It's early tuesday morning, I've been in London for all of 3 days, but it feels like it's been an eternity already. Here's what happened...
After an early scare with my luggage (my suitcase and carry-on had a combined excessive weight of 50lbs over the allowance... whoops! But everything worked out), it looked like that my flight to London was going to be seemless. Up until boarding time, there were no indications that my Zoom Airline flight was getting delayed whatsoever. Then an announcement was made that the flight will be delayed for an hour.
No big deal.
The hour passes, the flight gets delayed again for another hour. I've flown with budget airlines before, so I didn't mind the delays since it's a case of "you get what you pay for". I start to get hungry and scour the airport for something affordable to eat. As I paid for my apple tunover (the money litterally had just left my hand), another announcement was made and our flight was GROUNDED.
Oh HELLS no.
A mad dash to the service counter followed, and the crowd which waited so patiently has now transformed into an angry mob. We were given a choice of a taxi chit to go home or a free stay at a nearby hotel room. I opted for the hotel room (didn't want to wake the folks up... plus our goodbyes at the airport would seem so counter-productive), and proceeded to walk with the herd outside to wait for the shuttle to take us there. The hotel was clearly not ready for this as only a single shuttle was dispatched to recieve us Zoomed refugees, which resulted in a 25 minute wait outside the bitter cold for yours truly. All this time, I txt'd and called a concerned and disappointed Jules in England to update her. When I finally get to the hotel, there was already a HUGE lineup for hotel rooms. I mean 300 people worth of a lineup.
Yikes.
Luckily, it would appear that only good people with a sense of humour flew budget airlines. The once stressed out line of people quickly became single serving friends (thanks Fight Club), and it seemed that we collectively chose to laugh then to cry about this ordeal. I even managed to help out these friendly strangers when I combined my laptop and the hotel's wi-fi into a free Skype service to those who needed to call the UK to inform them of the delay. (One person says of me: "I want this guy on my team if I'm ever on Survivor!"). 3 hours, I finally get a room. I sleep for 3 hours, get my freebie breakfast, and off to London I went once again.
Nice way to begin my trip, eh?
