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Well I'm back from my cruise through Italy and it was completely amazing. The sights to see were astounding and I wish we could have spent more time in each of the towns and places we visited. I would hope to go again some time in my life because it was such a terrific trip.
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We had quite a setback on the way there though. (begin rant+complaining... eesh..)
We were scheduled to leave two days before the cruise set sail so we could spend a day and a night in Barcelona, seeing Gothic Cathedrals and Flamenco dancers, but that was ruined by the airlines. We arrived at the airport about two hours before the flight was due to take off and it would have been plenty of time had there not been a bomb scare at the airport..We didn't know this until later in the trip. We were told in the first place that we arrived too late and our tickets were overbooked and given away for the 6:15pm flight, and we would be on standby for a 9:15 flight(11 people on standby DOES NOT WORK!) Needless to say, they couldn't fit us on a 9:15 flight, and they didn't have any other flights until 7pm the next day. The airline company paid for a hotel and meal vouchers for us which would have been fine had we not had to be somewhere for something that we had reserved and paid for. With nothing else to do, we had to take it and we spent the night in a hotel(with no luggage mind you). The next day we got to the airport extra early to make sure things were ok.
Ok so you think things would be alright now.. nope!
We got there at 12:30(had to leave the hotel @ 12:00) with the flight due to leave at 7pm. We checked in and waited at the gate for our flight to show up. We sat and watched as two flights to Hong Kong and one to Texas flew out and then ours showed up. Barcelona it said! Fantastic! We used all of our food vouchers and waited until boarding time. We were in line to board with boarding tickets in hand specifying seat numbers and they told us that we weren't on this flight. Immediate panic set in as this was the last flight we could make before we would miss the cruise ship. We ran to the service desk and they said that we would not make it on this flight. With 11 people complaining and a line of people watching, this was quite a sight to see at the service desk. :blush2: They had been overbooking all of the flights to ensure a full flight and we were booted from our direct flight to Barcelona. They then put us on a transfer flight to Paris and then to Barcelona which would get us there with two hours to spare to find our luggage and get on the ship.
We arrived in Paris after a 7 hour plane ride and went to our gate for the transfer flight to Barcelona. The wait was short as we were late on the way to Paris for some other bogus delay I don't even remember. We ran there and they started boarding. We got on with no problem. The transfer flight was 1hr and 25mins, that gave us about an hour and 40mins to get to the boat once we arrived. We arrived and began collecting baggage..
DISASTER AGAIN!
We had 12 bags to collect and only 10 came off the belt. We ran to the service desk and questioned it and they said if you didn't find your bags, they can be delivered to the ship. We figured ok we'll go to the ship and collect them there when they bring them. Everybody was ok except for the two who's luggage it was, being that they've worn the same clothes for 2, now going on 3 days..
We get to the ship and we're all set. We figured luggage would come after we had dinner. We went back to the rooms and there was no luggage. The service desk said it would have to be flown to our first port in Nice. (I'm going to shorten this whole problem here). Arrived in Nice, no bag. Told us next port(Florence). No bag in Florence, bag was in Nice. Next port was Rome. We arrived in Rome, bag had been there since 9:15 the day before, nobody said anything or picked up the bag, we left Rome, bag would not be sent the next day because the airport is too far(Naples/Capri) so it would go to Palermo(Sicily).
To cut it short, the bags arrived on Thursday at around 8pm. The trip would be over and we would leave the ship on Saturday. Useless.. They had to buy clothes from the shops(they wouldn't help us with any laundry vouchers, they wanted $40 to wash a bag of clothes) and hadn't seen their luggage since they left it in the airport on Thursday the week before. In addition to that, one of the bags was broken when it got to the ship.. lol.. great.
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While we had all those problems, we still managed to have an awesome trip. I took 1350 photos(teasers below. I'll have them all on a photobucket in the next few days), my girlfriend won a $1200 bingo pot, we saw things we had only seen in books before(and they really don't give the actual place justice at all) and we had arrived safely after all of the dilemmas we dealt with.
If you want to see amazing sightseeing, stop down the coast of Italy. I was amazed at every place we went. Everything was breathtaking.
Here's some photos of the trip. I shot all 1350 in RAW+Jpeg so I'll have all of the PP'd shots on the photobucket in a few days.
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Originally Posted by SpeedingSphere
