It’s Susan here. For those of you who don’t know me,, I’m Jeff’s sister, aka Suey, a prolific amateur photographer.
The following is my recount of the memorable start to our boat trip.
We left downtown Toronto about 6 PM Wednesday March 11 bound for a coastal expedition heading north from Bergen, Norway on Saturday.
I had a great plan – we could save some money by having a one night stop over in Amsterdam which seemed perfect when Jeff said he’d never been there.
It was not a good idea. Some 38 hours later, we were finally in Bergen. Every leg of the trip was compromised.
It began on the initial flight which was cancelled 5 hours after it was supposed to depart. That time was spent in a lovely combination of siting at the gate and on the tarmac. This was a challenging time because PD makes it very difficult for me to be calm in the midst of chaos. We got through it together though.
About 5am, while at an airport hotel, we were told we had been rebooked on the first available flight to Amsterdam – on Saturday evening flight, which landed the day after the boat departed Norway. Throughout Thursday, we discussed many options but ultimately continued to try and work with Air Canada to find a solution.
Finally at about 4 pm, we had a new plan. We would fly to Frankfurt direct from Toronto, leaving at 5:40 PM , arriving Friday morning. We would take a train from Frankfurt to Amsterdam and connect to our KLM flight to Bergen, Unfortunately, our flight from Frankfurt was delayed due to “mechanical issues“. We made up the time and thought that we would catch our train, however the Frankfurt police decided to hold our plane at the tarmac for unknown security reasons. Once they left, jeff and I went as fast as we could to the train station adjacent to the airport, only to find that we missed the train by 15 minutes.
When we were redirected to Air Canada to get new train tickets, we decided to ask the AC rep whether they would put us on a flight from Frankfurt to Bergen Instead
The representative had sympathy for us and put us on a flight from Frankfurt leaving within the hour.
This meant, we had to run from terminal D to terminal A. We did this only to discover at the security checkpoint that we had two boarding passes for Jeff and none for me. Jeff had to sprint back to back to the gate. We made the flight with eight minutes to spare.
The flight to Bergen was delayed due to an apparent dispute between the luggage handlers (which I witnessed). It didn’t matter though – We were in Norway earlier than planned heading for a lovely hotel.
As always, i hope you enjoy the photos….
Boating Adventures 