We got on the road on Tuesday at 8am (after being ready 45
minutes early – this crew is awesome). Goodbyes
were a bit tough for me, it’ll be interesting to be living in an environment
now where we are saying goodbye all the time! Anyway, about 30 minutes into the
drive, we got a call saying that our flight to Conakry was cancelled, and we
needed to turn around and head back to
the IOC. We talked about it and decided as a group we’d rather spend the extra
night in Brussels, even if we had to pay for hotel rooms ourselves… no one
wanted to go backwards, we want to keep moving forward! So our travel agent said she would try to get
us some cheap hotel rooms, and we kept on going. The only issue was potentially
our South Africa, Maryke, didn’t have a visa for Belgium and she was the only
one of us that would need one. (US/Canada and EU countries don’t need visas). We got to the airport and stood around for
awhile as the Brussels airlines representatives tried to find our tickets, and
unfortunately, Maryke was denied entry. Most of us had already gone through
security and had our tickets, so we continued on and Maryke was rebooked for
the following day.
We boarded our flight to Newark and all settled in, it
looked like we were actually going to take off about twenty minutes early which
was great, because we only had 70 minutes in Newark and the potential was there
to have to change terminals, which would be a LONG walk. We sat at the jet way
for a good half hour before they came over the loudspeaker announcing there’s a
problem with the fuel lines (or something) and we all needed to deplane.
Awesome. The Brussels airlines folks
were super nice, and told us we would likely be rebooked on a flight to Chicago
then on to Brussels, arriving about an hour after we were originally supposed
to land. Okay, no problem, right? So we
settled in to wait for the Chicago flight set to depart about two hours later.
Then the lady came on the loudspeaker and said we’re ready
to go to Newark, they fixed the problem, and she told us we should still get
there in time. Okay! So we piled back on the plane, but still sat on the jet way
for a bit waiting for them to get our luggage back on, as they had pulled ours
for the Chicago flight already. Once we
were finally airborne, we figured out we’d be landing at just about the same
time that we were supposed to depart for Brussels, so hoped they would hold the
plane for us, or the pilot could make up some time in the air (which he
did).
The flight was uneventful until the end. We’re literally a
hundred feet from the end of the runway and the pilot pulls up and guns the
engines – there was a lady stuck in the lavatory and we couldn’t land. I don’t want to speculate on what happened
but it wasn’t a bad thing, she was elderly (though a police officer met our
plan e), we had to circle around and took up valuable time. We were watching
the time, and praying we didn’t have to run to a completely different terminal
to catch our Brussels flight. As it
turned out, we only had to go down about four or five gates! Awesome. So we piled
in our new (big – 777) plane, and then we had seat issues….
They held the flight for us, but had already reseated some
people into our assigned seats! So
several of us had to look around and sit wherever there was space.
Unfortunately, several of the passengers were less than friendly about the
whole situation. Oh, and the other thing
– one of our team had a seat assignment in row J – THERE IS NO ROW J in a
777! Crazy, huh? But finally, we all had seats, and settled in….
and waited… and waited…. For our bags to be loaded. We sat on the jet way again
for another hour, after being worried about making the flight. Ah, well!
Finally we took off and the flight was a pretty standard ocean crossing. The food was really good, I didn’t sleep at all, but it is what it is. Then, Brussels! All of our bags made it, which was huge considering how many times they changed hands! Brussels was awesome. Our flight to Africa was uneventful, very long, with a stop in Banjul before Conakry, but then we made it through customs with no problems, all of our bags made it, and we settled into our accommodations. I’ll write a separate blog post about that. For now, here’s some photos of Brussels, thanks to Suzanne. Love to all!
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| Where are we? |
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| We enjoyed cute little cafes... |
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| Beautiful cathedral, we got to go inside... |
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| In the royal gardens... |
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