Howdy!!

Howdy!!

Well, I have got Chris settled, attended to and relaxed. So here is the final posting about our trip to Florence, Italy.

21 Oct 12

It is now 5:00am and we are up and ready to head to the airport. We didn't sleep well last night due to people were on the street talking loud and noisy, it was ridiculous. At around 2 or 3am we finally got a little shuteye. 

Fenanda picked is up at 6:00am and she delivered us to the airport. We said our good-byes to her and we thanked her for hosting our stay in Florence.  It was now 6:20am and we are heading for the ticket counter.

We were shocked to find out the airline had canceled the flight to Gatwick in London. The lady at he counter was giving us a hard time because she she said that we should have checked on the Internet or phone to see the status of the flight.  We were fuming! We explained to her that there was no Internet were we were and no phone in the B&B.

She finally got us a flight from Florence to Gatwick for this evening at 7:15pm. So guess what we did? We lived in the airport until it was time to depart Florence. We used our phone cards to call the driver that was assigned to pick us up in London. We changed our pick up time and date.

Since we missed our connecting flight in London we had to stay overnight in London. I found a hotel on my Kindle and we made the reservations for it. It has been a long day. We departed Florence at 7:15pm and we had to sit in economy which was not a good spot for Elise and her back problem. We didn't have a choice if we wanted to get out to London.

The woman at the desk told Elise to keep all of her receipts etc; and then write to Meridiana Airlines and ask for a refund of everything. That could run into a lot because since we missed our flight we had to get a hotel in London. We also had to pay more to the caregiver because he had to stay with Chris an extra day as well. What a mess!

We arrived at the Crowne Plaza in London. It is very close to Heathrow airport. We checked in and another problem came up. We are on a roll. The reservation was made for next week by the person we talked to on the phone. The manager of the Plaza   approved the mix up and we got a room at the rate we were quoted. We got the room for $79 pounds and the going price was $249 pounds per night. Yikes!!

We also had a very nice helper from British Airways. She helped us when we arrived at Gatwick. We told her about what happened and she got on the phone and she out of an economy flight back to to Phoenix. She got us back into our World Traveler Class for the Phoenix flight home. It gives you way more leg room and it is  better for Elise. Thank goodness their are some good people still around. 

We need to eat something so we ate a pub within the Plaza and the food was very good along with the beers. We went back up our room to sleep so we could catch the shuttle to the airport in the morning.

Oops, this not the final posting of our trip. I will post about what went on on the 22nd of October, because we are still in London.