THE ODYSSEY TO BELGIUM
The family and I left sweet hot Alabama on saturday to come back to Belgium. We get to the airport for our 1st flight from Birmingham to Atlanta 2 hours early for the 20 minute flight. My 15 month old is doing great running around having fun like always. She doesn’t know whats going on that she won’t she her grandmother, great-grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins, and her grandfather until next summer. Everything is going well even when we go through security check with 2 laptops, 2 diaper bags, 2 carry on bags full of milk, food, toys,and a stroller. I know the people in line behind us were so happy we went before them. After we take all the stuff from the x-ray scans and they test all of Lina’s liquids and I get my belt and shoes back on we head to our gate not knowing how long it would be before we get to Belgium (and get all our luggage). We get on the 1st flight, on the run way the pilot comes on and tells us that a storm is between Birmingham and Atlanta and we were going to sit on the run way for 1 hour until we knew more. 1 hour passes and the pilot says Air Traffic Control (ATC) says we have to wait 1 more hour to leave, so the pilot says we will go back to the gate until ATC tells us we can leave. 10 minutes after we are back inside they tell us we have to leave in the next 15 minutes or the pilot’s hours would expire and he can’t fly for the rest of the day. By this time my wife and I know we will miss our next flight from Atlanta to Brussels that was schedule to leave at 5:45p.m. and it’s already 5:05p.m. and we were still in Birmingham. We land in Atlanta at 5:40p.m. we decide to try to make the flight that’s scheduled to leave in 5 minutes by splitting up my wife would take the baby and I would get the bags and the stroller and run like crazy to try to make it. Needless to say we didn’t make it because when I came off the plane there stood my wife and daughter saying “we missed it”. We stand in line at the rebooking counter for over 2 hours and the nice lady gave us a choice either stay in Atlanta for the night or go to Amsterdam and then to Brussels leaving at 9:30p.m. So we decide to go to Amsterdam thinking it will be easier to go there and get picked in Amsterdam instead of taking the flight on to Brussels (thinking it was better for the baby with a double ear infection) why did we do that? That was a BIG mistake none of our 4 checked bags made it. We stood in line for over 2 hours waiting to explain what are bags looked like because the group that was in front of us (8 people total) none knew what their bags looked liked in shape, style, or color. The woman at the desk gives a paper with a number and tells us she would call once our bags got to Amsterdam and promised us that they would be there the next day. The next day only 1 bag shows up in Brussels and 2 days later the other 3 bags show up from Brussels good thing we already had clothes here. To recap that’s 22 hours of travel with 15 month old, and 72 hours until we got all our luggage