Newstocks

Delayed

Thanks to the snowstorm currently hitting the East Coast, our flight to Atlanta this morning was cancelled. As there are no more Bermuda flights from Atlanta until Thursday, Delta put us on a flight to Boston tonight, and on a flight to Bermuda tomorrow morning. Bobby and Verna were put on different, later flights. So last night we spent a couple of hours on hold trying to speak to someone at Delta in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to all get on the same flights. Followed by another hour trying to sort out hotels. We finally got to bed at 1am.

So today we checked out of the Animal Kingdom Lodge and moved to the hotel at the Florida Mall. Bobby and Verna decided to wait until Thursday to fly back in order to avoid going all the way to Boston, and will stay here until then. Mandy, Aidan and I will still go to Boston tonight, however - assuming that flight isn't also delayed because of the snow, which hit Boston today.

Fingers crossed Aidan sleeps on the flight, which at 3 hours is longer than the flight from Bermuda to Atlanta.

All in all, it's a bit of a pain. But at least it meant we didn't have to get up at 5am this morning. Good job we tried to check in online last night though, otherwise we wouldn't have found out about the cancellation until we got to the airport this morning!

Orlando

Arrived in Orlando last night. Aidan wasn't feeling well before we boarded the plane in Bermuda, and had a bit of a meltdown at the airport, followed by another on the plane itself. We were late taking off and had a headwind to contend with, so ended up with only half an hour to get to our connecting flight in Atlanta. We just made it, but our bags didn't. Fortunately, Aidan slept for the whole flight to Orlando.

Bags finally caught up with us at the hotel this morning, which was a relief.

Today, we've been at the trade show with granny and pop, checking out the hardware. It was there that I found my first free wi-first hotspot, allowing me to check out the full capabilities of my iPod Touch for the first time. I've checked my mail, had Google Earth show me exactly where I am, got Google Maps to give me directions back to the hotel, and written this post. It's pretty damn cool.

We're on International Drive for the next couple of days, then moving to Disney on Monday. Looking forward to seeing how many rides Aidan is willing to get on, and how many he enjoys when he does!

New York

Mandy and I spent five days in New York at the weekend, leaving Aidan at home to be spoilt by his granny and pop.

Weather was good (apart from one day when we got drenched by the remains of a tropical storm sweeping up the East Coast), food was good (only picked a sub-standard place to eat once) and shopping was pretty good too (though I was disappointed to discover that it's actually a little cheaper to buy Blu-ray and DVD from Amazon and have it ZipXed to Bermuda than it is to pick it up in a New York store). We got some culture in too, with trips to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim, and met up with several friends. All in all it was a thoroughly enjoyable, stress-free getaway.

Reassuringly, however, there were still plenty of things for me to moan about, including:

• Moronic admissions policy at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. If you have anything breakable in your bag (we had a bottle of rum we were giving to some friends as a present later in the day) you can't take it into the museum and can't check it in the cloakroom either. We were basically escorted from the museum by a security guard as a result. We were so mad (yes, even Mandy was pissed!), when we went back the next day we declined to pay the "recommended donation" of $20 each for admission and gave them $1 each instead, along with a letter explaining why. I'm sure they could care less, but hey, made us feel better.


• Ill-thought-out self-service check-in desks at JFK. You have to go to a computer terminal and enter a bunch of information to get your boarding pass, then join one of a multitude of lines to drop off your bags. However, the terminals and the lines were so close together it was all just a confused scrum with no-one to tell you where to go. We figured it out, but some people didn't, and ended up queuing for the bag drop before they'd got their boarding pass from the terminal.


• Rude flight attendant on the American Airlines flight back home. She was handing a glass of orange juice to Mandy to give to me, but let go of it before Mandy had hold. The juice went all over me and my book, absolutely soaking me. The flight attendant gave us a couple of napkins, then carried on serving drinks without an apology. We had to ask her for some more napkins, which still weren't enough to mop up the mess, but she'd gone on her way by that point. I went to the bathroom to clean up. When I was returning to my seat, I encountered her pushing the trolley down the aisle ahead of me, collecting empties. I waited behind her to get past. "Can you stand back a bit?" she snapped at me. As I was hardly right behind her, I lost my cool at this point. "Sorry, would hate to get in your way," I retorted. At this point she got right up in my face and told me she detected some "negative energy" from me. I told her I was unimpressed with her attitude after the drink was spilled on me. "That wasn't my fault," she said. "It was your girlfriend who dropped it". I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "What did you want me to do?" she continued. "Take you to the bathroom and wash you myself?". Congratulations, American Airlines, you have just ensured that should we have a choice we won't be flying with you again.

Double bummer

Bobby was admitted back into hospital last night.

He had a checkup with his GP yesterday who, on seeing his swollen leg, suspected a blood clot and sent him to emergency for tests. After a lot of waiting around he was finally admitted and will probably be there for the next couple of days. His leg was giving him a bit of pain, but he had a good night and was given some painkillers this morning, which have made him feel much better. I believe they're expecting to do an MRI sometime today.

Unfortunately, today Mandy and I were also supposed to be flying to New York for a long weekend without Aidan, who we were going to leave with his granny and poppa. Naturally, we've had to cancel. Fortunately the airline has given us a credit for the full cost of our tickets that's good until the end of this year, and the hotel didn't charge us for the late cancellation. The only money we're likely to lose is what we paid for tickets to La Boheme at the Met and the Broadway show Curtains.

Bit of a bummer all round.

Mixed messages

Spotted in a Target store in Atlanta. Confusing, much?