Home at Last

Our return trip threatened to undo the well-being we had achieved on vacation, but we arrived home in good spirits.

The train to Marseille airport, COVID tests, and night at the Best Western all went according to plan.  But our flight from Marseille to Amsterdam was delayed over an hour; after an attempted mad dash (during which we ran mistakenly through forbidden doors and ended up outside the secure area without having gone through passport control), we missed our connecting flight. Damn! Delta re-booked us on an alternate route -- but on the following day. 

I’ve been a fan of Delta airlines since 2018 when they so kindly handled re-bookings and refunds after a family death disrupted my travel plans. I remain a fan. For this situation, Delta gave us vouchers for food at the Schiphol airport, and for a night + dinner and breakfast at the nearby Hilton hotel. 

Although we didn’t love the delay, it worked out in a good way. For starters, the Hilton was upscale. We had a lovely room and good food, all gratis. Plus, it was the night of the Champions League fútbol final which I had thought I’d miss. But now we watched it in the hotel lobby bar, alongside two young Dutch fellows (ages 24 and 20). They both work for Hilton -- a different one -- and were hanging out at this one for a few hours to watch the match before leaving on their vacation to Malaga, Spain.   

They were personable extroverts with excellent English, interested in learning about us and describing their career plans to “grow with the company” at Hilton. Together, we watched the match (as well as the unfolding fake tickets debacle) and they bought us drinks on their employee discount.  We were stranded in Amsterdam in the best way.

We had figured we’d just mosey to the airport in the morning to catch our re-booked flight. Thank goodness we got there earlier than planned because navigating Schiphol was a fiasco.  It took us nearly 2 hours to get through security and whatnot, and that was WITHOUT having to deal with our luggage (which had been retained by the airport). Our flight was boarding by the time we got through it all. 

 

I had some worry that our negative COVID tests might have expired by then but, whew, nobody called us on that. We settled into our seats for the 10-hour flight and never looked back.

I hope to make one or two more posts for this blog series – a few more photos and, possibly, some video clips if I can figure out how to post them to you-tube and link from here.Check back if you can, and thanks for following along!