Cruise?????

On May 9, we started a journey that was to take us to Venice, Italy to start an amazing Mediterranean cruise with Jim's parents, his sister Jill and her husband, Jeff. It's amazing what a little bit of bad weather can do to thwart such grand plans. Though the journey was not at all what we expected, it was a journey to remember none the less. Well, maybe we will just try to forget it.

Jim's parents came to Richland on the 8th so that we could fly out of Pasco early Friday morning. We left bright and early on Friday the 9th at 6:00 a.m. Jim's dad started the day off having security do an extra check with the "wand" before we got on the plane.

We arrived in Denver at 9:00 a.m. and our connection flight to Philadelphia was to leave at 10:13 a.m. When we got off the plane and were looking for the gate our plane would be leaving from, we noticed that our plane was delayed 1 hour. This wasn't a big deal since we had a 2 1/2 hour layover in Philadelphia and would still have time to make our connection there to Venice. After the hour delay was almost up, we looked at the board again and realized they were delaying the flight another hour. At this point, Jim got on the phone and tried to find out if there were any other flights leaving sooner that we could get on. He found one that was in another terminal in the Denver airport that was leaving very soon. We had to book it over to the other terminal to see if we could catch this flight. As we were running to get there, we saw the plane pull away from the gate and head for the runway. We just didn't have enough time. Apparently, there was some pretty bad weather going on in Philadelphia and planes were being delayed and cancelled all day long. Our only option at this point was to get on our original flight and hope that they would delay the flight to Venice by a couple hours. When we got back to our original gate, the flight had been delayed another 45 minutes totalling an almost 3 hour delay. We were hoping for a miracle.

We made it to Philadelphia finally, 3 hours later than expected, and our plane to Venice was not delayed and left without us. Jim's sister and brother-in-law had made it on time and were on the plane without us. So, we decided we needed to find out if there were any other flights that could get us to Venice in time to board the boat the next day at 4 p.m. A 6 hour time difference between the east coast and Venice does not make this an easy task. Jim, bless his heart, did a lot of searching for a flight that would help us get close. After about 3 hours of running to catch this flight or that and trying to work out some way to get to our cruise ship, we decided that it was time to just turn around and go home. When the International terminal in a major airport doesn't even know what or where the country Croatia is, you know you've got a problem.

Here we are after we made the decision to get a flight back home the next day. We were pretty tired and defeated.

We worked with the US Airways customer service people for almost 2 hours to get us a hotel room and some food vouchers and then decided we should see if they had our checked luggage downstairs. Jim went back and forth from the US Airways and United baggage counters 4 times with each of them saying the other had our luggage before someone finally just helped him file a claim to just make sure we got our luggage sent home to us as soon as possible. Jim was the one handling all of this and was amazingly calm with all of the people in the Philadelphia airport who weren't all that helpful.

On a bright note, we did get this fabulous picture of me with the Liberty Bell. Oh, wait. It's in the Philadelphia airport and it's made out of Legos. I guess I'll have to see the original another time.

Our flight was to leave on Saturday morning at 10:00 am, so we got to the airport at about 7:30 am to get checked in and get our boarding passes. While we were waiting in line, Jim's mother said she felt like she was going to faint and didn't have any strength in her legs. Jim helped her get over to some chairs to sit down and the airport staff called an ambulance. When the paramedics got there, they took her blood pressure and found that it was 190. They felt that it was too high and suggested that she go to the hospital and get checked out to make sure she was okay. So, we all piled into an ambulance and headed for the hospital, carry-0n luggage and all. I was able to sit up front and talk with one of the paramedics who told me a little bit about Philly. Both paramedics were so nice to us and trying to do whatever they could to help us out. We spent about 5 hours at the hospital where some tests were run that did not find anything serious wrong with her. We are so thankful for that. They wanted to keep her in the hospital over the weekend, but Jim's dad did not think it was necessary and decided to just get home and see a doctor to follow up as soon as possible.

Jim's mother in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

Jim's dad was able to take a much needed nap while we were in the hospital waiting on test results.

After Shirlee was released from the hospital, we headed back to the airport to change our flight once again and figure out how to get home. We missed the original flight for Saturday and unfortunately, there is only one flight per day that goes from Denver to Pasco, so there wasn't another flight that would get us to Denver in time to catch the connection to Pasco. So, we booked a flight to leave Philly at 10 am on Sunday and arrive in Denver at noon. The only flight out on Sundays to Pasco leaves at almost 9 pm. So, we were looking at a 9 hour layover in the lovely Denver airport. Happy Mother's Day!

We booked a couple rooms at the Comfort Inn just a couple miles away from the airport and headed there to check in. We arrived at the hotel at about 5:30 pm and were greeted by Darleen. Let's just say Darleen needs to work on her customer service skills. She acted like we were a nuisance and was so annoyed that she had to deal with us.
This is Darleen. She won't be winning any customer service awards, that's for sure.

We decided to rest for awhile an then have dinner somewhere. There were just a couple of options and the best one was Denny's. So, we got all dressed up in our finest, at least the finest that we had in our carry-on bags and went to dinner. It was actually a better dinner than I was expecting, although not even close to what we would have gotten on the cruise.

We had our waitress take a picture of the four of us and as you can see, she cut Jim off. We noticed and asked her to try again and this second picture is what we got.

She almost got it right! :)

Well, we arrived home after a long Sunday at the Denver airport, at about 11:30 pm. Surprise, surprise, the flight from Denver was delayed by about 45 minutes. Not the greatest of trips to say the least and we're all pretty sad that we didn't get to see all the wonderful places along the Mediterranean. We'll try it again some other time.