Tom Stieghorst
One of the worst feelings you can have during a cruise vacation is to be on the hunt for lost luggage as the clock ticks down to the departure of your ship.
I learned this firsthand this past week when I arrived in Copenhagen, Denmark, several days before I was to leave on a Seabourn cruise. My bag, alas, did not arrive with me.
There were baggage-system "issues" at London's Heathrow Airport, where I had switched planes. At least I was in good company, as about half of the people on the flight to Copenhagen were in line with me waiting to file a lost-luggage report.
Among the things In my bag: a sweater I had bought in Iceland and worn once, a leather jacket from Turkey, my wife's outfit for formal night, some notes for an upcoming story I planned to write. Would I ever see them again?
At first I was optimistic. I got a text from the airline. It said it had located my bag and was putting it on the next flight from London to Copenhagen.
But 24 hours later, the bag had not turned up at my hotel. The hotel staff had called the airline's agent in Copenhagen and were left on hold for 10 minutes. A website where I could check the progress of my claim said the airline was still tracking my bag and to check back later.
It took several tries to get through to a human working for the airline's agency. He said the bag had not yet arrived from London. My cruise was leaving in a day and a half. I tried to stay calm and enjoy my time in Copenhagen.
When the morning of the cruise arrived and the bag still had not showed up, I started to feel hopeless. I imagined the bag being misrouted to Madrid, forgotten in a line of unclaimed luggage by the baggage carousel, attended only by some employee of a contractor whose mind was elsewhere.
I confessed my distress to someone at Seabourn, who said she would get the line's port agent in Copenhagen on the case. It turns out that was the best thing I could have done -- and the only thing that worked.
We were one of a dozen couples on the cruise with lost luggage. We didn't know for sure if Seabourn would find the bag in time, but when we arrived at the cabin, there was our missing bag on the bed.
What a relief.
Later, I spoke with several colleagues who have had to make do with their carryon for part or all of a cruise. We exchanged our stories. One said that during a Scenic river cruise, a receptionist on the Scenic Sapphire called Delta every day until the bag arrived at a remote port on the Rhone River. So as with my example, working through the cruise line paid dividends.
Another said he's increasingly gun shy about checking luggage at all. "Maybe I check once for every 20 trips now," he said in an e-mail.
For a recent two-week European trip, however, he checked a bag. "In retrospect, I could almost have gotten away without checking," he wrote. "I just wear the same thing multiple times. Who really cares?"