| rev:text
| - Hmm...where to start?
We left Toronto for Athens on Sep 29...check-in was relatively easy and our plane left on time. No problems there.
The plane itself was actually ok, not the most comfortable I've been on, but at least I had my own private tv screen and could chose my own movies, which on a 9 1/2 hour overnight flight is a huge plus.
Now, I know we live in Canada and that we have 2 official languages, but lord have mercy, was it really necessary to make EVERY SINGLE announcement in English, French and Greek? By the time the cabin crew finished one announcement it was already time for another. I swear there was probably only 1 solid hour of silence during the entire 9 1/2 hours. This seriously did my head in. I couldn't sleep because as soon as I dozed off there was yet another announcement being made. At one point they announced that there was someone on the plane with a severe peanut allergy (more than halfway through the flight and most people were trying to sleep) and that that everyone should refrain from eating peanuts! Seriously? It's 4am, no one is eating peanuts and does it really take 15 minutes to make a one sentence announcement in THREE languages? Shoot me, please, I beg of you!
We landed in Athens without incident, jet lagged and hungry, but hey, we made it.
The return portion of our trip was a bit of a shit show.
We had booked our tickets back in June and then found out in late July early August that Greece was planning a national general strike on October 19th, our planned return date. Upon finding out about the strike, I immediately called Air Transat to ask if there was anything we should be doing, such as switching to another flight and they said no since these things are normally canceled, etc. So we really didn't give it another thought...that is until we arrived in Athens and found out that the general strike was in fact proceeding as planned.
I called Air Transat again and was told that they were not aware of any pending strike action and that the plane would be departing as scheduled. Ok then.
Fast forward to Oct 17 when we returned to Athens for the final 2 days of our vacation. When we arrived at our hotel there were notices posted everywhere warning of the strike action and what services would be closed. Airports and metro were closed on Oct 19. We were advised to contact Air Transat once again. Which we did. I was told this time that they had no information and that I would have to call them back again the next day (Oct 18). At this point, we decided to book an additional night at our hotel just in case.
In the end it took no less than 6 calls to our travel agent in Toronto and Air Transat's representative in Athens, Tour Greece before we were finally told that our flight was canceled and would be flying out on Oct 20th instead. Fine. After walking through tear gas clouds and seeing nothing but broken glass, marble and burning garbage on the streets surrounding our hotel, we were grateful to be delayed by only 1 day.
We arrived at the airport on Oct 20th, were checked in immediately. We were told upon check in that the flight was delayed by about 30 minutes, but would still be leaving that day. Phew!
Flight left as indicated, 30 minutes late. The plane was awful. The seats were tiny and crammed, no individual screens, we had to crane our necks to see the tiny screen 3 rows ahead of us.
During the initial announcements at the beginning of the flight we found out that the normally 9 1/2 hour flight would be closer to 11 hours due to strong headwings over the Atlantic (totally not their fault of course, but frustrating nonetheless).
We were served the smallest lunch I've ever seen about 2 hours into the flight and then nothing else until about 2 hours before landing in Montreal! To say I was starving was an understatement. I ate almost an entire box of Turkish candies I had hoped to bring back home, but my stomach was about to crawl out of my mouth and go hunting for it's own food at this point.
We landed in Montreal, for what was supposed to be a 1-hour stop for a change in cabin crew, pilots and refuelling. We were there for almost 2 1/2 hours and were not able to leave the plane during this entire time.
We finally arrived in Toronto after over 14 hours of travel time. What a mess.
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