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Tuesday, November 15

Home sweet home

We had a fabulous time in New Orleans.  When we have pictures off the camera, I'll post about the trip.  It was a great week full of museums, alcohol, seafood, alcohol, and walking (not always in a straight line).

Our flight home was suppose to be yesterday giving me today to unwind, do a little laundry and get some groceries.  The plane, however, was not as inclined to function.  There was a mechanical issue, a part broke that required two mechanics to come down from Canada on a Lear jet last night to fix it.  So we got an extra night in Louisiana at the airport Ramada courtesy of Air Canada. 

Events like this typically bring out the best and worst of people.  From my perspective, I don't want to fly on a broken plane.  There was apparently a few conventions going on that were flying home on Monday so there were no options to get an entire plane load of people home yesterday on alternate flights.  As soon as they said they would comp a hotel, I really didn't care.  The hotel is not used to a plane full of people suddenly needing a shuttle to the hotel, nor checking in at once, there was a lot of confusion from Air Canada so every step did feel like pulling teeth to get what you needed, but eventually it all fell into place. 

We met some lovely people.  We got fed up waiting for the 4th trip from the little shuttle and split a cab with Jason who is originally from Calgary but presently lives in Manchester.  We met another couple from Winnipeg and the 5 of us ended up having dinner together.  There was a gentleman who lives in Ottawa but was originally from Russia who we took the shuttle with this morning and talked while waiting the hour or so for Air Canada to check us in (there was some serious staff/technology issues going on).  But the time went quickly while we chatted.  He was kind enough yesterday to try and help someone who was from the Ukraine and struggling to understand what was going on.  After 8 months at sea, he was heading home, but his American employer used a Greek travel company who booked 10 people on a trip through Canada and he was the only one with a visa that would let him do that, so he was isolated and confused.  And paranoid as he thought this was the government tracking him down.  Then he fondled the wait staff in the restaurant and had a visit from the local police.  I am hoping he managed to sort things out with the police, he wasn't on my plane at 1:15 nor the 12:35 plane, but we know he checked out at 8am. 

Now we are finally home, Mr. Lina is doing his laundry so he has jeans for work tomorrow (there are down sides to casual offices, very little work appropriate clothing went with me on the trip) and I think I'm going to have a bath and head to bed.  It's been a long two days of drama, airports and hotels.

2 comments:

  1. OH MAN. I'm tired, just reading this. Sorry to hear that you had to struggle with the Air Canada staff. Sometimes, I'm tempted to leap over the desk and try to do those peoples' jobs for them -- I'm convinced I'd do it better?? I bet you're glad to be home in any case!

    You meet the strangest people traveling, LOL. I haven't had any extreme adventures like that -- the worst was when the airport lost our luggage when we were heading to a WEDDING. I was standing up at the wedding to recite a poem for my friend! We managed to get up in the morning and find something semi-wedding appropriate at Walmart (of all places). It made for a good story at the reception, anyway!

    I'm eager to see the photos of New Orleans when you get them up!

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  2. Part of the struggle is that AC is affiliated with United, but for an issue like this, we really needed someone to step up and be Air Canada. It took a while to figure out who was going to do that.

    I have left the outfit I intended to wear to a wedding behind, but it was a pretty casual wedding and fortunately I like wearing skirts so I made do. Finding something appropriate at WalMart would have been tough - time crunch, hoping it fits... As you say, it's something to talk about.

    I am still feeling tired. I was hoping to do something - anything like laundry, sewing, blogging, groceries - last night but the most I could manage was reading other peoples blogs and returning a few emails. Sigh, I have to do laundry tonight, or I have to sew some new panties. ;)

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Thanks for your comments, I love to have a two way conversation. I seem to be getting a lot of spam from anonymous users and am turning off the ability to comment that way. I really would like to hear from you so if you do want to add your two cents without an OpenId, email me at seraphinalina at gmail dot com.