A Night at the Airport

Our flight was scheduled for 1:10 PM and we were to arrive in Charleston at 5:00 PM.
I went online about 10:30 to check the status of our flight and found that it was not going to leave until 3:45 which meant we would miss our connection in Philadelphia.
I called USAirways and was rebooked on a later flight to Charleston out of Philadelphia. The reason the plane was delayed was because the crew was late. The reason they were late is they needed enough time to get their 8 hours off after late flights prior to ours.
We got our later flight out of Rochester and arrived in Philadelphia only to find that our flight was further delayed. It kept getting delayed and getting delayed and finally at 9:30 it was cancelled. About six other flights in our terminal were cancelled then too.
Why couldn't they just cancel it from the get go when you might have had other options for the evening. True, the weather was awful in Philadelphia for a good 2 1/2 hours, but then other flights were leaving. Our crew was probably still late. Fortunately we had the foresight to go charging to the Service area as soon as the flight was cancelled so we could get rebooked. There was a 9:30 AM flight direct to Charleston the next morning but of course it was booked. Our gracious US Airways agent suggested the 5:30 PM flight the next day - I DON"T THINK SO!!!! I asked her if there wasn't something a little earlier going some other way and lo and behold there was. We could leave at 6:30 and get a flight to Charlotte, NC and then go to Charleston and get in around 11:00. Much better!!
So, we got food vouchers for $10 each and had a romantic 10:00 PM Chinese dinner at the food court and then went to the gate where we were going to depart from the next day.

Was I happy to leave the concourse where we were waiting for our original flight, it was freezing. The new concourse was very comfortable. And were we lucky, no arm rests in between seats. It didn't pay to get a hotel for $$$ when we would have to be at the airport by 5:30 AM so we figured we would just have an airport adventure.

The only good thing about being stranded in the Philadelphia airport was free internet. I set up my office and started working on a photo book for Myles for his birthday.

Thanks to some other people sharing our accommodations we found out we could get pillows and mylar blankets. It was sort of like staying in intensive care with the bright lights and television on all night. Larry's never had it so good since he met me. Nothing but the best experiences.

We did get to sleep for a couple of hours and everyone pretty much woke up about 4:30. The restaurants were starting to open and pretty soon we had a delicious breakfast of bagel and coffee.

We shouldn't complain though, because there were people waiting for our flight who came from Europe the night before and hadn't slept for over 24 hours.

Fortunately our planes were on time and we arrived in Charleston as scheduled. Gerry was there to meet us but our bags weren't there so we kept calling him at the cell phone lot to give him updates as we were waiting to see the baggage people. Finally Gerry just parked and came into the airport and we waited for out bags which were on the next flight due to arrive shortly. Once we had out bags and were in the car we were ready for our vacation. We arrived at the house, picked out our alternate sleeping accomadations since we lost the room I wanted by being late and Nadine and Gerry Z. took the best room since they arrived the day before us. We weren't going to unpack right away but I had something to give Jacqui so I opened the suitcases and found that all our clothes were soaked. They must have spent the night out in the rain. And to make matters worse, some red and black ran onto some of the clothes, But, a little laundry and then the vacation could begin.