DAY 10: Granda -> Barcelona -> London Heathrow -> Somewhere in the sky
Today is a waste of my time..... and I really had plenty to waste!
I woke up early in the morning (really early) and went to the "secret" bus stop I managed to locate last night and waited for the airport bus. As I had many connecting flights today I couldn't afford to miss the first one. The airport bus was late and was slow and took lots of detour before reaching the airport. (typical for all airport buses)
If you were lucky enough to read my whinings throughout you would have remembered due to the pilot strike of Air Iberia, I had to purchase a separate ticket from Vueling for my flight from Granada back to Barcelona.
Checking in with Vueling was a breeze and then I noticed that many Iberia passengers did not aware of the cancelled flight and was stuck there. I went to speak to a Cantonese speaking family (who happened to be Americans) and helped them out by suggesting them to buy the Vueling tickets first and claimed back later in Barcelona. So at the end they got on the same plane as I did. (I bought mine at EUR 169 a few days ago, and now they were paying EUR 260+ each)
Breakfast was again bought and taken during the flight. For EUR 4.5 I got a "set breakfast"- a sandwich and a cup of tea. The plane was on schedule and left at around 09:40 and arrived in Barcelona at around 11:00ish.
Now my next flight was supposed to be at 16:40 (from Barcelona to London) so I had plenty of time. I thought maybe I could even left my luggage at the airport and quickly popped out to Barcelona to visit Montjuic.
But before that, I had to straighten oute my business with Air Iberia, once and for all... i.e. CLAIM for a refund!
So I immediately went to the Air Iberia ticket counter and queued up for the refund. The American Chinese family (the daddy) was directly in front of me in the queue. After experiencing (again) the expected effiency of the Spanish staff, the daddy finally got served and he managed to get a refund. To him he didn't lose out because the original ticket he paid for in Iberia was equally expensive to the amount he paid for Vueling. So he was quite happy and left.
Now it was my turn. So I asked for a refund. The refund was no problem and I got EUR60 back for my original cancelled flight. Next when I told them I had to buy another ticket (and paid an extra EUR 100) because of that strike so as not to miss the connecting flight, the manager came and said to me that was my own problem and she refused to do any refund or even politely apologized.
After about 15 minutes of arguing to no vain, I finally asked her for her name and she said to me, 'If my name could solve your problem, then here it is' and wrote down her name. I left in disgust and had never come across a sales manager being so rude at all and she had no intention to apologize even if her company was at fault! As Mr. Andy Lau always says, '今時今日咁既服務態度點得?'
So I decided to take this matter further and went to the customers relationships office. The staff on duty was more friendly but said he could not help me but gave me an email address for me to send the compliant.
Still furious but could do nothing, I decided to check in the baggage at Iberia check-in desk. (Becoz it was a code share flight, Iberia was operating for BA on this flight from Barcelona to London heathrow)
The staff there told me she couldn' find the flight. Even more furious I went to the BA ticket office and the lady told me the original flight operated by Air Iberia at 16:40 was cancelled too, that's why the Iberia staff couldn't find it! Absolutely amazed by how the Iberia staff couldn't get anything right (at least she could have told me it was cancelled and not missing), the BA lady offered me another flight operated by BA themselves@18:30.
Having checked-in everything it was already near 14:00 and it had absolutely destroyed any plans to get out of the airport, so plan B was executed instead -- "Last minute souvenir shopping"
and so the rest of time at the Barcelona airport was spent in lunch (I had real tortilla again this time!) and souvenir shoppings, including getting a LOEWE coins bag for my colleague!
Even plan B couldn't last me the whole day until my flight at 18:30, and 電車男 won't save me from the boredom neither, as 1) I have just finished that. 2) I am not on a train anymore... maybe 飛機男? 3) The battery just could not last that long......damn!
So the rest of the day was spent sitting, walking around the airport until I finally boarded the plane at around 18:00. Barcelona airport has a "special" feature that the domestic and international terminals are all mixed up. So if you took the wrong escalators for domestic departures, you could bypass the customs and immigrations.... not really a bright idea, but when I realized there were no passport controls it was already too late and I had to board the plane! Just hoped that in future I could still get into Spain and would not be treated as an illegal stay-over.
Arrived at London in ~20:00 and my next flight back to Hong Kong was 22:15, so basically the time was also spent in the duty free shops. The twin-pack Moet et Chandon was really cheap there but I didn't think I could sneak past the customs (actualy I think I could if it is HK customs!) with 2 bottles so I decided to leave them.
The flight back to Hong Kong was no thrill. The whole flight was packed with high school students going home. It reminded me of the good old days during the summer break when we were all excited to go back to Hong Kong after a boring academic year in UK. But nowadays one thing was different: A lot of the parents also went back with their children. I actually talked to an "Auntie" during the long flight and she went and lived in England just for the sake of staying with and watching her sons while the father still worked in HK. Such a pair of lucky kids with a great mom.
My foot prints: Granada airport, Barcelona Airport, Heathrow Airport terminal one and their aircrafts.
Stay: BA27, 30D
PS The first chinese food I tried after the trip was the cup noodles on my flight back to HKG......Ahhhhh~ Yummy! If only the pot noodles is made in HK and not made in China...
