The End is in Sight!

London, August 16, 09:00

We’re at a London hotel now, booked onto a flight to Amsterdam this afternoon at 16:00.

When we got to the airport, the KLM service desk was closed, but we found a KLM person and were dismayed to have her refer us to a Kenya Airways person. Our experience in Nairobi had made us very distrustful of their company. And, of course, the people in Kenya hadn’t booked us a connecting flight. Fortunately, the woman was able remarkably quickly to book us a flight and arrange a hotel and transportation for us.

So we’ve had a good night’s sleep and a shower (I’ll take another one in a minute, just for the sheer enjoyment of it!) and we’ll go back to the airport after breakfast. The Kenya Airways woman couldn’t check where our luggage is, and the luggage people had already gone home last night, so we have to go talk to them in the morning. My guess is that the luggage isn’t here, because we got on the flight quite last minute. The obvious place to send it is Amsterdam. We’ll see.

LATER: A note of irony to end the travel saga: the other group, the six who decided to go to a hotel instead of arguing their way onto another flight ended up getting home first! When the got to the hotel, they got a call from the woman who’d been “seeing what she could do” at the airport. She told them to get right back to the airport because she’d arranged for them to get on the evening flight. So they arrived in Amsterdam in the morning, while we didn’t get there until evening.

As for the luggage, one of my bags was there when we got there, and one of the others got one. Some of the other bags arrived today (Monday) and some will be delivered tomorrow.