November 7, 2010

So home with my laptop today I decided to start it up and see what the problem was with blogging on it. Lo and behold the menu bar is right on top where it belongs. Must be something with the shipboard Internet. So maybe we won't blog on the ship. I just hope when we travel to Alaska in May, everything will work. I will add the posts that I did in Word on the Trip

November 7, 2010

Today is Sunday and day 2 of our Journey. Yesterday was a bit as I had predicted on my last blog with a few minor differences. We of course had the bus ride to the airport, long wait at the airport, short jaunt up to Atlanta and then the differences begin. We had signed up for me to have a wheelchair in Atlanta and Barcelona. Well is seems that my experiences with wheel chair travels have gone south. I had problems with them on my last trip and they have continued to be problematic on this trip. Upon arriving in Atlanta they didn’t have me on the list but eventually produced a chair for me. The young man assigned to push me took me to a handy dandy elevator where he was greeted by a female attendant who informed him that the elevators on the “T” concourse (where we were heading) were out of order so he had to take me back up the elevator and then had to call someone else to push me all the way over. There I sat watching the rest of our group being pushed by on their way to Concourse T. Presently someone came pushed me to the end of this concourse where we took one of the people movers to our destination. We had a 4 hour wait for out next plane so our plan was to stop at a restaurant and have a hamburger and French fries. We stopped at Samuel Adams and finely were waited on after several people who came in after us. We ordered our burgers and watched the couple who had come in directly ahead of us be served burgers. At that point the waitress came over and told us they were out of burgers and would we like to try the buffalo chicken sandwich. Well we did and it was good but the point of this story is that the two who were ahead of us were eating our burgers. Good thing I am a pleasant person or I would have gone right over and grabbed the burgers away from them. Ok, nuff about the damned burgers. We finely caught our plane and after a long 9 hour flight (they had told us that it was only going to be 6 hrs but it was 9) we arrived in Barcelona. Then the fun began with the wheelchairs. There were 24 of us in wheel chairs and a most unorganized system I have never seen. I only wish I had had a video camera to capture this entire production on video. We all had to sit and wait for the rest of the passengers to disembark then we all moved to the front of the plane. They loaded us onto a people mover truck which elevated right up to the door of the plane. It only fitted about 7 of us at the time. Then they road us over to a door where one person would wheel one of us at the time, park us by the door and then go back and get the next person. Next move was to line up at the elevator (which only held one wheelchair) So he moved one person at the time and put us in a line then run back get the next person and line them up and so on and so on. Finely some of us got the idea and wheeled ourselves. This moved things along a little quicker. Presently Lee decided to wheel me and I drug the wheelie suitcase along. It was all quite comical. We all relayed ourselves through immigration and out to the area where Brenda, Leonard and Tom were waiting for us with our suitcases that they had pulled off the belt for us. We exited out through the door and the Celebrity (Cruises Ship) people were waiting for us. For some unknown reason this person and our wheel chair man whisked 7 of us away from the pack (we must have looked dangerous or something) and took us out to this enormous waiting area where no one was so we couldn't do any damage to anyone. We waited and waited and waited until finely someone came and got us and took us to the bus. A 30 minute bus ride got us to the ship where we had this long check on process. Then a long long walk up the gangway to the other end of the ship. We were able to drop off our hand luggage and got back off the boat to go to the duty free store and grabbed a couple of bottles of wine. Our state rooms were now ready for us so we collapsed for a short nap. By the time we got up our luggage had made it to our door and we unpacked and “feathered our nest.” Now we are all settled in We had a cocktail in the Martini bar then went to dinner, the show, a bit at the casino then finely made it to bed at 11:30. By now it had been something over 36 hours without sleep and I was so wound up I just couldn't sleep. That is until my head hit the pillow then I slept like the dead.
Until 9:00 Sunday morning. Now we had missed the sit down breakfast at San Marco restaurant so had to go up to the Buffet. I normally hate the buffet. I like to be served not have to grab a tray and carry it to the table. But I must say the meal was perfect. The eggs were cooked to perfection and everything else was just great.
Today is going to be the day for running into know it all, big mouthed old ladies. We were in the Captains Club area waiting for someone to come help us when this crazy lady came up and started asking about getting here boarding pass printed. She just kept on about it so I finely asked her what she was talking about. What boarding pass did she need? Well she was going to Ft. Lauderdale and had to fly home from there so she wanted her boarding pass. I said you mean to the plane. Yes that is what she wanted. I told her she couldn’t get that here she had to get that from the airport. The ship has nothing to do with that. She said oh yes she has had that done before. We finely figured out she meant getting the pass online so I told her she couldn’t get that until 24 hours before her flight. OH no she knew better. So I finely just walked away. The next crazy lady we ran into was in the lounge upstairs where we were trying to read when this loud mouth lady came in complaining well If they are going to have this they should have it when people weren’t all ashore. I say what are you talking about? Have what? Well the party she says. I said no there is no party going on here. We are just us trying to read. Lee said maybe she is in the wrong place. NO SHE KNOWS EXACTLY WHERE SHE IS. She has been on the ship many times before. You get this invitation to the elite club party. I said well do you have your paper with the invitation and it should have the time and place on it. She just kept going on about this special invitation party blah blah blah. Finely got tired of trying to talk to her so I buried my head in my book and ignored her. How do I attract these crazy people?