Stranded!

In December, Joe attended a conference in Belgium to present a paper. As with most of Joe's conferences, we made this one into a trip for both of us to enjoy. Joe flew out on Wednesday evening, with the plan for me to follow on Thursday and we would both come home on the Monday.

As you may remember, however, there was quite a bit of snow in Europe in December which I was in love with. In love with until it began to cause quite a lot of drama in airports across the continent and the UK and that chaos posed some potential disruption to our travel plans. For the entire week leading up to the trip, we wondered, would we be able to go on our trip? Wednesday came and Joe made it to Belgium without incident (easy peasy, lemon squeezy, as one of my Sunday School kids would tell me). I too made it to Belgium the next day but not without enduring what seemed to be the longest, slipperiest, fish-tailing-est landing and journey to stop I have ever experienced, all in near white-out conditions. Seriously, people on the plane were so quiet and everyone kept looking at each other with nervous, wide eyes. I still really cannot believe they landed the plane.

But, landed we did and I eventually made the bus then train then taxi journey to the hotel where I met Joe and from where we enjoyed three perfect days in Belgium (more on this on a later post). Somewhat naively, we thought all travel drama was behind us.

Monday morning, however, we woke early to check out and make our way to the airport. I went to check in online only to discover that the airport was closed and the flight canceled. Not good. Because we fly the cheap airline, there aren't that many flights available. The next flight was 60 hours later and more snow was predicted every day--meaning we could easily miss that flight and be stuck in Brussels until Christmas Eve, when the next flight was scheduled. We quickly looked into other options--other airlines and the nearest airport. All no-gos. The main Brussels airport eventually closed as well and flights were well over 500. So, we got creative and came up with the following (surprisingly affordable) plan home:

• Walk to Brussels North Train Station
• Take train from Brussels to Amsterdam Central
• Spend evening and next day in Amsterdam
• Take speed boat ferry from Amsterdam to IJMuiden (small island near Amsterdam)
• Take overnight, large ferry from Amsterdam to Newcastle, England
• Take bus from Newcastle port to Newcastle Train Station
• Take train from Newcastle to Edinburgh (after happily discovering that trains are, in fact, still running from Newcastle to Edinburgh.
• Gratefully accept ride home to flat from concerned friend with car (who will patiently and kindly wait at the station when the train ends up being 45 minutes late due to snow delays).
  

If you were counting, that was 8 steps, and included all modes of transport, except for our originally intended: foot, bus, car, train, and boat. And, we arrived home only 51 hours after we were originally meant to return! It was all a bit dramatic, but honestly, we couldn't have been happier with the outcome: we never got stuck in an airport, we got to see another city, and had a relatively leisurely journey home. More on our wintry holiday to come....