Hi friends. We just got back from a European cruise with Jason’s family and wanted to share some of the details of our journey. Maybe you can commiserate, or maybe you just want a good laugh. Either way, read on.
The Cruise
This all started when Jason’s mom decided she wanted to go on a cruise with the family for her birthday. Someone else wants to take us on a cruise for their birthday? I’m, yeah, sign us up for that. We’ll talk more about the cruise in another post (and talked about cruise prep here), but the TL;DR is that it was amazing and checked off many of the Scandinavian countries on our list of places to see.
Our Itinerary
Fortunately for Jason’s family, because they live on the East Coast, they got a direct flight from Philadelphia into Copenhagen on the way there, and then flew from Helsinki to Philadelphia with a quick layover in Copenhagen on the way home. Cool for them, right? But, as we’ve discussed earlier, because we live in the middle of the country, we have more layovers. Great.
Our original itinerary was to go from Springfield to Chicago to Toronto and then into Copenhagen (we try to keep our layovers mostly in North America, so we aren’t so brain-dead by trying to change planes in Europe after not sleeping). On the way home, we were supposed to go from Helsinki to Munich to Denver and then to Springfield. While it’s true that we started in Springfield and landed in Copenhagen, and then started in Helsinki and finally made it home, that’s about the end of the similarities between our original and changed itineraries.
On the way to the cruise, we went to Springfield with plenty of time to make our flight. And then we waited. And waited. And…waited. Delays, again. In the end, by the time we would have gotten to Chicago, we’d have missed our connection to Toronto. So, as we’ve done plenty of times before, we scoured Google Flights and the United app for alternative routes and found one on Swiss Airlines. It went from Chicago to Zurich and then up to Copenhagen, so we just had to get to Chicago, and eventually did. After multiple calls to United, we got our itinerary changed. That was all fine and well and mostly uneventful, with us arriving in Copenhagen only a few hours later than we were originally supposed to. Although Tasha arrived before Jason since she was in the back of the plane and he was in the front. Ha.
The Hilton Family of Hotels
We’ve mentioned before how we like to stay in Hilton hotels as much as we can when we travel (except when we stay in B&Bs, which we also strongly recommend). Mostly that’s because it’s a consistent brand, experience, and being a member of Hilton Honors gets us all sorts of perks. But also, they have so many different types of hotels, and we’ve explored most of them. We just had our first top-tier experience at a Waldorf Astoria hotel (for free!). When Jason was still in graduate school, and we had, well, let’s call it a more economical budget, we often stayed at their Hampton Inns and Suites, because they’re reasonably priced, include breakfast, and are almost always in the places we’d go. These days, we stay in many of their Tapestry and Curio Collection hotels, which are more boutique-style hotels, often in renovated buildings in interesting areas (yay history!). Of course, we also frequently stay at the flagship Hilton hotels, too. We also love a Garden Inn and the Homewood Suites or Embassy Suites when we need more space. More recently, Hilton and others have expanded their portfolio of more budget-friendly hotels, with the opening of the Tru and Spark hotel brands. These hotels have fewer amenities, aren’t in as ideal locations, and aren’t in fancy buildings, but they’re also considerably less expensive while still giving you a clean, safe night at a Hilton family hotel.
I say this not to advertise to Hilton (but if Hilton wants to talk, we’re open to it), but because it serves as a useful scale to explain our journey home from the cruise. Curious? Read on.
Our Journey Home
Okay, so remember the original plan: Helsinki to Munich to Denver to Springfield. Technically, this is still the route we took, but it looked a little different than we’d expected.
A month or so before our cruise, we happened to look at our fight itinerary and noticed one flight leg was missing. No notice from the airline, just…gone. It turned out Lufthansa, the Star Alliance member we were flying with on that route, had canceled the flight. So, we did what we do and found an alternative. But to avoid a really early flight that morning, we decided to stay a night in Helsinki, then cut our trip short, take an evening flight to Munich the next day, stay there for the night, and then head home the next day, but maintain the layover in Denver.
When in Helsinki, we stayed at the fantastic Waldorf Astoria Helsinki. For those who don’t know, the Waldorf Astoria hotels are among the highest tier of hotels in the Hilton family brand and are far fancier than we usually opt for. But we had a free reward night, and it happened to cover the entire cost for the night, so why not? And the Waldorf is a fair description of our brief time in Helsinki, which is to say it was very nice, easy, uncomplicated, slightly more expensive than our usual trips (honestly, have you seen food prices in Scandinavia?) and just worked without any issues.
After leaving Helsinki, we hopped a flight to Munich, where we stayed at the Hilton Munich Airport hotel. Was it as fancy as the Waldorf? No. But it was still very nice; we knew exactly what to expect, and we got upgraded to a suite. Woo! The same was true for our flight from Helsinki to Munich, and our flight to Denver the next morning. Everything was just as it should have been. Easy, relaxing, and an overall enjoyable experience (our first A380!).
But then we got to Denver, which is where everything changed. Originally, we had a 3.5 hour layover, which was intentional because we had to go through Customs and Passport Control, and even with Global Entry, we’re never really sure how long it’ll take. So, we opt for slightly longer layovers and then head to an airport lounge until our next flight.
And this is how things went. Normal. Then we got to our gate about 25 minutes before our flight and waited. Delayed. What? Bad weather, or so they told us. But when we looked at the radar, it just looked like rain. *shrug* So we waited. Then, delayed again. Same reason. Delayed AGAIN. What? No clear answer. No plane at the gate. Turns out our plane had made a diverted landing at a different airport because of the weather. It finally rolled in 7 hours later (it does exist!), and they started the boarding procedures.
And then the gate agent disappeared down the jet bridge to the plane and, when she came back, wasn’t smiling. WTF, mate? What she didn’t really want to tell us was that, as a result of being delayed so many times, our entire flight crew was timing out; they were running up against their legally allowed time limit for actively working. So then they tried to find us a new flight crew. Unfortunately, at this point, even if this did work out, we were scheduled to get into Springfield after midnight, and few of us were confident there would be a ground crew that late.
In the end, that didn’t end up being an issue because they never found us a new flight crew, so they delayed the flight again until the next morning. Now we’re scrambling to find a hotel for the night because we all know we aren’t the kind of people who sleep in airports and had already been awake over 24 hours. #sorrynotsorry What was available? Spark by Hilton, 12 miles away (because everyone else was staying in Denver that night too and everything closer was booked up by now, except the $600 airport Weston, naturally). I want to be clear about this: there was absolutely nothing wrong with the Spark hotel. It was exactly what it was designed and built to be. But it wasn’t what we wanted, nor what we’ve gotten used to over the past few years #hotelsnob, and so it was a somewhat disappointing end to our very long day. On the plus side, it was clean, and everything worked just fine, even if the soap and shampoo in the shower were nearly out and the conditioner was completely out. Still, the fall from our earlier experiences at the Waldorf and Hilton hotels is a fitting description for our experience in Denver.
The Conclusion
In the end, things worked out just fine. We boarded our flight to Springfield the next morning (after a slight delay due to a late flight attendant) and got home in time for Tasha to make it to her chiropractor appointment, which is a necessity when we get back from traveling.
Did it go the way we’d expected? Certainly not. But we still got to experience a Baltic cruise with Jason’s family and had a great time, so it’s hard to feel slighted. Still, and as we’ve said before, it underscores the reality that travel rarely goes according to plan and flying seems to be more of a problem as time goes on, but if you stay calm, can be flexible, and know where to look, there are lots of ways to get out in front of those disruptions to keep you on your journey.
Happy travels!
