In Transit: Shanghai to Paris
Monday 22nd November circa 3:00am (Beijing time): Well, we are officially on our way now. As I write this we are currently flying over central Asia, a ways north above Afghanistan and winging our ay towards Paris. The ironic thing is that we weren’t meant to land in France at all, and it’s a long story.
Holiday 2010 2.0 started innocently enough. The initial planning stages went off without incident, and in no time we had our main itinerary booked. There was trouble booking our flights, which should have tipped me off to the havoc which awaited us.
How it began
eDreams.com put a block on my transaction (undoubtedly due to the origin of my IP Address) and would not process the payment unless I scanned my passport and both sides of my credit card and emailed the scans to them. Naturally, I declined to do this and instead booked my flights directly with the airline.
Now, some disclosure – we are going on a 12 night cruise. You’ll understand why I’ve had to make this disclosure in due course.
Arriving to two days ago.. at 4:45am (Beijing time) I receive an email from the cruise company indicating that one of our cruise shore tours had been cancelled (and refunded accordingly). I’m not going to go into the reasons why this happened other than to say that the tour operator reported that the tour would not return in time for the ship’s sailing (so why not shorten the itinerary?!?!).
Without giving away too much about our eventual destination, it’s safe to say I was livid (this particular tour was the basis of our entire cruise). I had less than two days to try and locate an alternative tour plan before we left for Shanghai to fly out.
Eventually, I booked an alternate tour however I had concerns about the length of that tour and missing our ship’s departure, so (same day) I cancelled. The cancellation was approved, the charge never hit my credit card – phew.
Eventually I made alternate plans, but it necessitates cancelling our only other shore tour. So now I have to try and get some (more) money back. Leading us to tonight…
Transit Altercations
We were due to fly KLM from Shanghai via Amsterdam to our eventual destination. When I checked in, I opted to pay a little extra and upgrade to Business Class. When we arrived at the airport this evening, there was a large slow moving queue. When we finally got to the baggage drop, we found out why – the plane was being held at Pudong for three hours for a ‘Technical Check’, delaying departure until 3 AM.
Sure enough, this would have us miss our connecting flight in Amsterdam. We are given two choices: switch to the on-time Air France flight to Paris (with a connection to our destination) or wait until 3 AM and fly to Amsterdam where all flights to our destination were full. The catch: we have to fly Economy, and – wait for it – we have to chase a refund for the upgrade. Thus far, the original upgrade transaction hasn’t hit my credit card, so with luck I won’t need to hassle the airline for a refund.
So now we’re bound for Paris in coach. Of course the flight is full, it’s an overnight 12 hour flight and we’re sharing a row with a newborn baby. My suit bag is crammed into an overhead bin and Toni is wedged between a somewhat overweight Chinese man and I, what a great start to the holiday, huh?
I’ve got to say though that KLM were very sympathetic and really did their best to help us to make our destination on time. They gave us the options they could provide and would have even paid accommodation for us overnight. We opted the Air France route to play it safe, but full marks to the KLM team, they obviously had a plane load of disgruntled passengers to deal with, but I thought they were very accommodating under the circumstances.
Even Netbooks get the blues
Now, to top it all off, the new Netbook we bought has a bug in the bloody display adapter, and the display won’t dim (it stays at full brightness, and has an LED screen) – which is super annoying when the cabin is dimmed and the people around me are trying to sleep. I’ve rolled the driver back to the default VGA adapter just so the display stays dimmed.
…and that’s where we are right now at 4:45am Beijing time. Almost five hours into a twelve hour flight.. What else is going to go wrong (do I want to find out)?
Monday 22nd November circa 11:45am (Beijing time):
Now it is around an hour or so to landing in Paris. The flight has been a mixed success; although we are indebted to Air France for providing an alternate service there are some aspects to the flight which could use improvement. On one hand (the plus side), the staff were efficient and professional, the flight appears to be on time and the bathrooms have been maintained throughout the flight.
However, the seat I was assigned has been possibly one of the most uncomfortable I’ve ever been trapped in before, the food I ate was average at best (although the meal I missed was apparently quite nice). The plane really seemed to be designed by someone who hated the human body – the other chairs around me don’t look any more comfortable, and the modern features (LCD screens) look tacked on.
The baby screamed for about a third of the flight on and off. I sincerely don’t understand why planes don’t have a family/child allocation area so that they are all grouped together and away from other passengers – especially on long haul, overnight, flights.
An Update from Paris
Well, we are sitting at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, France. A Coke and Cappuccino cost over 7 Euros – wow expensive! – welcome to Europe. The Public WiFi is also not free, but they do provide free 10 minutes of access (which I have exceeded evidently downloading a display driver for the Netbook – which didn’t fix the problem). Our flight to Barcelona boards in about ten minutes, and we’ll arrive in Spain around 9 am.
Hopefully things improve once we arrive in the land of Gaudi..
An Update from Barcelona, Spain
We’ve made it safely to Barcelona, without any further incidents. We caught the bus from the airport right into the city centre at Catalanya (pictured) and walked a few blocks to our hotel for the evening. We’re about to head out for lunch and some sightseeing before dinner tonight.
Tomorrow we are due to join the Brilliance of the Seas and embark upon a twelve night cruise around the eastern and western Mediterranean Sea.
More soon.