Reluctantly it was time to leave the beautiful Grand Cayman Island. We’ve had a few locations like this that we just aren’t ready to move on from yet, but flights booked it was time to begin the first leg of the journey home to Australia. Grand Cayman (via crappy Miami again) onto Los Angeles. We’re both getting to the stage now that we are a little sick of airports and flying. We’ve done over forty flights since June 2007.
We dipped our toes for one last time in the Carribean, had a leisurely breakfast, packed and regrettably we were off. 
The plane left on time and the highlight was flying over Rum Point from the air. We had to do the usual ridiculous collection of our bags in US Customs to get back on exactly the same plane to Los Angeles. By the time we cleared customs there wasn’t much time other than a few sips of champagne in the Admirals Club (American Airlines version of Qantas Club). We boarded the plane to LA for a 5 hour and 20 minute flight.
The sun had clearly set on our Caribbean adventure for this time, but we will be back. We know it!
Upon arrival in LA, that sickening feeling of “my bag isn’t coming out on to the carousel come over me!” To my utter disbelief, my bag did not arrive in LA, even though I physically placed in the connecting baggage area myself. The worst thing is that it didn’t get on the exact plane it just came off from. I was disappointed with the utter incompetence of American Airlines and surprised that it was a Oneworld affiliate with Qantas. I had to wait in line (this is a constant reminder of all our experience with this bunch of pricks) to get a lost luggage claim form.
I arrived in LA after a full eight months of travel and with one day to go before we travel back to Australia, with only a pair of dirty jeans, a smelly sweaty t-shirt and I will leave it at that. Unhappy… yes. (By the way Tan was wrapped as her bag made it!)
We dipped our toes for one last time in the Carribean, had a leisurely breakfast, packed and regrettably we were off. The plane left on time and the highlight was flying over Rum Point from the air. We had to do the usual ridiculous collection of our bags in US Customs to get back on exactly the same plane to Los Angeles. By the time we cleared customs there wasn’t much time other than a few sips of champagne in the Admirals Club (American Airlines version of Qantas Club). We boarded the plane to LA for a 5 hour and 20 minute flight.The sun had clearly set on our Caribbean adventure for this time, but we will be back. We know it!
Upon arrival in LA, that sickening feeling of “my bag isn’t coming out on to the carousel come over me!” To my utter disbelief, my bag did not arrive in LA, even though I physically placed in the connecting baggage area myself. The worst thing is that it didn’t get on the exact plane it just came off from. I was disappointed with the utter incompetence of American Airlines and surprised that it was a Oneworld affiliate with Qantas. I had to wait in line (this is a constant reminder of all our experience with this bunch of pricks) to get a lost luggage claim form.
I arrived in LA after a full eight months of travel and with one day to go before we travel back to Australia, with only a pair of dirty jeans, a smelly sweaty t-shirt and I will leave it at that. Unhappy… yes. (By the way Tan was wrapped as her bag made it!)
1 comment:
I remember flying to LA from Heathrow with a mate in 99. As we were sitting in our seat we watched his bag being removed from the plane (pretty ugly bright colour). We told the hosite, who said, that was impossible and many bags look alike (dumb tart).
Sure enough as we got to the US of A and passed the LA immigration nazis we found out that around 20 people were missing luggage.
After making the mistake of going outside for a smoke, the security nazi wouldn't let us back in to fill out the missing luggage form. End result after an hour, was that my mate collected a couple hundred bucks for his bag going missing - which they have to cough up by law for you to buy new clothes. It arrived several days later.
We never saw the business suit that he claimed was in his bag either for the meeting that he was never going to attend.
Keiran
Post a Comment