Day #1: "The Airport Fiasco"

Hey everyone!

17 phone calls, 2 hours in lines, and 8 different flight booked.

That's what it took for us to get where we are now. Chris Stewart here, making the first entry of our group's blog for our seven weeks in Spain. Right now, it's a little bit after 10 p.m. Minnesota time. I know this because we haven't left the Twin Cities yet!  Currently, the seven of us are at the Days Inn in Bloomington, victims of the nasty weather at the airport throughout the day. We have a new plan, but I will get to that in a minute. According to sources at the airport, they were operating on about 35% capacity for flights coming in and out due to severe winds on Wednesday. One of the biggest problems for us was the fact that other airports in the region were experiencing the same weather because of the massive low pressure system moving through the Midwest. This was an issue for us because we originally headed to Chicago for our connection flight to Madrid.


But perhaps it is best to start the story at the beginning. I awoke this morning at about eight to re-weigh my bags, go over my checklist one last time, and start saying my goodbyes. Instead, I got a call from Carolyn O'Grady from the CICE at Gustavus, Deb Sandquist in Spain, and Deb Pitton from Gustavus to help with our flights and to create a game plan for our group for the day. At the time, all of our flights were still on schedule, so we had no problems. 

At about noon, all seven of us were getting ready to check in for our 1:50 flight, and our phones starting going off that it was going to be delayed until 2:40. It didn't take long before 2:40 became 3:30. At this point, I got back on the phone with Pam, our travel agent, and Drew got a hold of Deb Sandquist in Spain. Because we were going to Chicago first, then to Madrid, and then a short Malaga, we were afraid of missing our connections while abroad. So we went to the American desk and figured out a new plan. We were still going to take our flight to Chicago at 3:30, then go on to London-Heathrow then, and then go straight to Malaga, arriving at about 8 p.m. on Friday (Malaga time). So we re-printed all of our itineraries and got our boarding passes for Chicago.

By 3:30, nothing had changed and no announcements were made. They did push the flight back to 4:00, and then to 4:20, because Chicago had a ground hold (no more flights landing). By 4:15, we were a little concerned that our f light hadn't starting boarding, at which point our phones went off again, telling us that our flight had been canceled!  So we got BACK into line again to make more changes to our itinerary. The American Airlines agent basically said that we should avoid Chicago at all costs, as they had 45-50+ mph winds today and tomorrow. So we have been re-routed, and this is our newest itinerary.


1) At 8:45 CST we will leave MSP for Dallas-Forth Worth, arriving somewhere around 11 CST.
2) After a 6-hour layover in Dallas, we leave for Madrid around 5:30 CST, getting there at 9:30 a.m. local.
3) We leave for Malaga at 11:00 or so, and arrive just before 1 p.m. Malaga time.

After getting our new itinerary, we figured out where we were going to stay the night. We had the AA representative get us some vouchers for the Days Inn, and called Carolyn back. Gustavus paid the difference between the cost and the vouchers' value, and then also agreed to reimburse us for dinner. There was a Chili's right next to our hotel, so we all walked over there together and enjoyed some laughs and some good Mexican food. After getting back to the hotel, we went for a swim in the hotel pool, and started to get ready for bed in the last hour or so. We have to get up early to catch our shuttle back to the airport tomorrow that leaves at about 6:15 a.m. But we're all teachers after all, so we are used to getting next to no sleep!


In summary, our spirits are still high, we're all very excited to get to Spain, and are pretty much just enjoying the adventure that has been laid out in front of us. We may not feel that way when Deb Sandquist picks us up from the airport in Malaga after traveling for almost 36 hours, but we will do our best! 


Thanks for reading, and I'm sure someone else will follow up with a much less verbose post tomorrow. Wish us luck and hope for better weather on Thursday and Friday.