Our vacation to Europe was amazing and it never would have happened without the support of our family. Thank you so much! For 10 days BJ and I traveled through France and Germany, experiencing new cultures, foods, people, places, languages, and of course, great wine! We took almost 500 pictures (thanks to the digital age--our trip to Spain 5 years ago resulted in about 6 rolls of film) and we'll post the highlights soon.
You may have already heard the particulars of our trip but I'm going to run through the highlights here, from my perspective. I may have BJ "guest blog" here with his insights.
In Providence (Thursday afternoon) we decided to take a bump off our original flight because United had overbooked the flight. The benefits: two free plane tickets (we'll be using those to come to Colorado this summer, thank you very much!) and bumps to "Economy Plus" (more leg room). The downsides: our baggage was already on the original flight and we'd be getting into Frankfurt 4 hours later than originally planned. So we flew to Chicago while our luggage went to D.C. Therein lay the problem. We found out (in Chicago) that our bags wouldn't be going to Frankfurt without us, so they were taken off the plane in D.C. We had to scramble for 45 minutes to get something worked out in Chicago before we left to make sure that our bags got on the next flight out of D.C. The gate person in Chicago really helped us out--we were hoping that after the stress with the bags he'd give us a voucher for a drink on the plane. Instead he said, "You can have all the drinks you want" and led us to seats in Business Class! We enjoyed that bump immensely. We got a three course meal, champagne and wine, and breakfast in the morning. We had insane amounts of legroom--we could stretch our chairs out almost flat. I also discovered that the movie "Twilight" was playing, so BJ lost me for about an hour! I knew we were never going to travel in that much luxury again so we tried to enjoy it.
Once we landed in Frankfurt we worked with three different United baggage and ticket counter people to find out where our bags were. The most stressful point was when a woman checking in the computer said "These three bags went to Chicago to accompany the passengers." Oh crap, we thought. Now we're never going to get out of here! We were anxious to start our vacation. Luckily we didn't have reservations anywhere for Friday night so we weren't planning on leaving Frankfurt without our luggage. We were hoping that United would find us a hotel room or a place to stay until our bags arrived. Before we left the ticket counter one of the agents gave us a bump for the flight back, wishing us good luck for our third trip down to baggage claim to look for our bags.
The third time's a charm! The bags were in fact on the correct flight and had been taken off the carousel and put in storage since we weren't there to claim them. All in all, the decision to take the bump way back in Providence resulted in two free plane tickets, two bumps to business class, and an overall delay of 6 hours into our vacation.
The last bump came at the rental car place. The person helping us noticed our Colorado driver's licenses. He said that he spent 8 years in Widefield while his dad was in the army. What a small world! He and BJ talked about wrestling teams and south side Springs schools and the guy gave us a bump to a Mercedes and a 10% discount on our bill.
Ahhhh--cruising down the autobahn in a Mercedes, rested from a flight in Business Class, a week with no plans other than touring, eating, and drinking French wine--we were ready to settle into our vacation.
