Thursday, March 19, 2020

June 30, 2019 – Dover, UK – Mostly Sunny – 60s

Our cruise is complete and finally, there is some warmth and sunshine.  This is where we went.


I was up in the buffet at 5:30 AM and managed to get some oatmeal and scrambled eggs and a biscuit.  That was all I needed.

We got to the meeting point five minutes early and Stephania told us that Red 5 had already left the ship.  We found our luggage right away and walked the short distance to our bus for the transfer to Heathrow.  The bus left on time and the ride to LHR took a little less than two hours.  However, as we were making our way to the airport, I got an alert from American Airlines that our flight, AA91, was delayed three hours and would not be departing until after 6 PM.



A scant five minutes later, a second alert told us that our flight had been CANCELLED

We dragged our luggage into Terminal 3 and found the American Airlines bays.  The cancellation of AA91 had caused quite a mess with people lined up at Customer Service trying to rebook and deal with the issue.  I had already rebooked on the AA App so we did have a flight but it was for tomorrow.  We got in the line in the slight chance that there would be a way to get out today.  It look almost two hours to get to the agent only to be told that the only flight today would connect in Miami and would get us home after 11:PM tonight.  We were tired and decided against that – instead we requested hotel, meals, and transport for tonight and tomorrow.  We were set up at the Crown Plaza Hotel with tickets on the Airport Hoppa H1 Bus and dinner and breakfast at the hotel.

We lugged our bags (using the free luggage trolleys) to the Hoppa meeting point (a fair distance) and headed to the hotel.  The Crown Plaza looked like a minimum security prison 


from the outside but the lobby was nice and the rooms were nice.  The big issue with the hotel is that it is shabby and could use either new carpeting or a major cleaning.  On the plus side, there was bottled water in the room.

We rested up in the room – the lobby was full of air travelers and noisy.

We went to dinner in Orwell’s Restaurant and picked our meals from their special "delayed traveler’s menu" – I had the Fish and Chips and Ellen had the Marguerita Pizza.  They were both OK - not spectacular but free.

We went back up the room and rested us – another early day tomorrow.

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