This is the plane that eventually got me to Cape Town. I say eventually, because I did a little tour of major european airports on the way there. Little know fact: you cannot fly direct from Italy to Cape Town. You must go North to go South. So, I booked myself on KLM from Firenze through Amsterdam to CT.
The connection at Schiphol Airport was 55 minutes - lots of time I thought, and anyway, why would KLM sell me a ticket with too short a connecting time, right? Wrong! I thought our flight landed on time, but according to KLM's computer, we were late. Even though I made it to the departure gate with 15 minutes to spare, there was no seat for me PLUS my luggage would not have made it onto the plane. So I was automatically rebooked to fly to CT with Luftansa out of Frankfurt at 10pm - twelve hours from my original flight time. While I like the Frankfurt airport and I know how to get to downtown Frankfurt from it, I didn't relish spending the day there. So, the nice people at KLM got me a seat on a British Airways flight from Heathrow which departed at 17:00 hrs. Less time waiting in airports, plus I hadn't been to England in awhile.
With time to spare, I explored Schiphol, which is just one big mini-city. It has a public library, a casino, every type of amenity you could think of, and an extention of the Rijksmuseum, which had 16 lovely paintings and a great gift shop! On exhibit was an outrageous painting of William III, 4 yrs of age, dressed up in drag! It was hilarious...and then he went on to marry Mary Stuart, but I digress. The blue piece above with the ship is actually a tile work and it was quite beautiful.
Heathrow, Terminal 5, is just a couple of years old and is just one big shopping mall. There are actually 3 buildings to the terminal, so it's bigger than all of Pearson T1 in Toronto. I resisted the urge to shop, and the plane departed on time and it was an uneventful flight. Once in Cape Town, I waited and waited and waited for my luggage to arrive, but it was no where in sight. I was assured it was "in transit" and 24 hrs later it showed up and was delivered. In the meantime I was welcomed to CT by my roomie John (from Glasgow) and did a bit of shopping so I had a change of clothes. A bit of adventure getting there...but OH so worth it.
