Rash, sit, Philly, overbooked

January 5, 2009
Our (me, my mom, and Olivia) first day of attempt at travel. I was a long, long day full of airports, not to mention the discomfort I felt from a newly formed rash on my face, maybe poison ivy from vine swinging? but who knows, I've never gotten poison ivy before. Anyways, the original plan was changed around five times. The night before the idea was to go to the Charlotte Douglas International Airport around 5:30 pm to try to catch a flight to London, however, around midnigh plans changed to go to the airport at 11am to head to Philadephia, due to the flights filling up. Philadephia was a much better option because they have three flights a day going to the UK rather than just one like Charlotte. However, once again flights even to Philly were becoming oversold, so in a frantic bolt we all piled into the car only to turn around upon reaching Wachovia and my mother realizing she forgot her debit card. Then the plan changed to catch the next flight which gave us an extra hour to finish up some last minute things, like eating, random packing, and cleaning. We left for good finally and arrived at the airport at 11:30am. We missed two flights to Philly and quickly came to realize that the flights were going to be full all day. So, it was time to call the employee line for help, and also to figure out where my checked bags were. The man that answered the call was a God-sent, he was very kind and looked up every possibility until he found out that a staggered route would get us there. We now were going to be off to Richmond, VA. We immediately went to the gate to check in just to stumble upon the fact that no one would be there for us for around an hour. So, we headed to get some lunch. We ended up at Chili's too and quickly retreated back to the D concourse after eating. At 4:15pm we were off to Richmond without any problems, so we thought... once we were in the air though, I realized that I forgot my brand new coat some where in the Charlotte airport. I couldn't believe it and felt it was lost forever. But God used this incident to remind me that He was taking care of things. As soon as we landed I got in touch with Chili's and they found my coat. Next I called my dad who happened to be leaving shortly for his own flight, fortunately the plane will wait for him, since he's flying it. So, he picked up my coat and delivered it, as he said "to the other side of the world", which is really just the other side of the airport to a currently boarding flight to Philadephia. Thank goodness the flight attendants took my coat without any questions. At the same time in Richmond when we reached the ticket counter the gate agents were talking about [us] "these people that had to come from Charlotte in order to get to Philadephia." And when they saw us approaching they surprised us by asking, "Are you the Urbans?" We made it to Philadephia and picked up my coat. Fortunately God interveined again. He also blessed us with the fact that my coat was going to be delivered 7 gates away from our departure gate. Which is a huge blessing because the Philadephia International airport is HUGE, we could have had a to walk over a mile just to get my coat, and I'm not exaggerating. But thankfully God proved once again that He is faithful. We did disappointedly not make a flight to the UK that night, and not from a lack of trying, we sat trying to get on 3 flights, and I even begged British Airways to check all their availability, sadly they were all full too. So, we had to get my bags from baggage claim and check into a hotel. Once again we come to find out God had better plans, had I or all of us gotten onto the plane my bags would have stayed in Philadephia, and I would have been out of clothes. Next it was time to find the shuttle to Quality Inn, well we were missed by the van, so I in my ankle brace and high heels with 90+lbs of luggage, ran down the street to where he did stop to get him to wait for all of us to get there. I'm sure everyone was quite entertained, especially when my bags slid, and the man almost left, except this lady yelled really loud to get the man's attention to tell him to wait for me. So, we made it to the hotel except apparently Quality Inn and Quality Hotel are not the same place. Due to the mix up they gave us a reduced rate lower than the AAA rate! So, there we are after a long day finally getting a shower and a bed, back to square one, where do we go from here to get where we want to go?