2017.06.30 – Marks arrival in Crete
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2017.07.01-
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Little did I know I’d miss my connection in Munich due to a delay out of Zurich and be stuck there for another 4+ hours…
Greece Trip
After an uneventful trip from O’Hare to Heathrow, my flight was delayed to Zurich by an hour and a half. This meant I would miss my connection in Zurich to Heraklion. They would not make any flight changes in London so I was stuck flying to Zurich and then standing in line for an hour and a half with most of the other passengers from Swiss Airlines flight 333 who had missed their connections. My flight from London to Zurich was passed pleasantly next to a lawyer from Calgary who was traveling with his wife and daughter who had recently graduated from university in Britain. We spoke about the theater, politics, traveling in Europe and Hawaii, and pipelines. He was a semi-retired lawyer in the gas and oil industry. Thankfully the lady on the other side of me, and traveling with her cat to Palermo, took the cat to the bathroom and found an aisle seat when she came back. She kept putting her hand in the travel carrier and he was scratching her like crazy. I was waiting for the cat to escape and scratch up my ankles. Yikes!
When I arrived in Zurich there was a gentleman from Britain who I had spoken with briefly while waiting in line to board our flight and who also missed his connection. Together we found the desk for transfers and stood in line for over an hour and a half waiting to reschedule our flights out of Zurich. He was flying to Leon France to watch his son Sam race in a triathlon Sunday. I guess Sam is one of the top triathletes out of Britain and has placed pretty high. There was another lady by us in line traveling from St. John, IN to Belgrade to see her dying mother. After finally getting our flights rescheduled, my luggage (that took forever to come out despite the fact that it was close to two hours from when we disembarked to when I had everything figured out for my flights to Crete) and our hotel and taxi vouchers, we shared a taxi to the Sheraton 20 minutes away. We were fortunate to be put up in that hotel. According to our taxi driver the next morning, there were a lot of people who did not make connections and had to be put up in hotels. The hotels in Zurich were booked full so some people from other flights had to go to hotels 40-50 kilometers outside of the city.
Along with hotel and taxi vouchers, we were told we could spend 20 francs on food and drinks at the hotel restaurant and bar. That really wasn’t much considering a beer is 9 francs and a burger was 29. None of us were hungry since it was after 9:30 so we had a drink and chatted. Alastair was a British army vet who had been in service for 30 years before retiring and going to work for a company that does some sort of contract work with the US government. We spoke about his days in the army, traveling to Nepal and Brunei with cadets for training, British and American politics, Gettysburg, our families, etc. Melia, the lady traveling to Belgrade, spent most of her time on her phone in contact with her husband who was worried about her missing her flight. We both had flights around the same time the next morning so shared a taxi back to the airport and said our goodbyes.
It’s always interesting the people you come in contact with while traveling. I also spoke for awhile to another Brit who worked close to where the tower recently burned down and you could see the wreckage from his office building.
Now I’m hoping for a good flight to Munich and to make my connection to Heraklion. I see the cat lady is on my flight to Munich so fingers crossed I’m not seated next to her. Can’t wait to spend some time relaxing and exploring in Greece with Markus!
2017.07.03 –
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2017.07.09 –
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