It’s day 1 of our Iceland adventure and we are in er…Charlotte, NC!? The weather just didn’t cooperate today. Flash thunderstorms and high winds rolled through Charlotte just as our flight was scheduled to leave Knoxville. We were grounded for in Knoxville for 30 minutes before lift off and sat on the tarmac in Charlotte for another 10 minutes. To our dismay, these delays ate up 40 of the 45 minutes we had between flights. Luckily we were seated near the front and sprinted to the door as soon as it opened.
We hit Charlotte Concourse E running and flew to Concourse B-Gate 8 for our Boston departure. Will and Kim were ahead of us (faster runners) and grabbed the last 2 stand-by seats before the door closed. Yep, US Airways gave away the seats for all the weather delayed passengers to all the people who had been delayed on previous flights, there were probably 15 of us.
Angry and frustrated, we climbed in the airline service line and waited our turn to re-book our reservations. Getting upset with the ground crew was pointless so we bit our tongues as we considered our possible flights. As it turns out, getting to Iceland is not easy. After some options through Boston arriving at 6:30 AM Saturday morning or flying through Frankfurt (yes, Germany) and on to Reykjavik Friday night (20 + some hours of flying and several airports), we settled on JFK to Reykjavik with a Friday, 11:40 PM arrival. We will miss a day of sight-seeing in Reykjavik but will get some sleep before beginning our tour around the island begins on Saturday morning.
Iceland Trip, day 1 Knoxville to Charlotte. This is not a very exciting picture. Hope to have an ocean and island in our sights tomorrow!
