Thursday, May 29, 2014

Sleeping With Strangers - or Not

Did I grab your attention with my mildly salacious title?  We're in Vienna, where it's raining.  I've been awake for a very long time.  We flew business class on Austria Airlines.  They have updated their seats to the new flat sleeping pods.  Jim and I were unable to sit next to each other, so I was literally sleeping next to a stranger.  Except, of course, for the fact that I was unable to sleep.  It's 4 hours Seattle to Toronto, and then another 8 from Toronto to Vienna.  I dropped off to sleep, but then something woke me up and I was done for. 
The flight was tedious.  When we checked in to Seattle, the Canada Air gate agent said he could not give us a boarding pass for the second leg of the flight.  This is odd, we've never had a code share tell us that.  When we arrived in Toronto, we were forced to clear customs, rescreen at security, and then go to the check in counter to get boarding passes.  There we discovered that our checked luggage was not in their system.  We had time to deal with it, but code shares should not make you roam the airport trying to get a boarding pass. If done correctly, we never would have left the secure part of the airport.
When we arrived at our gate, we discovered a terrible line in front of the two gate agents.  Apparently our flight was seriously overbooked  In retrospect, we might have spent less time roaming the airport than standing in the line for a boarding pass.  It just annoys me; this is poorly written ticketing software and the airlines should fix it.
On the bright side, our two suitcases did arrive in Vienna, and were the first two bags off the plane.


We're at the Hotel Boltzmann.  We're across from the University of Vienna.  We're here because this is where the REI tour starts and we didn't want to have to relocate.  It's an ok room, it's small, but most hotel rooms in Europe are small.
Today was some sort of national holiday and just about everything was closed.  We did find a pizza place that was open, so we have pizza and salad for dinner.  Things could be worse, we could be eating energy bars and Cliff blocks.
We forgot to bring washcloths and a 3 way power tap for the voltage converter.  The toothbrushes and the razor will have to be charged serially instead of in parallel.  Note to self for future packing.  I do not understand why hotels here don't have washcloths.  What is up with that?
We're pretty tired, I am totally rummy since I didn't sleep.  One has to remember that there is always an ebb and flow to long trips, and they usually start at low ebb until one is firmly in the new time zone.

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