Out of Canada, Into Kenya - Shawn's Journal

We're Here!

We arrived less than 5 minutes ago in Kijabe, Kenya at Rift Valley Academy. While here we’re staying with Bob and Stephanie Milligan and their six children. It’s 12:30 am here and we’re exahusted. Our flights went well and we even had a great surprise for the first leg of our trip from Chicago to London.

For the last week I’ve been telling Danielle that I was going to try and get us into business class. (I had heard that British Airway’s business class was amazing) Obviously we couldn’t pay anything extra for upgrading, and I knew it wasn’t likely to happen, but I figured I could always dream.

Anyway, we were in O’Hare, checking in, and the guy behind the counter (Richard Anderson - I’m making a note of it to write and thank him) was super friendly and about our age. After he printed our boarding passes, I asked how full the flight was. He replied, “Very full - only a few empty seats. I’ll see if there’s anything further forward, though.” As he was checking, I said “Is it ever possible, if you’re nice to the staff, that you can get upgraded a class?” We were booked into the lowest economy class, World Traveller, and then there is World Traveller Plus, and then Business and then First Class.

He smiled and replied, “Normally, yes, it is possible. In fact, had you been here about 40 minutes ago, I could have done that.” He paused for a second and then said “Let me see what I can do.” He walked away for a few minutes before coming back with a big grin on his face. He proceeded to tear up our boarding passes for seats 51b and 51c (out of 64 rows) and print out new ones for row 17 - business class. Wow. We were floored. Hoping that maybe he could pull off getting us into World Traveller Plus, but not expecting even that to happen. It was amazing. The seats went completely flat, like beds, meals were served on real dishes (!), and there were even foot rests. It was the most relaxing flight that I have ever been on in my life. By the time that we arrived in London eight hours later, neither of us felt like we had been on a plane for eight hours. We were rested and relaxed for the second leg of our flight from London to Nairobi. We weren’t spoiled again for that part of the trip, unfortunately, but the flight was smooth and uneventful.

It’s time to grab a quick bite to eat before heading off to bed and hopefully sleeping for a little while. Jet lag is looming over us.

Posted by slvrfrg at June 6, 2004 04:44 PM