This was the trip that never happened last fall thanks to a missed Delta flight. So, we added an extra two days during the rebooking process, thinking that we would take a train to Bruges for an overnight, partly because once we mentioned we were going to Brussels, people asked if we were going to Bruges. Every time. So, yes, we are going to Bruges. :)

Rebooking the Brussels hotel turned into a bigger hassle than originally expected and while we managed not to lose any money in the process, it means we are only staying one night at Le Meridian and the rest of the time in a small B&B nearby. This is partially due to overall cost and partially due to the fact that the B&B looked very charming and included breakfast.

I have a ton of places highlighted on my map, mostly having to do with beer and chocolate, so if anyone has any suggestions about not-to-miss restaurants or museums, we’d love to hear it!

You may have noticed the lack of photos and updates from our trip to Brussels last weekend… and that’s because we never made it.

Our flight was delayed over two hours out of Raleigh (due to Atlanta weather) and even though we were repeatedly told that all flights were delayed and our outgoing flight was probably delayed as well, we missed it. By a good 45 minutes. The Brussels flight wasn’t even listed on the monitors by the time we landed (never a good sign).

Once we missed the flight, Delta had automatically rebooked us on a flight for the next day, but that would have cut our time in Brussels to one day and it didn’t seem worth it to us. So we stood in line and waited on hold and booked a flight back to Raleigh with the idea of having the un-used miles redeposited back into our accounts.  We were still stuck in Atlanta for the night, but thankfully we have friends in town, so after a 45 minute MARTA trip we had some thai takeout and a couch to crash on.

After arriving home the next day we got back on the phone to see what, if anything, could be done about our non-refundable hotel reservations. The hotel representative in Belgium said they would make a one-time exception and offered to rebook us for a different date – when did we want to come?

Ummmm.

This prompted another 1+ hour phone call to Delta reservations to see if we could rebook the entire vacation for next March. Unbelievably, the agent was able to reuse our miles and extend our trip two more days for mid-March 2010.

Even though this trip was interrupted, we were ultimately able to salvage our miles and the hotel charges. A huge thanks to Sharisse and Theresa at Delta reservations for helping make a busted trip into a vacation for another time.