I finally made it! After initially delaying my trip by a week on doctor’s and physio’s orders due to my bad leg and the impact the ironman may have had on my immune system, I set off for the airport on Monday morning (July 11th). The train I had planned to take from London Bridge was cancelled when I got there so I had to take a later, slower one. Not to worry though, I’d given myself more than enough time to play with. I arrived to Gatwick 90 minutes before my flight was due to take off and was directed to an automatic check-in machine as when I’d tried to check-in earlier that morning the app wouldn’t let me. Hmmmm, the machine wouldn’t check me in either. Double checked I’d booked my flight to Madrid for the correct day (I had) and went to customer service to see what was up. They sent me to the longest check-in queue and said the staff there would sort it for me. So I queued and tried not to check my watch too much. Check-in closes 45 minutes before take off and exactly 45 minutes before my flight to Madrid was due to take off I get to a check-in desk. “I have two pieces of bad news for you Miss Conneely. Firstly, your flight is delayed.” This is actually good news for me as I really don’t have enough time to get through security now and make it to the gate on time. “The second is that you don’t have a seat on your flight.” Excuse me? Easyjet policy is to overbook their flights and the last people to try to check in online get blocked as I did and get put on standby. Apparently the only way to guarantee your seat on an Easyjet flight is to pay for an assigned seat. What??!!!

I have never heard of this happening to a single person ever outside of the US so I get a little bit upset with the lady behind the desk. “Would you like to go to the gate and wait to see if someone doesn’t show up or go straight to customer services now and ask them to book you on the next available flight which is in….two days time?” I took my chances with going to the gate, dropped my bag off at oversized luggage and sprinted through the airport to my plane which was just starting to board their priority passengers. I hand over my boarding card which has no seat assigned to it. The man scans it and the machine beeps. “Ok Miss Conneely you’ll be in seat number 2C.” This seems too easy. “That’s definitely my seat now? I can go on the plane?” “Yes, of course, please move along.” So now I’m sitting (and sweating) in the pre-boarding area expecting to hear some form of ruckus when the person who’s seat I’ve swiped arrives to claim it. We start to board the plane with no fuss. Now I’m sitting in seat 2C, willing the plane to take off before someone notices they’ve made a mistake. Aaaaand we’re off; I am en route to Madrid!

Everything went very smoothly in Madrid airport and once I realised, after being in the airport for three hours already, that Madrid is an hour ahead of London I went to board my flight to Buenos Aires. I forgot that you need to request veggie meals on long haul flights so I had to eat around the chicken dinnerI  was given but the food was pretty good on the Aerolineas Argentinas flight. The seats were comfy and the movies were great too. I am very lucky in my ability to sleep anywhere and with 8 hours of plane time left I put the seat back and passed out, waking up only a handful of times to move position when a body part had gone dead. The plane landed at 4am and by 4.45am I was in a pre-ordered taxi that an Argentinian friend had organised for me (thank you Juampi you hero!). 

So I’m here in Buenos Aires, I’m in one piece and now I’m going to go and wake up the people in my dorm because I really need a shower and some breakfast.