Now that we have our luggage, we can be out and about seeing new things. But it was not until 26 hours after our arrival that the last of the bags arrived. In a nutshell:

Our Tuesday night flight to London was cancelled while we were in the air going to Washington. To United’s credit, they were ready with alternative arrangements when we disembarked the aircraft in DC and they even were able to assure us that our baggage would be re-directed just as we had been. It was not a non-stop but rather a connection through Paris.

We arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport about 7 am on Wednesday morning and it was easy to kill the four hour layover by wasting time trying to find the correct terminal without the assistance of any signage and no visible airport personnel. Not just no signage in English but we found no signage at all in any language even telling what airlines were in which terminals.

Upon finding British Airways, our next carrier, we checked in with them so as to be sure they had our baggage information even though a call to United’s baggage service told us that our bags were still in Washington on Wednesday morning in spite of three flights subsequent to our cancellation having left for London.

We left late from Paris for a 40 minute flight, were delayed in the air another 30 and arrived shortly after twelve noon and, of course, no bags. But BA claimed to have found them in the United baggage claim area in a different terminal. A $30 cab ride to the United terminal (Heathrow is very spread out) resulted in our being told by United that the bags had been picked up by the BA courier maybe 10 minutes earlier and were on their way to our flat (why this responsibility became BA’s who never touched our bags during our trip is not clear).

After calling and waiting in the flat the rest of the day, we were awakened by a 10 pm call with the good news that the bags would be at the flat between midnight and 1 am. The 12:50 am wake up call from the courier had me going into the London street barefoot and wearing only my brand new British flag boxer shorts purchased just hours before from a late night souvenir stand (after wearing the only clothes we had for nearly 36 hours, they were still in the 2 hour and 40 minute wash cycle) to learn that there were only three of the four bags in the truck.

So up all night, on the phone in the morning with British Airways and the bag courier and continuing the wait through the day, bag number four arrived at 2:20 pm on Thursday. So we are finally seeing the sights of London again. And thanks United for not knowing where the bags were at any point in time including when you told us they were still in Washington. At that time they were on a plane about to land in London. You can check out my “Airlines Lie” post about this same topic in January 2011.

One of the larger lessons from this experience was that British customer service persons are incredibly nice. Immediately empathetic in such a way that one could never justify getting angry. I was impressed.

Tomorrow our visit to the UN.