The trip from Hell!!!

We got up on Tuesday morning and checked the departure of our flight on the Internet. It had a 3 1/2 hour delay, since the flight from Houston to Frankfurt had been late leaving. I called Continental in Frankfurt and even though everybody knew that the flight was late, they insisted that we had to be there for normal check in two hours ahead of normal flight departure or we could loose our seats. We had a connecting flight in Houston to go to McAllen, which at this point we would miss. So I asked the lady on the phone about a hotel voucher, since it was the last flight to McAllen that night and was told I had to talk to somebody at the airport about that.

So we arrived at the airport at around 11 am and checked in. At this point the plane is supposed to leave around 5:30 pm. I spoke to the lady at the counter about our dilemma of most likely missing our connecting plane in Houston and were told that Continental was definitely not giving out hotel vouchers. My blood pressure was rising, but the people in Frankfurt are actually from Star Alliance and not Continental, so I figured I would take that fight up with Continental in Houston. However, we were given a 20 Euro food voucher each and a pass to the Lufthansa lounge, which also serves some food and beverages. Security checks really were not so bad, specially after what had just happened in Detroit and we managed to pass the time until boarding. What a mess that was!! We could have actually left at 5 pm, if the ground crew would have started their security check for the transit passengers a little bit earlier and then it took forever for them to figure out who from standby could actually get on the plane. But eventually, we actually left Frankfurt and were on our way.

The 10 hour flight was pretty much uneventful and we actually made up some time. We were supposed to land at 8:40 pm CST time and our connecting flight was at 9:24 pm. We bolted out of the plane, practically ran to immigration, which seemed to be in the last corner of the airport and got through there fairly fast. Next stop was picking up the luggage and going through customs. At the baggage area was a temporary Continental counter and to our surprise they had already booked us on the first flight out of Houston the next morning, had a hotel voucher for us as well as two $12 food voucher. They totally took the steam out of my sail, but at that point that might not have been a bad thing. We had been up for a about 21 hours, with maybe 2 hours of sleep in the plane. We got our luggage pretty quick and went on to customs with 20 minutes left to our next flight. The lady wanted to chat a bit, but once we explained our dilemma she let us go without checking our luggage. On we went to the Continental transfer counter and dropped our luggage back of.

We were told that we had to go through security again, which means taking of shoes, jackets, taking computers out of the bag and no liquids in the backpack. I of course forgot to take the two bottles of soda out of the backpack, but the lady was nice enough just to take them out and throw them away. I still have to put my shoes back on and we have about 8 minutes left to make it to the gate. Doug started running ahead and I followed as fast as I could. We saw that there was still an attendant at the gate and started waving to make sure that they don't close the door. We made it with one minute to spare until I realized that I lost my purse somewhere after the last security check and I can't get on the plane now. I told Doug to stay put and I started running back the way we just came. By now I am utterly exhausted and about to breakdown and cry. However, adrenaline is flowing and I found by purse fairly fast, ran back, waving my purse above my head to let them know I found it as I am running out of air.

We made the flight, arrived in McAllen one hour later to find out that our luggage had not made it. I am so glad that Donna and Grant picked us up, since by now we have been up for about 23 hours and I would not want to drive anymore. I don't ever want to have to go through a trip like this again!!!!