Follow Me Around the World

The following is why I really hate British Airways

So I am flying back from Amsterdam through Heathrow to JFK. I take easyjet (my first mistake) to london then BA back to JFK. EasyJet is late so when I get to London i miss my flight back to New York. I’m standing online at BA trying to get another flight. Keeping in mind there are other flights, but since I don’t have a cell in london I have to stand in line and wait. The line is pretty long and I wait about 45 minutes to try and get on another flight. Every single person ahead of me gets on another flight, which was leaving pretty shortly. When they get to me they say “sorry there is nothing we can do,” to which I respond “what are you talking about, all these people ahead of me just got on ANY flight leaving today?” They continue to go “sorry sir,” and eventually are like “well we can get you on a flight leaving tomorrow morning early, and put you up at the heathrow hilton for a night plus vouchers for dinner and breakfast. I go fine. The Hilton Heathrow is really nice. I mean it was like over 100+ pounds a night, the dinner was expensive and the breakfast was over 30 USD so I was like fine.

So I wake up at around 5am to get ready and check in for my 830 flight. 3 hours before blah blah, I wasn’t taking any chances. So we board the plane a little late, which was fine but this is when it all went downhill. You know when you first get on the plane the electricity isn’t going, hence no A/C, just maybe a little fan coming through? Well that is what we got for over 5 hours. So after waiting like 45 minutes to an hour, the pilot gets on the loudspeaker and goes “sorry we are having technical problems with the jetway, the electricity has gone out and we can’t detach from it, but don’t worry we have people working on it.” Another hour goes by, the pilot gets on “ok we have detached and we are on our way down the tarmac and getting ready for takeoff.” Good, but nothing happened, we are still sitting on the tarmac. Another half hour, pilot gets on “Sorry about the delay but we are having problems with one of the engines, but don’t worry engineers and technicians are on their way.” Another hour plus goes by, still nothing, sitting there in the hot, no A/C nothing. This is like hour 3 or more of sitting there, people are starting to get restless, and stir comes over the passengers. It has now been like four hours, we are all hot, tired (cause the flight boarded at like 830 and many of us got up real early), and to top it off they haven’t served us an ounce of food, water, snacks, nothing! Even for me, who is patient in times like this, I had a breaking point and it was slowly approaching. So finally they get the engine fixed, and the pilot assures us we are taking off.

Well that didn’t happen either, the pilot once again gets on the loudspeaker and says something I have never heard in my life “Sorry ladies and gentlemen, because there were so many delays (over 5 hours sitting on the plane) I am not allowed to fly the plane, I have run out of hours for the week, so we need to bring in a new pilot to fly, but don’t worry he’ll be here in 45 minutes”. At this point I start to get a little crazy. “Were they kidding me? I thought to myself. Was this really happening. Did the pilot just say “I can’t believe I have to tell you guys this, but I can’t fly?” Many of these questions passed through my head, and at that point I got up out of my seat yet again, paced around the aisles and then when I got towards the front of the plane overheard a few british guys talking about getting off the plane. It was almost like a coup was brewing to get off. The british guys were planning how they would get off this plane, and get on another flight. They were on the phone calling BA about other flights, working travel agents, family friends etc…Eventually one of the guys was like “there is a flight coming up at 430, let’s get on that flight.” At that point I chimed in and told them that I was down to get off and do whatever was necessary. Eventually the new pilot came, it took well over an hour plus and when the new pilot got on this british guys went off. They demanded to be let off the plane, and their were yet again rumblings pouring down the aisles. “Did that guy just ask to get off, well heck I want to get off, this plane is cursed, too many problems” were many of the thoughts and murmurs coming from the crowd. So finally, I get up there with the guys and say to this guy in a purple shirt that I wanted off as well. This guy turned out to be the new pilot, who went back and forth with me for about five minutes, claiming that once he settled in the plane would be off and going in 45 minutes. I said I didn’t care, I had a bad feeling about this plane, too many things going wrong, we haven’t been fed, it is real hot in here so I want out! He gave in to my demands and said that there would be a bus who would take us back to the airport and back to the BA terminal. I said “thank you,” gathered up my stuff and was on my way. When I got off the plane, I got on that next flight, this time demanding to get on and not just letting the BA counter screw me over yet again. I figured out that the reason why I got screwed the first time was because my ticket was bought using some real cheap online discount site and I think they just didn’t want to acknowledge the pay grade of it, because like I said before every single person had gotten on a non-full flight the day before me, and people after me and they didn’t give me an answer as to why.

So now I’m off the plane, waiting for my new flight to leave. I think it was around 130 or 2pm and the flight was leaving like 3pm or something. So this plane arrived pretty much on time, in to JFK and I had found out that the plane that supposedly was going to leave “in only 45 minutes” according to the new pilot left at like 430pm! It took them 9 hours to get that plane off the ground! So I guess all in all I sat on the plane from about 830-130, and that is why I will NEVER fly BA again.

Today was our final full day on the fun ship. We started off the day with our usual quick breakfast in the main dining room, gathered up our stuff and headed off for what would hopefully be a funfilled day.

We got in a shared taxi (which is always a mad rush once we get off the ship) and managed to snap a few of the touristy (welcome to ____).

We decided to head for a beach on the french side of the island AKA St. Martin. For those who didn’t know St. Martin/St. Maarten is one of the only islands that have two countries associated with them (France and Netherlands). The ride to the far side of the island took quite a long time as we had to manuever our way through the mountainous and hilly island. Our driver was pretty funny and was speaking in as many languages to us as he knew. These included Dutch, French, English and a bunch of other ones. It was quite impressive to say the least, it also made our 45 minute journey far more pleasant.

Our first stop was Orient Beach. Orient beach is known for one thing and one thing only…a portion of it is completely NUDE! When you arrive you see a huge sign saying “Welcome to Orient beach” with a picture of naked butts. Also has a sign that says “no cameras” in several languages. I mean it would be almost criminal to not at least take a stroll down the nude side of the beach after traveling this long to get here.

The nude beach was extremely interesting to say the least. The beach seemed to be filled with middle aged Americans, who were yes, completely NUDE. After taking a stroll back and forth we decided to head to the normal, non nude side of the beach and find a place to plop down.

This side was much more entertaining and exciting. Basically the beach was divided up by vendor. Each vendor had a bar/restaurant and a whole host of chairs. Some had umbrellas some didn’t. Some offered free drinks with an umbrella chair combo others didn’t. We walked down until we came to one we liked. This one offered some free drinks with a chair/umbrella combo (of course still insanely priced), but this beach had what I would think would be a very european feel to it. Granted, I have never really been to a beach in Europe (Nice doesn’t count as it was the winter and it is all rocky), but maybe this is how the beaches in St. Tropez are in France.

Anyway, we settled in to our area, got our “free” drinks and just enjoyed the beautiful, sunny, yet extremely hot day in here in lovely St. Martin. The water was crystal clear, blue, very warm, but didn’t have much of a skyline. It wasn’t like some of the other beaches we had been too. It almost had waves like a bay, nothing major but overall a very nice beach with very fine sand. From time to time, people from the nude side would stroll across us, not completely nude, but generally topless, both men and women. It is incredible who will go topless these days!

After a few more drinks, and watching people have fun on the jet skiis, I convinced Nicole to take another run on them. Since the beach was crowded with Cruise tourists, we had to wait about 2 hours to get on them and we rented them for the standard 30 minutes.

When we got on this jet ski, it definitely felt much faster, lighter and shiftier than the one we rode in St. Looocia. I was whipping it around, hair blowing in the wind with Nicole screaming in the back. Unfortunately, this ride wouldn’t end the same way as the last ride. At one point, I slowed down signficantly, almost to a dead-stop. Apparently, that isn’t the best thing to do while riding a jet ski especially after traveling at a fast speed. To make a long story short, our jet ski tipped over and we ended up in the middle of the sea. Nicole was flipping out, I was trying to keep her calm and roll the jet ski back on. Thank G-d we were wearing life vests, because they definitely saved our lives.

Another thing was that we were pretty far out from shore and it was probably hard to see us from the shore, so the guy who ran these jet skiis definitely did not see us tip. Luckily, a guy who had rented one saw us, came over to us, took Nicole back to shore, and got the jet ski dude to come get me. Lets just say this big black guy was NOT happy that we tipped over. He was screaming at me the whole way back to shore. At one point he told me that we should have known how to ride the jet ski (even though it was only our second time) and that he didn’t feel it was his responsibility to teach us how to ride this jet ski, which turned out to be a racing jet ski (which makes sense as to why it was so damn fast). Then, the guy tried to tell me that I broke the Jet ski and/or that I needed to pay him $50 because now he couldn’t rent it out until it was dried or some BS. I gave me a paper I signed which he claimed made me liable for the $50. It obviously did not and he was just trying to muscle me. I told him “this can’t be the first time someone has tipped over a jet ski and I’m sure it doesn’t break them if it does.”

He basic point was that now he couldn’t immediately rent it out, but I told him tough luck. After I left him, Nicole asked me what happened and I quickly said “grab your stuff and lets go, I’ll explain later.” So Nicole and I quickly grabbed our stuff and found a taxi back to Philipsburg which is the capital of the Dutch side, St. Maarten.

Downtown St. Maarten was really nice. There were a strung of restaurants and hotels that lined the Marina. We ended up finding a really great tourist shop tucked away in a corner street. For the first time the chatchkas were relatively affordable and not ung-dly expensive like every other place. The guy who ran the shop was actually from Hong Kong and had been living in St. Maarten for a few years.

After leaving the shop, Nicole and I were both really hungry. We strolled around and came to a place that seemed fairly local, with a vibrant and exciting ambiance. We took a table and saw that they had a great menu. It has fresh “pub” style food. We got some nachos and ordered main meals. As it turns out a fairly famous TV show was filming there and was checking out the food. We didn’t know them, but looked them up when we got home and they were on some cable network. We spoke with the owners for a while and profusely complemented them on their delicious food.

We both really enjoyed St. Maarten/St. Martin even after we almost died in the middle of the caribbean sea. It has a nice laid back feel to it, seems more developed then some of the other islands we went too, cleaner and not as shady as say Barbados. There is a nice marina in Philipsburg, with hotels and restaurants, and it is a place we would definitely return back too.

After eating we walked around and did a little more shopping, including a walk through a very affordable duty free shop. We snapped some photos along the Marina (one that came out really well). The last shopping we did was when I stopped at a handmade local cigar shop (with the people actually rolling the cigars. The guy who owned the shop was really cool and was actually preparing to run the NYC marathon. He asked me if where he was staying was safe and I told him no. It was in East Harlem and pretty far up Lexington Avenue. We chatted it up a little, I bought a bunch of handrolled cigars, a t-shirt and was off.

The walk back to the ship was long. It was getting late and we didn’t have much time to get back to the ship. We had to walk probably a mile to get back in the blazing sun. But as most travel guidebooks will recommend, try and be one of the last people on the ship to maximize your day at a port (and by the last few days we certainly were!).

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