Today was supposed to be a nice, easy return home. It turned out to be anything but that. We woke at 5 am because our bus was to pick us up at 7:00 am. The bus did not arrive until 7:30 am. There were roughly 100 people on our double decker bus, and all of us were on the same flight back to London, which was good. We sat upstairs so we could enjoy the scenery, which was a bad choice, as it was boiling hot and only hot air was blowing out of the vents. It was roughly 15 degrees outside and I was wearing a tank top and still sweating on the bus, to give you a clue.
About an hour into our journey (total 3 hour journey to the airport) the boy right in front of me got sick, and it smelled so bad, I thought I was going to get sick as well. The heat just permeated the smell as well. So, the bus stopped for about 10 minutes so he could change clothes. While stopped the people on the top deck opened up the emergency hatches, we had been repeatedly telling the driver that it was too hot but he still had not done anything so we were all just trying to get any relief that we could. Of course he came up to the top of the bus, and shut them, telling us we could not have them open. Once back on the road, some people opened them back up anyways, we really needed the cool air at this point.
On the way to Saas Fee a week earlier, we made no pit stops in our 3 hour journey, today, when we are running an hour late, the driver decides to stop for 20+ minutes for a break. So, it was now 10:00 am (our check in time for our flight), and we are just getting back on the road, and we still have an hour plus journey left to the Geneva airport. We finally arrived around 11:00 am the airport, our flight is in 1 hour and it is international, not good. The driver dropped all 100 of us off (again about 1/3 of the plane on this bus) and we proceeded to go inside and check in. We could not find our check in terminal, AT ALL!!! Nobody at the airport could help us either. Finally, our tour guide came and found us, we were at the wrong terminal.
We walk to the correct terminal (about a 10 min walk), in which time we see the bus driver parking the bus in from of this terminal, we were not happy campers. We all trudged in to the check in desk, and our flight was CLOSED! Now, since it was a package deal we knew that they were not going to abandon 1/3 of their plane. We waited for them to open up the flight again and began the check in process. So, the Geneva airport has the worst layout I have ever seen. We had to take a shuttle from the check in area, over to the actual gate terminal, where we had to go through security and 2 passport checks. Finally, we had to then wait for a second shuttle that would actually take us to the plane. Our 12:00 departure was now pushed back to 12:45 at which time the captain came on and announced that we were going to have to wait another 40 minutes before we could take off. Greg and I were not even sitting together, so we really were not happy. I had a bratty kid sitting next to me the entire way, he kept staring at me, kicking me, putting his coloring book in my lap, and on and on.
Finally we had taken off, for our 1 hr flight to London, but it was well past lunch time and we didn't have much for breakfast so we were getting a little hungry. Once we took off the captain then announced that their food provider did not show up and therefore the crew had to scrounge around for food from other planes, and they were 40 short, so they needed volunteers to not eat. Greg and I were not willing to miss our lunch, since everything else had gone wrong, but there were enough volunteers and we did get to eat. Whew!
Oh well, all in all it was a GREAT trip that I would take again. We did finally make it home, and our dog sitter had already dropped the dogs off at our flat, so that made things even better for us, to see their wagging tails and all when we walked in.
Saas Fee is a "carless" town and all of the vehicles are small electrical cars:
We slept on Austrian double beds, which is just 2 singles pushed together, not very good:
My knees were completely black and swollen by the end of the week:
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