Coming Home

Ok, so here's part two to my airline rant.

It starts out ok. We get to the Marseilles airport and checked in for our flight to Amsterdam. We're on a KLM/Air France flight. All goes pretty well, no real complaints.

We arrive in Amsterdam. My first issue was with airport layout. I know this isn't really the fault of the airline, but rather the airport. Trying to find information about our connecting flight to Philly was nearly impossible. We had to walk a significant distance before we finally found information as to where we had to go to check in for the connection. As it turned out, our two gates could not have been further apart. We literally walked the entire length of the Amsterdam Airport, I'd say it had to have been close to a mile.

While we were walking, I was trying to keep an eye out for this "Children's Corner" which we were told by a friend was supposed to be a real great place to hang out with one's kids while waiting for your flight. I was told there were signs for the place, but I never saw one on our long walk. I did grab a map, which seemed to indicate there were several of these "Children's Corners" which was a bit confusing, but I never saw any actual signs in the airport.

We finally get to the place to check in for our flight to Philly, and after waiting in line a while (because naturally US Airways had only one check in person), we're told the flight will be 3 hours delayed because it was coming in late. So now, instead of arriving in Philly at 3:30, we were not scheduled to arrive until 5:30 or possibly even 6 pm. Not happy, especially hubby, who was going to work the next day (I took it off, since I knew I'd have to unpack, do laundry and grocery shop).

At least this time, however, we got food vouchers, 15 Euros each. Good thing, since the food in the airport was quite expensive. We used two for lunch and I used the other two to buy a lot of snacks for the plane (which ended up being quite a good idea). With now 5-6 hours of wait time ahead of us, we went in search of food and the elusive Children's Corner. We walked, and walked, and walked, and hunted, and hunted and hunted. Could not find the place. We asked several airport employees. No one knew where it was, even after looking at the map. The only one we found easily was this very small play area at a McDonalds, which clearly wasn't what our friends had described.

Finally, when we were close to giving up, we found the place. It was smaller than I had been led to believe, but it did have stuff for the kids to climb on and slide down. It wasn't really meant for kids younger than 4, since none of the ladders were conducive to young kids. I had to supervise and help Elise quite closely to make sure she didn't fall when she wanted to climb up to go down a slide. The kids played around for a bit, but there were quite a few kids and it got to be too many and my kids were clearly hungry and tired and started crying. So we left and got lunch at McDonalds. I really wanted to eat somewhere else, we can get McD's anytime, but it was easy since there wasn't really a lot of other options for sit down eating places where we could have kids (and not totally annoy other people). Good thing we had the vouchers, I would have choked to paying 7 Euros for a Big Mac, Fried and Coke (costing roughly $11.00 US).

We head over to the airplane gate and go through the "extra" security for flying back to the US. There was even more due to the terrorist that flew from Amstersdam to Detroit on Christmas Day. They not only ran us and our carry-ons through the x-ray, but patted us down and unpacked our carry-ons completely (which made a mess of some of the stuff I had packed).

Then we're led into this walled off waiting area to sit for at least another hour. What annoyed me most was that even though there was a restroom in the area, it had no baby changing area. So I had to change Elise's diaper on floor. Clue to airport people. If you are going to force people into a separate area to wait for a plane for an extended amount of time, give them full amenities.

The plane finally arrives for us to board and we get on. Unlike our flight to Europe, this time we were separated 2 and 2. I took Elise, hubby took Camille. We were several rows apart. Both Cami and Elise sacked out pretty quickly. It was good that Elise slept through dinner because even though we had ordered special kids meals, only Cami got hers. The flight attendant held up the kids meals shouting "kids meals!" and while Cami got hers, who knows who got the other one, likely some enterprising parent. All I know is that when I got the flight attendant's attention, she said she had no more kids meals and Elise would have to eat the regular meal. Since she was still sleeping, I just told them to hold it.

Unfortunately, I also had no such option. I had ordered special 'low cal' meals for hubby and I, but again the flight attendant didn't know anything about those, so we had to eat the regular meals. I usually don't mind too much, although overall airplane meals have gone down in quality, but these were the absolute worst. Half the meal was still frozen, the other half overcooked. It was gross. As I said above, good thing I bought lots of snacks.

Oh, and as per usual, it seems that whenever we fly back from Europe, we get the crappy airplane with the overhead movie screens, rather than the individual screens. Always annoying since I'm usually sleeping on the flight to Europe, but wide awake on the flight home. The weren't playing any good movies, so I skipped buying the headphones and just read my book and listened to my ipod. Just as well, since Elise woke up half-way through the second movie and once she was awake, I had to give her my full attention.

My other gripe about the airplane is the usual. We were in a 3 seat row (and I still don't understand why we couldn't get our seats closer together), with Elise and I having a window/middle seat. I have the worst luck on airplanes, especially being a larger than average person. Naturally, the person behind me kneed me the entire flight (and twice actually stuck his feet between the seats), the person in front of me reclined his seat fully, and the person next to me was also larger than normal, forcing me to take up half of Elise's seat to have any measure of comfort, which was slim. Once Elise was awake, it was terrible trying to keep her in line, while being squished and bumped on nearly all sides. It was especially hard when we got extra turbulance and I had to force Elise to sit in her seat with the seat belt on. She kept wanting to stand up and watch the 20-something behind me make funny faces. Said 20-something also yakked yakked yakked the whole flight (which at least I didn't have to listen to when I had my ipod on).

At least the flight went faster than planned, so we landed just before 5:00 p.m. Got through immigration quickly and even got our luggage fast. So at least we got home safely, which means it was a good flight, even if it was probably the worst I've ever been on.