Trapped at London Heathrow Airport!

Our travel day started out on the right foot... we were well prepared and packed the night before, and we were up at 5am and dressed and ready for our 6am taxi this morning which made really good time to Munich Airport. From there it went down hill.

Lufthansa delayed our flight by 3 hours because "London is experiencing snow and freezing fog". I didn't know that fog froze, but whatever. Anyone who has watched the news would know that the ENTIRE world seems to be having a snow storm. We all know that New England just got nearly 2 feet dumped on them this past weekend. But also almost every major European country has had its fair share of snow accumulation causing major delays. On top of that EuroStar had several chunnel trains break down in the tunnel for 16 hours a few days ago, and they are days backed up as well. London got some snow over the weekend too, and the entire country has come to a screetching halt.

Twice we were loaded onto an airport bus like cattle and given a tour of the runway, and brought right to the steps of our plane (major tease)...only to be met by the captian who informed us that we HAD a landing slot, but we lost it..so it would be best to go back to the gate and wait.

This gets me back to today's dimlema.. that 3 hour delay caused us to miss our connection to Virgin Atlantic and we are now trapped at London Heathrow Airport with about a million other people. We tried every airline.. no availability whatsoever...and not just to Boston, but to New York, DC, you name it.

We begged if they had anything for tomorrow, and they said "No, I'm sorry. I'm afraid we can't move you to any available seats for tomorrow because people are still purchasing flights"...and since our tickets were already "purchased", they would actually be losing money to give us those seats. Upon hearing this, I whipped around to Tristan and put all my faith into his ability to follow my instuctions, I said, "Tristan, look this lady square in the face and ask her if she is going to get you home in time for Santa". And for once, my little boy did EXACTLY as I asked, and even added the sorry puppy dog eyes as he did it. It was a proud moment for me! And Christian stared at me with all the "Oh my God, you are so brilliant" look in his eyes. I am so ashamed to have used my child like that. (NOT!)

Anyway, I'm not sure what Charlie Brown tree we will be able to find at 8pm on Christmas Eve, and we won't be able to go shopping for the ingredients to make Santa his Christmas cookies, and the mall will probably be closed and Tristan won't get his annual photo with Santa...so we are feeling a little blue. But we ran into loads of people who have been stuck in Europe for days on end, so we really are pretty lucky.

Wishing everyone a beautiful holiday season and a New Year full of hope!
Here is Tristan in front of the Christmas tree at the London Heathrow Marriot Hotel.