I'm A Procrastinator - Now I'm In Trouble
It's my job to sort out our airline tickets for the upcoming trip to Greece and I fu__ed up royally. I can't get us a flight out of here on our preferred date. Three weeks ago I started checking airlines and dates and trying to figure out how I could avoid Olympic Airlines. Those who read regularly will remember my rant of last October, well deserved I thought, and my vow never to fly with them again.
After doing much checking for important things like leg room and luggage allowance my foggy brain finally realized that I had no real choice. Not if I wanted to take more than 24 kg of clothes for 7 weeks and have more than 12 inches of leg room (that's Transat). My other alternatives where of course to fly through another airport with either Lufthansa or KLM which required changing planes and in effect turning a 12 hour trip into anywhere from 18 to 20 hours. That's not really a good option for someone with arthritis and fybromyalgia. I'd be dead by the time I finally arrived in Athens.
So yesterday, I bit the bullet and called the trusty travel agent and asked him to book September 2. Seems that I waited too long to decide and now that flight is full, booked solid... Well not quite, there is one ticket available, but there are two of us. What gives, I thought people weren't flying, I thought we were in a recession?
I'm getting a headache trying to figure out what to do next...
Labels: Grecian Holiday, Travel
posted by Rositta @ Wednesday, July 30, 2008
4 Comments:
We are in a semi-recession, but airlines have also cut back their schedules so fewer seats are available. I have no advice except to pick another date and just book it.
I always book well in advance for pricing reasons. I once bought tickets online and 5 hours later the price for the same seat doubled. Boy was I happy! Sometimes you gotta just do it.
There are times you can wait (off season, November-March) and get some wonderful last-minute deals. But I find that more often in Europe than in North America.
OH the joys of travel.....I have a brother and 2 sisters in Europe right now. My brother and his wife have been there a year....they have travelled everywhere....he blogs and on his blog the one thing he says for certain....the best thing you can do for yourself is don't expect anything...if anything expect the worse....planes often don't connect, are delayed...buses don't show up when they are suppose to...you luggage ends up in Turkey while you are in Greece and so on...but he says try to find an adventure in that...if you have a lay over....take in what you can..emerge yourself in the culture....he had some great stories of what they did to pass the time....some pretty risky..especially with their 8 year old son....Good luck with your plans....
Ouch. Maybe you could leave a day or two earlier and spend time in a connector city with frequent flights. That would break up your travel. I don't think I could spend more than 8 hours on a plane. I'd go NUTS. To be sure, that would be a short trip any way I did it.
Kat, I have faith in the travel agent, by tomorrow it should be all sorted out. It shows seats available on their website but the travel agents get a certain allocation.
Hey hey, smalltown rn, I am taking this in stride actually, just don't like Olympic very much. Once I get there I'm fully immersed, all those Greek relatives..
Rudee, 12 hours is a bit much but it's the best option.
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