Personal: The Travel Woes of Sarah Schroll
Hello everyone! I've finally settled into my dorm room in London and had some time to sit down and write. As this blog is used for class and to keep track of my study abroad experiences, I feel it is necessary to memorialize the travel troubles I've encountered.
So far, everything seems nice and smooth, right? Well, my luck did not hold long. About 45 minutes to an hour after takeoff, the pilot comes back on and states that they are having issues with a heat sensor that he is wary about taking over the ocean, but he is in contact with officials. He later informs us that we have to return to terminal where flight officials will inform him and all passengers of the next steps (re-books, reschedules, etc). It takes us over an hour of circling to land due to the rain showers over the Charlotte airport. After which, we are deplaned and were given complimentary food and beverages. I suppose they wanted to sweeten us up before notifying us that the flight to London was cancelled and everyone was to proceed to the ticket counter to reschedule.
Now, there were at least 300 people on that flight that are now going to the ticket counters to reschedule their flight to London. My group of 17-20 people end up walking from the end of one of the terminals to the front of the airport, where the main American Airline ticket counter is located. The CCSA adults are attempting to reschedule us to the next available flight so we can get into London before classes start on Monday.
It takes until midnight before CCSA manages to get us all re-booked and AA puts us in hotels for the night. AA provides with hotel, cab, and food vouchers. Six students (including me) and one adult chaperone are on the 10:00 am flight to the JFK airport in New York and flying out to London and arrive on Sunday morning. The other 11-12 people fly out Sunday morning to Chicago and arrive in London Sunday night. We are not provided with our checked luggage and not everyone has clothes/toiletries with them.
Our flight to JFK is set for noon and we have to leave the hotel by 10:00 am and I want to partake in the pre-paid breakfast before then. My alarm is set for 8:00 am and I manage to get up smoothly. At 10:00 am, Carol texts me and says that all plans are currently on hold because the flight to JFK is currently cancelled due to inclement weather at landing time. After a failed re-booking onto a Raleigh flight, my group is booked onto the same flight as the others - a 5:15 am to Chicago O'Hare and a 9:10 am flight to London for a late-night Sunday arrival.
Since we now have a free Saturday and most people have no clothes, we decide to go to the nearby mall and go shopping, where I spot a pretty cool LEGO figure. My roomie is feeling extremely nauseous, so we return to the hotel shortly after lunch and then cannot get back into our room. Housekeeping lets my roommate in and I go back down to the reception desk for them to reset the key card. The rest of the night goes smoothly and we watch Fixer-Upper.
So I am very stressed out at this point and it takes me about 30 minutes to get through the security line. Thankfully, the gates is only about 100 feet away from the checkpoint and I find out that we haven't even started boarding since we are missing a flight attendant. So the flight is delayed until a 5:30 takeoff and I am able to breathe again. All of the students make it through security before boarding even begins but one chaperone's mobile boarding pass suddenly fails and she cannot pass through security. She has to leave the line and go back to the kiosk/ticket counter. Obviously, she did not have enough time to get a physical copy of the pass and get back through security, so we leave without her. She manages to re-book onto the next flight to Chicago and has a 50/50 chance of making it on the London flight with us.
The flight to Chicago goes smoothly, minus the fact that our group is missing someone, but my stomach and head are not happy with little sleep, high stress, and no food that has occurred. I land with an extremely uneasy stomach and a throbbing headache, but manage to choke down a bagel and bring plain potato chips for the plane. Carol shows up about 20 minutes before boarding begins and everyone boards smoothly. The flight to Heathrow is a typical-horrible-8-hr flight overseas with disgusting airline food and the downing of ginger ale or water. We land at Heathrow at like 11 pm, but manage to get through customs fairly quickly, without any major hiccups!
And off we go to baggage claim! I stand at one spot by the conveyor belt and start looking for my distinctive gray suitcase and wait. And wait and wait. Eventually, we realize that there are about 6 other people without their luggage and so we walk over to the American airlines counter. One person suggests looking at the app and so we all "find out" that our luggage took a side trip to Orlando, FL, but landed in London on Saturday, except for one person - her luggage is completely lost. We all cheer up and think that our luggage is hiding behind the counter. Once we reach the counter, we are quickly corrected that our suitcases were still in Charlotte. They never crossed the ocean. At this point Sunday night, we have not had our checked suitcases since Friday morning. AA provides us with a little kit that has tiny toiletries and a plain white tee along with their assurances that our suitcases should be on the next flight out from London. They should arrive and be passed along to us on Monday.
It is now important to note that I, and many others, have class starting at 9 am. My first day is incredibly busy for someone dealing with jet lag, no checked luggage, and approximately 5 hours of sleep. I have two classes, a mandatory orientation, a short neighborhood walk where we are shown the important places (fee-free ATM, grocery, underground station, etc), and finally a short dinner with a grocery/clothing run afterwards. My checked luggage also did not arrive at any point during the day.
My luggage wouldn't arrive until Tuesday night, which was a nice birthday present, if I do say so myself. Additionally, I managed to survive on consecutive days of low sleep and high stress without any caffeine.
This concludes the first weekend of my study abroad trip and the major travel woes of one Sarah Schroll. The minor travel woes include already achy feet and the issues of my needing items that were in the checked luggage that was not yet in my possession.
Day 1: Friday, June 28th
My journey starts on Friday, June 28th, with a flight out of the Cincinnati airport at 3:07 pm. I arrive at CVG by 12:30 and am able to check my bag with the CCSA group with no issues - my suitcase is 20 pounds under the max. The flight from Cincinnati to Charlotte, NC goes smoothly, even with the usual motion sickness-induced headache. We have roughly 2 hours before we board the flight to London Heathrow! Everyone boards and then the cabin starts to get uncomfortably warm. The pilot announces over the PA that they have to switch over to a secondary A/C line thing (I don't know the exact wording), but there will only be a small delay in our takeoff. |
| View above the clouds |
Now, there were at least 300 people on that flight that are now going to the ticket counters to reschedule their flight to London. My group of 17-20 people end up walking from the end of one of the terminals to the front of the airport, where the main American Airline ticket counter is located. The CCSA adults are attempting to reschedule us to the next available flight so we can get into London before classes start on Monday.
It takes until midnight before CCSA manages to get us all re-booked and AA puts us in hotels for the night. AA provides with hotel, cab, and food vouchers. Six students (including me) and one adult chaperone are on the 10:00 am flight to the JFK airport in New York and flying out to London and arrive on Sunday morning. The other 11-12 people fly out Sunday morning to Chicago and arrive in London Sunday night. We are not provided with our checked luggage and not everyone has clothes/toiletries with them.
Day 2: Saturday, June 29th
There is then the chaos of attempting to get everyone in to a cab and off to the the hotel. Our hotel voucher is for a Hilton Garden Inn and there are approximately 4 within 30 minutes of the airport. Half of the group ends up the Hilton Garden Inn/Charlotte Airport and the other half is in the Hilton Garden Inn/South Park. I, of course, end up at the wrong hotel with about 9 other people and have to order an Uber to get to our hotel reservation. We split into two cars and we reach the hotel, are given a key, and we think that 3 girls are going to have to fit into one hotel room with a Queen size bed. So we prepare to go to bed and I lend out two pairs of pajama shorts so the other girls can sleep in them. I then go track down our adult chaperone for the flight tomorrow to determine the schedule. I then notice that one of the other girls from the other car has a room to herself and after telling an adult, my room becomes less crowded. After communicating with Carol,the adult chaperone, and passing the information to all related parties (including my family), it is about 2:00 am. |
| LEGO figurine found in Charlotte |
Our flight to JFK is set for noon and we have to leave the hotel by 10:00 am and I want to partake in the pre-paid breakfast before then. My alarm is set for 8:00 am and I manage to get up smoothly. At 10:00 am, Carol texts me and says that all plans are currently on hold because the flight to JFK is currently cancelled due to inclement weather at landing time. After a failed re-booking onto a Raleigh flight, my group is booked onto the same flight as the others - a 5:15 am to Chicago O'Hare and a 9:10 am flight to London for a late-night Sunday arrival.
Since we now have a free Saturday and most people have no clothes, we decide to go to the nearby mall and go shopping, where I spot a pretty cool LEGO figure. My roomie is feeling extremely nauseous, so we return to the hotel shortly after lunch and then cannot get back into our room. Housekeeping lets my roommate in and I go back down to the reception desk for them to reset the key card. The rest of the night goes smoothly and we watch Fixer-Upper.
Day 3: Sunday, June 30th
Our flight to O'Hare is at 5 am and security opens at 4 am. The plan is to take a shuttle from the hotel at 3:30 so we reach the airport when security opens. Everyone is cautioned to set alarms and not to be late for the shuttle. I set an alarm for 2:45 and my roomie sets one for 3:00. Both of us wake up smoothly and are down in the lobby by 3:15. The chaperones request that I go back up and knock on doors to make sure everyone is up. On my way back up, I run into several of the CCSA members so I skip those rooms. There is only one room that has no answer when no one has seen their occupants. The two guys on the trip roomed together and don't stir at my knocks. Everyone is downstairs at 3:30 but these two. It takes almost 15 minutes and security pounding on their door for them to wake up and come downstairs to the shuttle. The shuttle driver manages to get us to the airport right about 4am, which is impressive since the hotel was 25-30 minutes away from airport. There is a long line at security, which just opened, and one for the AA ticket counter and none of us have our boarding passes. We all head to the kiosks and it takes me 3 tries (and a move to a different kiosk) for my boarding passes to print. Several members have to go to the ticket counter for their boarding passes but the majority are spread out in the long security line. Think at least 30 feet long with several of the typical queue wraps at the beginning and you have a pretty close image. I get in the line at 4:15 and my flight boarding time is 4:40 to 5:05 as the flight leaves at 5:15.So I am very stressed out at this point and it takes me about 30 minutes to get through the security line. Thankfully, the gates is only about 100 feet away from the checkpoint and I find out that we haven't even started boarding since we are missing a flight attendant. So the flight is delayed until a 5:30 takeoff and I am able to breathe again. All of the students make it through security before boarding even begins but one chaperone's mobile boarding pass suddenly fails and she cannot pass through security. She has to leave the line and go back to the kiosk/ticket counter. Obviously, she did not have enough time to get a physical copy of the pass and get back through security, so we leave without her. She manages to re-book onto the next flight to Chicago and has a 50/50 chance of making it on the London flight with us.
The flight to Chicago goes smoothly, minus the fact that our group is missing someone, but my stomach and head are not happy with little sleep, high stress, and no food that has occurred. I land with an extremely uneasy stomach and a throbbing headache, but manage to choke down a bagel and bring plain potato chips for the plane. Carol shows up about 20 minutes before boarding begins and everyone boards smoothly. The flight to Heathrow is a typical-horrible-8-hr flight overseas with disgusting airline food and the downing of ginger ale or water. We land at Heathrow at like 11 pm, but manage to get through customs fairly quickly, without any major hiccups!
And off we go to baggage claim! I stand at one spot by the conveyor belt and start looking for my distinctive gray suitcase and wait. And wait and wait. Eventually, we realize that there are about 6 other people without their luggage and so we walk over to the American airlines counter. One person suggests looking at the app and so we all "find out" that our luggage took a side trip to Orlando, FL, but landed in London on Saturday, except for one person - her luggage is completely lost. We all cheer up and think that our luggage is hiding behind the counter. Once we reach the counter, we are quickly corrected that our suitcases were still in Charlotte. They never crossed the ocean. At this point Sunday night, we have not had our checked suitcases since Friday morning. AA provides us with a little kit that has tiny toiletries and a plain white tee along with their assurances that our suitcases should be on the next flight out from London. They should arrive and be passed along to us on Monday.
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| View of London from Thames River on 7/1 |
Day 4: Monday, July 1st
Thus, we join the driver and meet up with everyone else at the apartments. Our first look at London is at 1:30 Monday morning. CCSA takes care of us by giving us dinner and streamlining the check-in process so we are all in our flats and ready for bed by 2 am.It is now important to note that I, and many others, have class starting at 9 am. My first day is incredibly busy for someone dealing with jet lag, no checked luggage, and approximately 5 hours of sleep. I have two classes, a mandatory orientation, a short neighborhood walk where we are shown the important places (fee-free ATM, grocery, underground station, etc), and finally a short dinner with a grocery/clothing run afterwards. My checked luggage also did not arrive at any point during the day.
Day 5: Tuesday, July 2nd
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| Birthday dessert! |
This concludes the first weekend of my study abroad trip and the major travel woes of one Sarah Schroll. The minor travel woes include already achy feet and the issues of my needing items that were in the checked luggage that was not yet in my possession.
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