Travel Stupidity

So I'm home from the Canaries again, but as with most of this trip, it couldn't help itself but end in some sort of travel stupidity. So here we go.

On Sunday afternoon after a spectacularly late night out with Kerry and Suzie, I raced around packing and climbed into the cab to head to the airport and go home. The airline had changed the flight time to an hour later so I had plenty of time and my trip home started out well enough with the airline checking my surf board bag in without any additional charges (Yeah!). So bag checked and tickets in hand I headed to the gate. So far, so good.

Unfortunately it all went downhill once I arrived in Barcelona. Although I didn't know if for a good hour. When I arrived I took a look at the flight board to see where I needed to go. Checked the time and thought, 'Oh good! Now, I've got 90 minutes to sit, grab a drink, make a phone call or two and write some emails." Which is exactly what I did, I figured with a 90 minute layover I could spare a little time to relax before heading to the gate. So 60 minutes later, I stroll casually up to the gate to find absolutely NO ONE there. Yup, somehow I hadn't realized that Barcelona was actually an hour ahead of where I was coming from. Instead of an hour and a half layover I had actually only had half an hour. And there were no more flights to Frankfurt that evening. Brilliance.

So after some panicked racing around the airport and some heavy negotiating on flight prices (they originally wanted to charge me for a full ticket at 742 euro, but I got them to do a ticket change for 98 euro instead), I hauled myself to a hotel for a few hours sleep before heading back to the airport at 5am to track down my luggage. An utter disaster, but it all worked out in the end.

Hard to believe I'm sure, but in all of the travel I've done in the last year I have never come close to anything quite this ridiculous. Oh well, lesson learned. I'll never, ever do this again. At least I'm finally home.