Markus’ Blog

We’re back home, almost a day late. Our honeymoon ended just like it had begun: with a cancelled flight and a forced overnight stay at a hotel.

Warning! Rant ahead…

As already mentioned, on the way down we had to overnight in Richmond and catch our new flight from Vancouver to Atlanta Saturday morning as opposed to Friday night. The reason was the storm that had hit SeaTac airport earlier that day.

On our way home, everything went according to plan. We got off the ship in time, the transfer to San Juan airport worked out nicely, as did the flight. Till we got to Dallas / Fort Worth Airport, that is. Our way in was one of the roughest descents that I have ever experienced. Due to “inclement weather” we had to hold for 20-30 minutes and we did so in a pretty rough patch of air. The end result was passengers being bumped through and shaken up nicely for about an hour or so. But that was just the beginning.

We had nice, yummy lunch at an Irish pub. The airport is actually quite nice and offers a lot of choice when it comes to food.

Once we were done eating and got ready to board our flight to Vancouver, were soon facing the same “let’s keep delaying the flight by another 15 minutes at the last second” kind of game that we knew so well from our way down. They kept that up for about an hour or so. Five minutes before the new “departure time” they would just bump it back by another 15 minutes, never calling anybody to board the plane. Then this announcement came over the speaker system:

A tornado has been sighted very close to the airport. We urge all passengers and staff to get away from the windows and search shelter in the baggage claim area.

Nice. (We saw later on the news that they did have quite a few problems in the area.)

As it turned out the order to go to baggage claim was a huge screw up by airport management. Their weather shelters are the bathrooms. The fun parts:

1. There were washrooms right by our gate. We could have stayed there. There were many more washrooms throughout the gate area. Enough space to hold everybody, I would think.
2. The baggage claim area is outside of the secure zone. That meant that everybody had to go through security again, completely unnecessarily. I’m talking a few thousand people here.

After about 20 minutes in the shelter they gave the okay to leave the washrooms and proceed to security. An hour and a half later, we were back at our gate — and they were still playing the “let’s keep delaying the flight by 15 minutes” game.

During a “fun” conversation where Brigette demanded some answers, it was finally made official what we had very strongly suspected for the last two hours: our flight had been cancelled. So about 15 minutes after we got through security we headed back outside to get re-booked and find ourselves a hotel.

Yep, that’s right, we spent 90 minutes to go through security and after 15 minutes in the cleared area we left again. Fun, eh? Can you say humongous waste of time?

Once outside, we did double-duty. Brigette lined up in the endless queue in front of the ticketing booths (many, many flights had been cancelled) and I booked us a hotel room (using the airports’ phones) before there wouldn’t be any vacancies anymore. After that I tried to reach American Airlines via phone (Brigette’s line was barely moving). I managed to get through and got our flight re-booked to Saturday, 10:05am. Had we just waited in line, we would have been there for at least two more hours — and the morning flight would have most likely been full by that time.

After that everything went fairly well. We stayed at the Courtyard Mariott in Irving, TX, had Italian food delivered for dinner (as did a few other people staying at the hotel ;-)) and successfully managed to get home today — with only a 20 minute delay, and a very annoying incident with a US security official when we first went through security this morning.

We’re so glad to be home now, in Canada. Not in the US anymore. US security personnel is just so rude and obnoxious. American Airlines didn’t impress us either.

The good about this whole trip home, though, is that our luggage was already in Vancouver when we got here. We weren’t expecting that. We surely thought that they’d screw that up, too, and that it would be days till we’d get it.

More enjoyable news about our honeymoon will follow soon.

Today is our last stop before we head back to San Juan, Puerto Rico. We are in Aruba now, its capital Oranjestad to be more precise. Today we spent some more time on the beach and in the beautiful turquoise waters. We also did some shopping.

Since today is the only day where the ship will be leaving late (11pm), we’ll take advantage of it and eat dinner at a restaurant on shore.

Tomorrow will be our last vacation day. The ship won’t dock anywhere, so we’ll spend the day on board the ship, hanging out and relaxing.

Friday morning it’s “getting up early” day to get off the ship and to the airport. We’ll be back in Vancouver Friday evening. I hope we can still handle the rain.

We are at our second port of call and taking a day off today. Well, sort of. We are still wandering around town and looking at shops. It’s really beautiful here, but also hot — yeah, I know, the last thing we should do is complain about the heat in December, but oh well.

I’m taking lots and lots of pictures. Even bought another 1 GB flash card (two, actually, because they were so cheap).

We had our first formal dinner last night and it was very nice. The next one is scheduled for the evening of Dec. 25.

That’s it for now.

Finally, we are here. Keeping the fingers crossed didn’t help. Our flight to Seattle Friday night was cancelled at the last minute after they had been telling us for three hours that “everything still looked good right now”. Bloody hell. And all of that, just because SeaTac Tower didn’t have any power. Who needs power anyways.

We finally left Saturday morning, at 7:15am, going to San Juan via Atlanta (no more layover in Seattle, thank God). Our two flights each were late, of course, but we finally made it and arrived in San Juan tired, but in good spirits at about 11:00pm yesterday (the original plan said we’d be here at 2:00pm).

Now we are off exploring Old San Juan. — It’s hot and muggy. lol And no, we’re not (yet) complaining about it.

Interject by Brigette…by “we”, Markus meant “me.”

The next post will be from some more exotic location. Stay tuned.

My mind is ready, anyways. Still got a few things to do and prepare before we are actually going to head for the airport at about 5:30pm.

Hope the plane will be on time and neither storm nor snowfall will keep it on the ground. We have connections to make, so it’s even more important. Seattle first, then Atlanta in the early morning hours on Saturday. Keep your fingers crossed.

We’ll try and find internet cafes every once in a while and post some updates, but probably no pictures till we are back.

PS: It’s 27°C in San Juan.

Small Claims Court, here we come. It’s been an ongoing issue for the last few months: The fact that the previous owners left our place quite a mess, created a bird shelter for a pigeon with her two eggs and (apparently) refuse to comment on any of that or take any form of responsibility for it.

I’ve said before how we ended up with a big mess on our deck, everything covered in bird poop. Three birds produce quite a bit of that when they live in one spot for about a month and a half. We have repeatedly tried to contact the previous owners via their real estate agent. It turns out she refused to forward our letters (she’s also a personal friend of the previous owner’s, go figure) and it took phoning her supervisor to get that sorted out — or so we think. We have no way of really knowing if she actually passed on our second letter. We know for a fact that she didn’t pass on our first, friendlier letter from back in September.

It looks like they feel either safe that we won’t be able to serve them the papers, because they think we don’t have a contact address for them, or they think we aren’t serious. Either way, somebody’s going to have one hell of a surprise.

There has been no reply in about a month and a half, and it has been made quite clear to them what would happen in such a case (we’d take the matter to court). So the forms are now filled out and ready to be submitted to court.

The latest “fun” news, though, is that it seems like the previous owners were in contact with our strata council about the bird poop on our deck, but still didn’t bother to respond to us in any way shape or form. We found this out only by chance.

UPDATE: Turns out the previous owner is on vaction till Jan. 15. So no luck serving the papers today.

We got our cruise papers yesterday. That’s very exciting. Yay!

What’s even better: Only a week and a day left till we leave!!! Double yay! It’s going to be so nice to hang out on some nice, warm beaches, go on excursions to rum distillers and beer brewers (can you tell we have our priorities straight ;-)) and just enjoy our special two weeks together.

Anybody jealous yet? lolol

The honeymoon is coming closer and closer and that’s very good news. I think we’re both ready for some vacation — and very special vacation at that.

The remaining days till we leave, though, seem to be quite full. One could say won’t be getting bored.

• Brigette has to finish her remaining assignments for class.
• We have to get rid of our wicker set by Thursday.
• We have to make our place look presentable for the Xmas Party on Saturday.
• We still have some work do do on the condo (curtains!).
• Brigette’s going to pick up our travel documents this week.
• We have to do some general organizatorial things in regards to the trip.

I’m sure there’s more that I’m not thinking of right now.

This time it’s my mom’s turn.

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag, Mutti!!!

Hope the birthday card made it in time.

The trip to San Jose is almost over. In a couple of hours we’ll be heading back to SFO and fly home to Vancouver.

It’s a very bright and sunny day out today, even though it’s only 4°C right now. It’ll warm up nicely, though, they say. Not that that will make too much of a difference as we’ll be inside for the most part anyways.

It’s been a good trip, so far. It’s always nice to meet your team mates face-to-face. It’ll be even nicer to get back home, though, to my schveetie.