Sunday, December 25, 2016

Bloody Italians

 UPDATE - for some reason blogger has decided to date this post 25th December - most odd....

We've all heard tales of how striking French air traffic controllers can bring about chaos. Well yesterday the Italians decided to give it a try.

Thursday saw us fly from Newcastle to Heathrow with no trouble whatever. On Friday we set off from our Heathrow hotel at the unearthly hour of six am. Travelling with a wheelchair you learn to leave plenty of time.

The flight to Copenhagen was scheduled for 9:50 but sometime around 7:30 we heard that it was cancelled. Aircraft stranded in Italy. So we were booked on a hastily chartered flight leaving at 12:50 arriving at about 15:30.

Now it gets interesting. By being early in the queue I got the last available business class seats. However the flight was put back to 14:30, arriving at 17:15 local time. Fifteen minutes AFTER the ship sails. Not good. Fortunately there were twenty of us in the same predicament, and this made up about fifteen percent of the ship, so they delayed sailing to nine pm. Just as well as we finally got in the air five and a half hours late.

We arrived at the ship around 7pm, exhausted both mentally and physically. We missed the safety lecture and the welcome party, but made dinner so all was not lost.

And as an added bonus, our butler unpacked our suitcases while we ate. Not a thing we normally do, bur most welcome.

So where are we now. We're at sea somewhere in the gap between Denmark and Norway, heading into the north sea. Here is todays veranda view. Not very exciting I'm afraid.





We're about an hour or so away from a storm. the wind is at present about 71 kph though the ship is quite stable. It's the Captains welcome reception tonight. black tie and all that  so here's hoping it stays reasonably calm.

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