Day 1-2 Hawaii to Bergen Aggravation

Warning: This is a long post and meant to just be a reminder for me. Please feel free to scroll to the bottom.

Along with our friends, Cal, Myra, Craig and Terry we decided to take a trip together about three years ago. We'd traveled with Craig and Terry before on a Viking River cruise of the Rhine River. We enjoyed it so much we decided to do another Viking trip. We decided on a Scandinavian Ocean Cruise. Soon after, Cal and Myra agreed to join us.

And then COVID hit and the trip was cancelled by Viking for two years. But in early 2022 the trip was on and although we were nervous about it, we decided to risk it. We talked about seeing St. Petersburg and going to the Hermitage Museum there. We talked about Finland and Estonia. Viking promised that everyone would have to test negative to go on the cruise and that we would be tested onboard ship every morning. This sounded more reassuring... And then the 2nd booster was promised just in time. Yay!

But then Putin decided to attack Ukraine on February 24th after saying he wouldn't.

Seriously??? 

Viking changed many of the places we hoped to see to places that were well... not what we signed up for.

I wrote before about the pre-trip aggravation we had with a gazillion changes to the itinerary and United changing our flights so that we would miss the other two connecting flights to get us to Bergen.

But... what the heck! 

It was the morning of the trip. 😴 We had to get up at 3:30, leave the house by 4:30 and drive to the airport by 5:00 for the 7:00 flight.

At the airport, the kiosk would not work. Craig and Terry were there and had the same problem.

Myra and Cal had left the night before to have more relaxing times between flights. 

Apparently, the United computer was not working. However we got our tickets and though Art got his GOES pre-check to breeze through TSA, for some reason, I did not and had to stand in a LONG line with the attendant yelling, "Tighten up! Tighten up! No social distancing!" 

Seriously?

However....

We got on board our airplane and sat down.

 Finally.... 

We would have an hour and a half lay-over in San Francisco to catch our flight to Copenhagen, Denmark. After a short layover, we would be flying to Bergan, Norway.

But the flight would not take off. The pilot came on and apologized that there was a problem with some electrical part. They'd have to find it somewhere. Someone behind us joked, "Where? Home Depot?"

What? 😮

Eventually, the flight was scrapped and we were told that there were no more flights out of Honolulu to San Francisco.

Seriously?? 😖

Art and Terry worked with a United representative who finally found a way to get us to Bergen via Newark, New Jersey but we would have to now be retested for COVID to meet the 72 hour requirement. Luckily, the airport had a place we could get that and we left Honolulu at 2:55 PM.

Here was one of the bright spots in an otherwise awful day(s). No kidding! United gave us Premium Plus seats and $20 meal vouchers to be used at the airport in Newark. 😁 The seats were fabulous. Comfortable with leg room and lovely meals. Granted it was 9 hours long, but we were feeling pretty good about it.

Granted there was one passenger behind us who started shouting because they ran out of chicken. He apparently had a meeting to attend in NY and couldn't survive on pasta. The flight attendants had to scramble into first class to placate the guy. 🙄

But now... there was going to be a 12 hour layover in Newark.

I lost count of how many hours I had been up now. I can't sleep on airplanes. I wrote before that I'm a terrible traveler.

We did get those $20 x 2 vouchers from United but for some reason, although it was supposed to have worked with the server doing it for us, we did get charged $49 for two bowls of ramen when we got home. 

Seriously???

As difficult as that layover was, it was made easier by the fact that we were suffering with Terry and Craig.

Myra and Cal texted us that they were in Bergen now and enjoying some sumptuous meals onboard the Viking Star. We agreed with Terry and Craig that since this was their first cruise, we were glad that we were the miserable ones. 

No, honest. 😄 We did say that and meant it.

OK... So eventually we got on our connecting flight without a hitch to Amsterdam. There... we went through a long Immigration line.

From Amsterdam we flew to Bergen, Norway and were met by a very, very friendly Viking representative who took us to the ship.

They never asked for that antigen test we went to such pains to get at the Honolulu airport.

Instead we had to provide our spit before we could leave our cabin.

At this point, I wanted to just lie down and sleep for 5 days. Seriously. 

But no... We were happy and relieved to be reunited with Cal and Myra. We had to dress that night for dinner at The Restaurant. It was a lovely, very fancy meal.

We'd missed the first day of the trip and the excursion we paid for, but we would be reimbursed by Viking. Myra and Cal showed us their excursion pictures which we enjoyed seeing.

And this was our first day. Sort of.