3-16-20 - London, here we come!

The flight from Cairo to London Heathrow is fairly nerve wracking.  Our seats are spread out across the plane as Kyle’s seat purchase didn’t go through earlier in the day.  Despite being armed with face masks, hand sanitizer and wipes, a chill creeps up our spine every time a loud, deep coughing fit can be heard across the plane.

There is a woman across the aisle and one forward from Kyle’s aisle seat who has let out a barrage of 3 coughing fits not even halfway through the flight.  No face mask, no handkerchief, no towel and when she coughs, she turns her head back and towards Kyle as if purposely aiming the Coronavirus f**kers right at him with every cough. 

Kyle is becoming more apoplectic with every cough.  “Damn, should have tried to make those home-made hazmat suits after all,” Kyle is thinking.  Kyle gets up to talk to the flight attendant and implores her to move the woman. “She’s literally coughing right on me,” Kyle explains.  “Sir, every seat on the plane is full, I have nowhere to move her,” she responds.  “Well, can’t we move her into the luggage area underneath the plane?” 

The flight attendant apparently liked Kyle’s response as much as Kyle likes getting coughed on and says, “sir, please return to your seat,” and starts backing away from Kyle with a look that says, “you’ve already got it, now get the hell away from me.” 

Kyle turns to the backup plan, drink the Coronavirus to death.  They keep stressing that the hand sanitizer has to have alcohol in it to be effective, so Kyle’s going to skip the gel part and go right to the alcohol part.  “Can I have a bottle of something strong enough to kill the Coronavirus?” Kyle asks the flight attendant as he arrives with the drink cart.  “Sorry sir, we don’t serve alcohol on this flight,” he responds.  Of course not, we’re on the national airline of an entirely Muslim country.  Kyle can’t catch a break today. 

The flight lands and Kyle gives the Coronavirus uber-spreader a stink-eye worse than the guy in Nepal gave us for helping teach his kid how to swim. She looks the other way and hurries off the plane. The crew re-assembles and Kyle tells everyone that are not to take off their masks under any circumstances.

We go to clear immigration and another surreal scene greets us as there is not a single person on the line.  Not one.  Kyle has the picture below to prove it although Leanne is convinced security is going to confiscate Kyle’s phone for taking pictures of the immigration set-up.  “They have bigger problems to worry about right now than my phone,” Kyle points out. 

We clear immigration, get our bags, clear customs and meet our driver in the arrivals section.  We are flying out of London’s Gatwick airport tomorrow morning so we are staying in a hotel at Gatwick airport. We now have to drive from Heathrow to Gatwick. It’s about 10pm London time which is about 2am Egypt time so we are feeling the effects of a long and harrowing day that began at 2:30am Egypt time when Kyle found out the original flights were cancelled. 

Kyle had sent an e-mail yesterday informing the Albania tour company that we will not be proceeding with the Eastern European tour.  The representative e-mailed back asking why.  Despite the fact that Kyle think’s the answer should be entirely self-evident, he politely responds with an answer. 

Kyle explains that we were going from Egypt to the Middle East to a Greek sailing trip on April 11th.  Since the Middle East got cancelled, we were trying to substitute Eastern Europe for the Middle East and still salvage that part of the trip.  Given the accelerating closure of borders, we have decided to cancel the entire rest of the trip including the rest of the Egypt and the Greek sailing trip.  Kyle concludes by telling her that we are going to bear a heavy financial loss with the decision and that no one is more disappointed than our family at the decision but our health and safety has to come first. Kyle even promises that if we do the tour in the future, we would definitely use their firm.

Kyle thinks it’s a pretty good explanation but apparently not good enough as the representative responds with an e-mail tirade lashing out at Kyle about how she and her team worked over the weekend on the itinerary and how rude and irresponsible it was of me to cancel after she worked on it. She goes on that he’s violated all sort of travel industry etiquette norms, etc., etc., etc. Furthermore, she continues, if Kyle does this tour in the future, she’s going to slap on a 500 euro penalty fee on the existing price for the pain and suffering he’s caused her and her team. 

Kyle spends the entire 45 minute taxi ride from Heathrow to the Gatwick hotel fuming and composing his now-not-so-polite e-mail response.  First he points out that every travel agent works on spec and isn’t compensated until the trip is booked and paid for. Second, he points out that he said all along that everything had to be last minute cancellable and they had countered with best efforts to re-arrange any disruption.  Right there, Kyle points out, he was never going to book the trip unless they agreed to 100% cancellation refund. Third, Kyle points out it was completely “rude and irresponsible” of her to place her compensation over the health and safety of our family. 

Finally, Kyle points out the dumb-ass business practice of placing a penalty if we go in the future.  If she responded that she understood, we would have used her in the future if we had the opportunity but now she has 100% ensured that we will never use her company.  Kyle finished the e-mail with “so you can take your 500 euro bill and shove it up your ass.”

Our Coronavirus stress-o-meter is now measuring 150 on a 10 point scale.  The stress is bad enough without having to deal with idiots like that. Geez!

We check-in to the hotel, go to the rooms and order room service.  The food was extremely good and we drift off to sleep dreaming of Antigua where we will be this time tomorrow if all goes as planned.  Nowadays you have to expect the unexpected so there’s always that dreaded if…