We have flown a number of times with Astrid. She has always been fairly good on planes. A bit of grizzling with the descents and being tired, but nothing major. We have only ever done shortish flights (approx 2 hours). I am a bit worried about the 30 hours plus to get to Europe, but the short ones have been fine. Up until now.
Last week we flew up to the Sunshine Coast to stay with my parents. Astrid has done this flight a number of times. This time we had an evening flight, so Anto could leave after work. We hoped she would sleep most of the flight. Yeah, uh that didn't happen........
After a nice lunch out with friends, she refused to have an afternoon sleep, despite being tired. This caused whinging most of the way to the airport. The mood improved after she ran around Qantas club stealing cheese and crackers off the plates of unsuspecting fellow travellers. We hopped onto the plane, settled in and hoped she would nod off during take-off with her bottle. We got so, so, close. Sadly though, she stayed awake. Over-tiredness kicked in and the whinging and wriggling started. Then our meals were served. Fat chance of me even attempting to eat with a wriggly baby on my lap. Astrid wasn't at all hungry but had to sample everything. At least it distracted her, but trashed the plane. Once that distraction was over she got very grumpy. Cue loud whinging. She was the only baby on the plane that night and everyone knew it. Once we started the long descent her ears started really hurting and she was full of milk and water and wouldn't suck on anything to help her ears. Cue hysterical, ear-splitting screaming that went on and on. I think everyone just wanted the plane to land to escape the racket. Of course she finally sobbed herself to sleep 5 minutes before we landed, about 2.5 hours after her bed time. She slept through everyone getting off the plane and we had to move her to get her into the ergo and off the plane. She was NOT happy to be woken. More hysterical screaming. I had to go to the bathroom and left her with Anto and could hear from the other side of the arrivals lounge through 3 closed doors.
Once off the plane, Anto realised he couldn't find his wallet. We searched everything three times and concluded it must have been on the plane. We found a helpful staff member who dashed back to the plane and searched it for us to no avail. We then figured it must be at the Qantas club in Canberra. We trekked through the airport to the Brisbane Qantas club and asked them to call Canberra, who had shut for the night. At this point we gave up and figured we would be cancelling all our cards.
Running half an hour late we finally arrived at the baggage carousel to find our bags and car seat circling on their lonesome. We grabbed the luggage and headed for the pick-up area to be met by my dad. At this point we had a tired and grumpy baby and a bunch of missed calls on both our phones. My missed calls were from my dad trying to locate us. Anto's were the Qantas staff saying they located the wallet. He dumped us and the luggage and dashed back through the airport to find the wallet.
Thinking our night was about to improve we loaded the car, got Astrid into her seat and headed off for the hour drive back to the Sunshine Coast. She went to sleep pretty quickly. She was not impressed to be woken upon arrival and put into her PJs and into the portacot. Quite a bit of protesting later she finally calmed down and went to sleep, about 4 hours past her bedtime.
Once I had Astrid settled, I was informed that the bad news was that one of the bags was not actually our bag. It looked like ours, but was full of someone else's stuff. Of course we checked the tags on every bag but that one....... When we were so late getting our luggage we kind of assumed it was ours since it was a distinctive bag. That missing bag had all of Anto's clothes, all his dive gear, all my toiletries and medication and Astrid's favourite toy. Normally we take spare toiletries, medications and clothes in our on-board luggage for situations like this. However, this was a short domestic flight with no connections. Nothing would go wrong right? Middle of the night phone calls to the airport baggage claim did not locate our bag.
At this point it was very late and we decided to give up and go to bed. We could live without clothes and toiletries for one night and we would hopefully locate them in the morning. I was feeling quite pleased that I at least had some clothes. Until I opened my suitcase to discover my PJs were soaking wet. A pack of baby wipes had compression leaked onto them....... At this point I just gave up and figured the next day could only improve.
In the morning we managed to track down the owner of the bag in our possession and they indeed had our bag. It did require a trip back to Brisbane to swap them over but at least it got sorted out. Not a good start to a holiday though.
Let's just hope the trip back goes much more smoothly!
