morning fog with a chance of afternoon furies

fu-ries (fyoor'ees), n., pl. 1. unrestrained or violent anger, rage, passion, or the like. 2. a fierce and violent person, esp. a woman.

As many of you already know, we just took our first trip back to the United States. Our kids had a 2 week break from school and we thought it would be good to replenish our sunshine canteens in preparation for the coming winter. We knew that the Geneva-London-Los Angeles flights were going to be brutal but we thought we were ready for it.

We started early on a Saturday morning and should have known things were going to be a bit rocky when we found the Long Term/Inexpensive (P51) parking lot full at 7:43 am. Fortunately there were still about 65 spots left in the Short Term/Very Expensive (P1) parking. **Tangent** The Geneva airport has a handy feature where you can go online and see how many parking stalls are available before you arrive. As I write this there are 109 places available in Long Term. Feel free to try it out for your self: http://www.gva.ch/DesktopDefault.aspx/tabid-65

After checking in and dropping off our lugage we stopped by a bakery and enjoyed some pastries. Like the rest of us, Henry has come to love chocolate breads and croissants. Can you blame him?

So do Alex and Ruby

Long story short, we sat on the plane without moving for nearly two hours because of infamous London fog and then flew 7 circles above Big Ben until we could land at Heathrow. By the time we deplaned at the "supposed-to-be-fantastic" Terminal 5, our LAX flight was 45 minutes gone. Needless to say we were disapointed but we knew that the 3rd daily LAX flight would be leaving in about 3 hours and so we didn't give up. That is until we saw this:

Because we missed our connecting flight we couldn't go directly to the gate. Instead we had to wait with 2,000 other people who had also just missed their flights all queued up in this little corridor (note: the bottom picture was taken on our return trip when Christina actually had her wits about her):
To put it into perspective, Christina and the kids were starving, sweating and overwhelmed by the chaos so they stood in a far corner crying while I stood in the line that moved a whole 10 feet in 51 minutes. When I realized that the last LAX flight of the day was now leaving in 2 hours instead of 3 and I wouldn't be talking to anyone who could help us get to California for at least 3 hours, I decided to cut my loses. I got out of line, we cleared customs and headed for the check-in desk at the front of the airport.

I wouldn't say the idea back-fired on us because it was no longer body-to-body chaos and Christina found some Pringles and carmel popcorn to help us eat away our sorrows, but the line was already over two hours long. After a few minutes of going nowhere, I approached the line police and told them I wanted to see a manager. The kids hadn't eaten real food for over 7 hours, we were disapointed because we knew we were having a London sleepover and wouldn't make it to California until Sunday night and we needed to find some more diapers.


WHAT??????

We all know that flight delays and cancellations are a part of air travel, but I think BA/Heathrow should have been a bit more organized and prepared to handle 2,000 stranded passengers.

Again, long story short. As the morning fog lead to afternoon furies and Christina passionately made it clear that she was not going to stand in line for another minute and she was going to get on a flight or else, I went to the front of another line and found out that my Gold frequent flyer status does mean something. We found out the only way to leave the airport that day was to fly a red-eye to JFK and spend 4 more hours on a layover. Obviously we chose the better part and found ourselves on a shuttle to the Heathrow Renaissance Airport Hotel about 45 minutes later.

On the shuttle to the hotel 9 hours after we left home and only 1.5 hours closer to our destination. Note: at this point Heny was almost completely converted to a liquid diet and had not slept all day.
If only our room looked this nice.

Christina letting people in California know not to expect us for dinner. Can you see her enthusiasm? Henry is pretty happy though.

Things worked out fine at the hotel although dinner didn't start until 6 pm (7 our time) and the kids had not eaten a meal since breakfast at 6:30 am that morning. Luckily, we took the first flight out the next morning. The novelty of the toys/books/projects in their backpacks had completely worn off long before we boarded the 10 hour flight to LA so we had to stop and buy additional bribery items.

Alex and his airplane set

When it was all said and done, we spent 9 hours of our lives in or trying to get out of Heathrow's Terminal 5. I think it is safe to say that next time we will fly through Zurich.