DO NOT FLY QATAR AIRWAYS

Our first day of travel was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, day. We left Jakarta at midnight, and arrived in Singapore at around 2:00 in the morning. That was ok. When we got on the plane (The awful Qatar Airways flight), we thought they would turn out the lights and let us sleep. But noooooo, they thought we wanted dinner. Who wants to eat at 3:00 in the morning? So with the stupid carts going up and down the isle, and flight attendants waking me up to ask me if I wanted anything, the trip was already aggravating. When we finally arrived in Doha, Qatar, seven hours later, we proceeded to the transfer desk to get our boarding passes to Athens.

The lady told us at the desk that she had very bad news for us. They had overbooked the flight to Athens, so we were going to be bumped, and flown to London instead. We would arrive in Athens at around midnight instead of our regularly scheduled time of 2:30 in the afternoon. I was in total anger, and wanted to strangle the woman. Why were WE being bumped. She even admitted that we had done nothing wrong and had confirmed reservations...it was all THEIR fault..."OK, So YOU have the problem, why do WE have to be the victoms??" No argument was heard. We were handed our new tickets without explanation....and NO COMPENSATION!!! I am still angry as hell. What airline bumps passengers off a flight without compensation?? To make matters worse, we were seated in the back of the plane next to the restrooms. It was a 6 hour flight to London, and then another 4 hours to Athens after waiting 2 hours in London for the connecting flight. You would think, at a minimum, we would be given business class seats as some kind of compensation.

My plan was to arrive in Athens at 2:30, check in to the hotel I had already booked, go see the Acropolis (sp?), and then buy ferry tickets to Santorini. Well, since we arrive in Athens at midnight, our hotel room was already taken. We then had to find a new hotel....stress....then finally got to sleep at around 2:00 am, with no ferry ticket.

We woke up this morning, and went down to the port to buy ferry tickets. All sold out....go figure. So we bought two airplane tickets instead. OK, not bad. We then ate lunch at McDonalds, and are now here at the internet place to update the blog. We are going to go see the Acropolis, and then catch our flight at 6:00 to Santorini. Hopefully things will run much smoother from here on out. It has been a stressful start.