the light turning green for me to go after the nice Italian steward scans my ticket, it turns red. He then proceeds to tell me that I'm flying with British Airways and that I need to go to Terminal 5. I guess that's what the "BA" stood for. Do you know how long it took me to get to terminal 4? Seriously?!? And guess what time it is? 09:20. My flight leaves in 10 minutes. UGH! So I run, and I run hard. I was one of THOSE people in the airport. Thankfully I did not have to wait for the bus to take me to terminal 5. It was sitting there waiting for me. I met a nice guy named Roy from Houston who was trying to get my mind off of being late, but it was the only thing I could think about. I get to terminal 5 and start to run. They even let me go through the fast Track, but to no avail. My plane had left. It was now 09:35 AM. Which is about 2:00 in the morning at home. I was tired and all I wanted to do was cry. Like seriously. I went to the reservation counter and talked to the nicest British man that ever lived. He rescheduled me to the 11:50 flight with no charge. I guess in most cases where it's the customer's fault they make them pay a transfer fee. He said if anyone asks me why I missed it, one of the employees told me the wrong place to go.

After the nice man was super nice, I had to go through the terrible security yet again. This woman came up to me and was like, “Love are you traveling alone?” I said yes, and she was like, “Oh well then follow me. You can go through the fast security just for women.” Okay so that was a lie...It was not fast. It was a new training thing that the airport is doing. UGH! I was a little angry. Since I already had been through it once. But whatever...My next big challenge was how to let Simona know I missed my flight. I try the international calling machine. I don't know how to dial or even where to begin, so I give up. Next, I try connecting to the internet at the airport. My computer was being screwy so I couldn't connect. Plus it cost like 10 pounds which is about 15 euros which is about 20 bucks. So umm...no. I have to bite the bullet and ask someone. Luckily the reservations counter had no one in line and a nice little old British lady asks if I need help. By the way, British Airways is absolutely wonderful. Everyone is super nice. I get a hold of Simona and tell her. I feel awful! They had to wait an extra 3 hours at the airport. Anyway, I got on the plane...oh and about that the plane was delayed and extra 40 minutes due to fog in Amsterdam. Just another little road block . . .