Dear Readers:
This is some trek we are on to get to Budapest. It was going to be long to begin with. American Airlines (as well as the other airlines) is making it harder and harder to use your frequent flyer miles. So we are flying to Budapest via Madrid with a 7 hour lay over. Bad enough you say. But then there´s an air controllers´ strike (slow down I guess) in France which is affecting flights throughout Europe. So yesterday our 6 PM flight to Madrid didn´t leave till 9 PM. At that point we didn´t know about the strike and figured our lay over in Madrid had basically been cut in half so we weren´t too pissed off yet. We were flying on Iberia which had the biggest business class section I´ve ever seen (and no first class section). Every seat turned into a sleeper bed. So after having stuffed ourselves in the British Airlines lounge prior to getting on the plane (American Airlines, BA, Iberia and Malev-among others-are partners and share lounges in certain countries), we basically just slept. We got to Madrid at around 9:30 AM local time (3:30 AM in our bodies) and attempted to find Malev Airlines-the Hungarian airline for the next lap of our journey. Eventually we found where they would be ´´later on´´; they share a counter or two for check-in (which we were not able to do at Iberia at JFK) with Iberia. First we were told they would be there at 11 AM. We couldn´t go to the lounge because we didn´t have boarding passes. When we returned promptly at 11 AM, we were told they would be there ´´maybe in 30 minutes, maybe in an hour´´´! They actually showed at 11:20 but wouldn´t talk to us till 11:30! At that point we learned about the strike. So of course this flight is delayed too; instead of leaving at 2:20, it´s now scheduled for 4:45. At least at this point we had boarding passes and got to the BA lounge; not nearly as nice as last night´s lounge but it did have a couple of couches to stretch out on and sleep some more. So that´s been our adventure so far. I´m hopeful tomorrow will provide adventures of a different sort!
Irene
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