,
You know that your highly anticipated vay-cay just got
down-graded to one tad short of miserable, as you spend what seems to be hours
glued to your spot by the emptier than empty luggage carousel, desperately
imploring the gods of Baggage for the safe return of your now AWOL bags.
Bug-eyed and bleary-eyed, Miss Kid and Grocery Gal were in
quite the predicament indeed, as they were literally the last man standing, helplessly stranded in a Portuguese airport
without a clue as to what to do next.
For you see, the mischievous gremlins of Luggage Gone Missing were in
their heyday and had thrown a wrench into the girls’ first
grown-up over-seas adventure by executing a brilliant move of grab, snatch and
hide. A game of hide and seek of the wickedly disruptive kind. Tee
Why sprint out of the airport lickety-split, when you can
instead spend the first leg of the journey dejectedly hanging out in said
location whilst anxiously darting up and down the stairs and corridors on a desperate
quest to retrieve your now missing belongings? Not exactly the most ideal scenario and not quite
what the gals had initially envisioned for the start of their holiday. Looks like languishing on a sun drenched
beach and splish splashing in the turquoise waters will have to wait, to be replaced
instead with a tsunami of waterworks of another kind.
It goes without saying that full blown-out pandemonium had
by now erupted at baggage claim, with full-out wailing, screeching, bawling and
cursing the new order of the day.
Marching en masse, a small army of irate travellers had by now descended
upon the respective airline counter, throwing daggers of hatred at the hapless
staff, who were clearly at a loss as how to pacify the disgruntled herd. Expletives, spewed in a melange of dialects
and tongues, could be heard far and wide, as a war of words was brewing in a
volcanic eruption of the not so pleasant kind.
It’s quite the misfortune then, that Miss Kid and Grocery
Gal’s Portuguese vocabulary was limited to just five words in total: Hello, Beach, Sunblock, Mall and
Shopping. Sad. But true.
So what’s a pair of Canadian teenyboppers to do, but resort
to what they know best, and that, my dear reader, would be snivelling. Yes.
Snivelling. Spilling one crocodile
tear after the other, in hope of garnering a wee bit of attention to their
cause, the forlorn gals from across the pond pulled out all stops and went for
the gold. Those poor suckers at the Lisbon airport had no idea what they were in store for,
bombarded by an onslaught of drama that could only be perfected by calculating
teenagers of the deviously conniving kind.
The gals’ Academy Award winning performance of a lifetime
was a resounding success, reaping each the reward of a 75 Euro voucher, enough
to pay for overnight essentials such as PJs, toothpaste and a change of
clothes.
It’s too bad, though, as they didn’t actually have to resort
to such dramatic measures, as the policy of their respective airline was to
issue these types of vouchers to all such passengers whose luggage had gone temporarily
missing.
Just don’t anyone tell the girls.
Did I mention that a full-fledged downpour was waiting in
the wings?
Come hang out in the baggage claim centre
of some foreign airport on the very first day of your beach holiday, clue-less
and luggage-less, struggling to converse in a language that is as clear as
mud. To add misery to the mix, the
forecast was calling for non-stop rain, wind and hail. And just where was that umbrella??
Stay tuned for more on Miss Kid and Grocery
Gal’s escapades in “sunny” Portugal. Are
they eventually reunited with their long-lost luggage? And, pray tell, what about that incessant
rain?
Next post - In two weeks!! Catch up with the fabulous adventures of cuckoo ol' Auntie Nora's slightly smarter niece on Wed November 12th.
(Lisbon pictures courtesy of Maradzidra)
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