Reason #45: London Gatwick Airport
I promised you an explanation in the last post, and here it is...
I was supposed to spend the weekend in Cyprus. Flying out Friday afternoon, and then coming back Monday night. Unfortunately, it wasn't as easy as expected.
Our flight was supposed to take off at 15:20, and at around 17:20, we were told that our flight had been cancelled. The good news is that there was an alternative flight. The bad news? It was at 21:55. This meant we ended up hanging around the airport for over 8.5 hours.
So that's Friday night ruined, but hey, we have the whole weekend. Saturday, we have a wedding + dinner, which is super lovely, and we go for drinks afterwards. I don't know if you've been to Cyprus, but it seems to me that there's a limit to how much alcohol they put in one drink.
I woke up on Sunday with a banging headache, a sore throat, and the beginnings of a cold. The recovery was rough, but I finally felt human again by Monday. Oh, and Monday was the day we were due to go home.
Flight booked for 18:10, we have a lovely light lunch in the Cypriot heat, and head to the airport. We get through security, and everything is running a bit late. It's not the end of the world though, we're all on the plane by 18:45, when the pilot speaks to us over the intercom...
Unfortunately, due to the same staff shortages that got our first flight cancelled, our return flight was now to be delayed by at least two hours. This delay did end up getting dramatically shortened to just 30 minutes, but not before one of the passengers decided they no longer wanted to be part of the flight and just got off.
Unfortunately, it's not that simple; the cabin crew conducted a head count, bags were all checked, and all-in-all, it cost us around an hour and a half.
So, having departed around 2.5 hours later than scheduled, what was supposed to be a slightly late arrival ended up being a 22:50 one. By the time we got through the border control and back home, it was about 1am; I crashed and waited for my alarm to go off at 5:30 before heading to work this morning.
All-in-all, what should have been about 9 hours of travelling and 36 hours of vacationing ended up as at closer to 20 hours of travelling, 6 hours of vacationing, and 19 hours of being a mixture of hungover and unwell.
It was a multiple-coffees-before-work kind of morning.
Today was a 6/10
This post is part of a series called "The Reason". I haven't committed to living forever, but I find a reason to live for one more day every day. Read the rest of the series here.