London:

I finally land in London…early. It was 2:20. I felt that I had a good chance to catch my 3:50 flight to Dublin. So we are cruising down the runway and then we stop and sit for a few minutes. So the pilot comes on and in Dutch and makes this long speech. I know when the guy next to me makes some sarcastic smirk then I am screwed. Come to find out since we are early, they have no gate for us. NICE. So we sit on the runway until 2:50 and the we park it. I make it through customs after having to explain my complete itinerary. I then go to collect my luggage not knowing if it was going to be there because of the cancellation. I had realized after I had got on the plane the lady at the ticket counter that had given me my new ticket took my old ticket w/ my baggage claim ticket # on it. I then got a little freaked, because if my bag wasn’t there then I had nothing to show when I got there. But to my relief everything was there! WHEW! Now I have to figure out where to go. I find out I am in Terminal 4 and need to go to 1. That requires me to take the train. I trek my way down to the train, where I am greeted by a nice English woman yelling to stay behind the white line and not to board the train. When a girl disobeys her orders and hops on the train, she literally chases her off. I made sure not to get on until instructed. Finally, Terminal 1. It doesn’t matter what country you are in customer service still sucks. The girl at check-in sends me over to buy a new ticket. The girl at the ticket counter, after telling her my sad sob story, just says “I guess you have to buy a new ticket”. OK..I buy a new ticket and then told I am on standby for the 6:10 flight. It is now 4:10. If I don’t get on the 6:10 there are flights every hour after that. Well that is reassuring to someone who has been up for 24hours.
I don’t know if any of you have flown Aer Lingus from London, but it is no wonder the Irish hate the English. Their gates are in a metal tube. Getting to the gate is like hiking through the Sahara desert. There is no air and totally hot. It is amusing to see people finally get to the gates (there is a fan down there), they are gasping for air and sweating to death. Well I finally meet an nice English chap who works for the airlines. He really tried to get me on the 4:50 flight, but it was full. I did make it on the 6:10 flight completely exhausted and sitting in a middle seat. It would be my luck that some really cute guy sits next to me reading an article about Coldplay. I didn’t even have an ounce of energy to say anything. Plus I know I looked like absolute hell.