Well gang, your prayers really worked… we all got on the flights with our standby tickets and made it home safely on Monday! But of course there’s a crazy story behind it I’ll share in a bit!
We once again enjoyed the benefits of purchasing the “Key” program since it gave us a final sit down breakfast where we got served (you know how we love our food and service!) and also afforded us time to relax on the balcony and see the beautiful early morning view of the sun rising over Seattle. So after breakfast we grabbed our luggage and were quickly off the boat and in a taxi on the way to the airport.
So we were planning on connecting thru Chicago leaving Seattle around Noon since the direct flights were either too early or oversold. There were two red eye flights leaving Seattle late Monday around 11 PM but we were hoping not to take those.
As we’re on the way to the airport we check the flight and it looks like we may not get on the Noon flight but we’re crossing our fingers. We go to the gate for the Noon flight and we’re there almost 2 hours early but it just so happens that there is a flight ready to leave that is direct to Charlotte. Kathy goes up to ask if there are any open seats and they say the flight is wide open and gave us all First Class tickets!! So yes, your prayers were amazing!
The reason for all the open seats was this flight was supposed to go out late Sun night but it got cancelled due to bad weather and the few people they couldn’t reroute had to stay the night and take this flight. So they all cheered when the pilot announced we were ready for take off (and we cheered for our First Class seats!!).
The only glitch with this plan was that since we had already checked in to the Noon flight, our luggage was on the other flight. But fortunately we all had the Apple AirTags in our luggage (I highly recommend those!) that can track your bags (or anything) and just a little after we arrived in Charlotte our bags showed up so we swung back to the airport to get them.
The flight home was uneventful and we got another good pic of Mount Rainier while leaving Seattle.
We all agreed it was an amazing cruise and are ready to go back to Alaska. If you have the chance, put it on your bucket list!
Just to give you a teaser on our next trip, Kathy and I will be doing a 7 day cruise to Croatia in early October. Can’t wait for that one! We’ll be on a new cruise line we’ve never been on called Azamara. They are much smaller ships with a focus toward higher levels of service and an immersion into their destinations. The ship we were on this past week had 4,300 passengers where our Croatia one will be about 500! Should be interesting to compare the two!
That’s all for now! Take care all and thanks for traveling along with us!
The Wandering Italian 