Travel Woes

I should have taken it as a sign.  When I received the e-mail from Air France about online check in, I clicked on the link and was redirected to its "partner" - Delta - for this was a codeshare flight.  Only then I learned that the seat I had chosen three months ago was not mine, and Delta had assigned me a window seat in the last row of the plane.  After an hour on the phone with Air France, I was told that they did not control the seating (despite my having booked months ago and having dealt exclusively with Air France).  Basically, tough luck.

I should not have been encouraged by the fact that at the airport I was able to switch seats to . . . .  You guessed it - the original seat that I had chosen.  That was the last time I was satisfied with a travel detail on this trip so far and we are approaching 48 hours into it.

The flight arrived late to Paris.  We ran to the connecting flight, but it left several minutes before we got there.  Do you think that Air France knew that there were 4 passengers connecting to catch the one flight to Ljubljana per day?  Did they care?  Obviously not.  The next hour or so was spent learning our fate and dealing with the delightful customer service people at Air France.  Long story short, rebooked through Zurich to Ljublana, spending many hours waiting in both CDG and Zurich airports.  And we arrived after 10 o'clock in Ljubljana, about 24 hours after we had left Ed Black's house on the way to Logan Airport.

What are the odds that our luggage followed us?  You guessed it again - zero.  After spending another 30 minutes with Tina from Adria Airways (who was quite nice), we had our reports filed and off we sent to the hotel, with only the clothes on our back and what we had in our backpacks.

So far the first thing I wanted to do on the trip - sightseeing in Ljubljana and dinner in town - well, scratch them off the list.

I will spare you the complete story.  We are at our first stop, we still have no bags, although there is a chance that are bikes are on a plane arriving from Zurich tonight at 6 pm and maybe there will be 2 of our 4 suitcases with them.  One other suitcase is still in Paris (they think) and they don't know where Marko's bag is.  But I doubt they have a clue where any of them are, and I'll believe them when I see them.

The second thing on the list was a ride today in Rimske Toplice - to get the kinks out and warm up the legs.  Scratch that off the list as well (although it did thunderstorm, so maybe I should look at the bright side).

We have heard now that 3 of the bikes are in Ljubljana and are "on their way" to the hotel where we are staying.  Suitcases are another story, although there is a possibility that one or more will arrive on the last flight in from Zurich tonight.  We probably won't know until we wake up in the morning, so it may be like Christmas.

I'm too tired even to talk about what a beautiful country Slovenia is and how nice the people are.  All that is true.  I am hoping that I get my luggage situation squared away to be able to report on it.