Stranded!

Photo from: News.Sky.com

Day 1: Thursday April 15th: Ash cloud envelops the UK.  No worries, it will blow over soon.  We stay positive as they hand our luggage back to us at our stopover in Athens.  We land a free stay in the posh Sofitel Airport Hotel and check-in to find that we get free dinner. Extra Bonus!

Day 2: Friday April 16th: Jesse stands in line for 2 hours with sweaty, smelly, pushy Greeks to find out that the earliest flight back to London takes off from Athens in 8 days! Jesse comes back and sleeps most of the day away in depression. On the bright side, we still have three free meals a day and a nice comfortable hotel room. Jesse thinks we may lose it at any moment and insists that one of us stay in the room at all times.

Day 3: Saturday April 17th: Rose and I stand on the corner waiting for a bus that never comes to take us to the beach. We decide to head back into central Athens to go shopping, Rose for clothes and Jesse for Mythos Lager. We spend the evening glued to the TV watching the same report that UK airspace is closed again. We cut down our line standing time from 3 hours to 1 hour by going at 11:30pm to try to get on standby for the earliest flight out.

Day 4: Sunday April 18th: After breakfast we are stunned to hear that we need to vacate our hotel room because Aegean is no longer paying for any more meals or lodging. We stand in line for over 3 hours to find out that Aegean is no longer responsible for us and it is OK that we are getting kicked out of our hotel room because the other airlines are doing it too. Funny thing is that when we head back to the hotel to get our stuff, the other airlines are still housing and feeding their customers. We are refugees now. Jesse makes friends with the bouncer at the buffet and he lets us in for dinner. We eat like kings! Then we head over to sleep in the airport. We are not so kindly kicked out lounge where we are resting and head back to the hotel to wait for our standby flight to Rome.

Day 5: Monday April 19th: By the grace of God, we make the standby flight to Rome! We arrive to complete chaos at the airport. People have been living there for days and territories are fiercely defended. There are no rental cars in the whole of Rome so we board a bus to find a hostel. During the bus ride the heavens open up and intense hail begins to pelt the bus. An angry African women tells the bus drive to wait it out and he kindly ushers her off the bus. I don't think she made it. We find a dingy hostel and pray for a rental car.

Day 6 Tuesday April 20th: This morning finds us back at the Rome airport, dirtiest airport ever, in line to rent a car. Standing in line for 2 hours pays off and we finally have the keys to our car! Praise the Lord! Now we just have to drive 1100 miles to Calais, France. Our journey takes us through Italy, Switzerland, and into France. After driving 12 straight hours, we pull over at a rest stop and try to grab some sleep in the car.

Day 7 Wednesday April 21st: We awake at 4am freezing. Two hours later we are on the road again with our sights set on making it the ferry in Calais. By 1pm we have made it to the overcrowded port. Rental cars are strewn all over the port. 3 hours later we are relieved to be sailing toward the cliffs of Dover after paying three times the price to cross the channel.  We are used to waiting now. It takes an hour for the bus to deliver us to the train station. 4 hours and three trains later, we arrive in Taunton at 2230.  We look like the refugees we had become, but we have our friend Russell to pick us up to bring us home and neighbours to run outside to give us hugs and food as we pull up to our home!!