NYC to Cape Town via...Amsterdam and Johannesburg?

Do to an unfortunate series of events on Friday, we arrived at JFK five minutes too late to check in for the Cape Town flight. The system shuts down 1 hour before international departures and prevents you from checking in. So even though the plane was still sitting on the ground, there was no way to get on it. We were obviously pretty bummed about losing a day of vacation and even more upset when we found out there is no flight from NYC to South Africa on Saturdays. As Andrea slowly began to unravel at the thought of losing two days of vacation, Randy decided to be productive and research other flight options. Within half and hour, he figured out that we could fly standby to Amsterdam and then fly standby on a flight with KLM to Cape Town (side note: it's this state of focused intensity when everything seems bleak that make's Randy the kind of guy you'd want to fly your airplane). This was a little risky since we had no way of knowing how full the 2nd flight would be, but at the time we were willing to go anywhere other than back to our apartment. We got on the flight to Amsterdam and even got to sit in first class, which was so enjoyable that we almost forgot we were on our way to the wrong continent.

When we arrived in Amsterdam Saturday morning and tried to list standby for the next flight, we received some bad news. The flight to Cape Town was overbooked for the next two days and we would not be able to get on. We asked about Johannesburg - it was overbooked too but we had a better chance since it was a bigger airplane so we went for it. Thanks to some very helpful airline employees, within minutes we were able to change our flight and re-check our luggage that we picked up at baggage claim.

Well, the Johannesburg flight was full but the wonderful crew of KLM allowed us to sit in these flip-down seats that are normally used by the flight attendants during takeoff and landing - those ones that face the rest of the seats! Not the best way to spend 10 hours but we weren't going to be picky! It was our first flight on a 747. The flight attendants were so nice and told us we could walk around anywhere we wanted to stretch our legs - so we went upstairs to check out first class and it was awesome!

By the time we arrived in Jo-burg Saturday night, we were relieved to be in the right country, even if we did overshoot our destination by 1000 miles.