Travel Trials

 The best laid plans. . and all that.  No matter how much work you put into making meticulous plans, one of the things about travel is that you never really know how things will work out.  We have actually made it to Valletta, but not without hiccups.  The first one occurred at Cherry Capital Airport.  Thank goodness we got there early.  We walked up to the gate agent, (who, if he has an IQ north of 90 I would be surprised), handed him our confirmation, only to be told that "there's a problem with your profile."  It turns out that the first two segments of our return flight from Lisbon have been cancelled, and so he had to call someone at United (which took 45 minutes).  He finally called us over and asked if we could do an extra day in Lisbon, and we quickly said yes.  The flight to Chicago was 1/2 an hour late, but we managed to hoof it as fast as two old people can hoof it, and made that flight.  We lucked out; the plane was only about 1/2 full, and we had a three seat row to ourselves.  That flight was an hour and a half late to Frankfurt, and again we made it a long way as fast as we could, with just 10 minutes to spare, then we got held up at the gate by an officious and none too bright agent who thought that we needed a negative covid test.  She was finally convinced that she was wrong, and we got on the flight!  Then when we got to Valletta, our luggage was still in Frankfurt.  It did arrive, however, albeit a few hours late.