Other than the delay, my journey home was not difficult especially when compared to some stories I heard about people having to take upwards of 4 flights to get home, or sleeping on airport floors. The most eventful part was when I boarded the tiny regional plane (2 seats that don't recline on either side of the aisle kind of operation) taking me the one hour from Toulouse to Madrid. I was looking at the gate number instead of seat number, and found myself at the back of a 14-row plane looking for 22, and had to swim upstream to row 4 with an aisle half the size of a normal one full of people. Twas humorous.
Being home and able to spend Christmas with my family was really wonderful even if a bit rushed. The fam and I even made it into NYC to see a show (Memphis) and the tree.
To say that my trip back to France with my cousins Loren and Dyan went less than smoothly (but no less fun) would be a gross understatement. First there was the mad rush to pack and get to the airport after deciding the night of the 25th that we would be taking off at 8am the next day. Things at JFK were crowded, and it seemed everyone's tensions were running high between leftover travelers displaced because of the snow in Europe before the holiday, and the impending hysteria over the snow to hit New York that day. However, compared to the rest of the journey to come, JFK was cake. After not getting much sleep the night before, Loren, Dyan and I slept most of the 8-hour trans-Atlantic flight, and arrived at Heathrow around 6pm. It took a while to navigate the huge airport (gotta love those ambiguous airport signs and directions), convert dollars to pounds, and locate the shuttle to take us to the hotel where we had rented for the night as we had such a long layover. And for the record I beg to differ that there isn't a language barrier between Brits and Americans. We checked into our flight for the next morning, and finally found the right place to wait for the bus that runs the circuit of hotels around the airport. We spoke with the cheery bus driver who told us our Holiday Inn was the last stop on his line. We were so happy to finally reach the hotel to crash and gave each other congratulatory pats on the back upon entering the warm and well-decorated hotel lobby. We'd made it. The also, infuriatingly cheery, concierge at the Holiday Inn wiped those smiles off our faces when she told us that this was in fact the wrong Holiday Inn. Luckily, this hotel had availability for us, unluckily, we would have to pay for both rooms. How helpful. We ended up taking a cab to the right Holiday Inn, where were ate, drank, and went to bed, requesting a wake up call for 4:30am, then only a few hours away.
Cut to 8:00am, ten minutes after the flight from Heathrow to Toulouse had taken off: Loren, Dyan and Lindsay sound asleep. Whoops. Yeah, not much to say about that. After a $60 phone call to British Airways to change our flight to the one at 6:45pm, we headed downstairs, tails between our legs, to the complimentary breakfast (which Silver-Lining-Dyan optimistically reminded us that we would have missed had we been on our flight). As London was about an hour away from the hotel, and we did not want to risk anything causing us to miss our second flight to Toulouse, the highlights of our day in London included taking a double-decker bus about 30 minutes away to Uxbridge - a tiny town with a shopping mall. My midday we were running low (count: 2) on pounds with the unaccounted for cab ride the night before, and extra day we had not factored into our pound budget when converting $$ at Heathrow. We were also feeling a bit humbled after our $1 per minute phone call to the airport, so we got thrifty and bought 3 Coke's for 1 pound and a bag of tortilla chips for another pound at Poundland for lunch. We then justified that the 2 pound lunch and absence of fee to change our plane tickets evened out the phone call.
We got to Heathrow close to 3 hours early that evening - NOTHING was going to make us miss this flight. When we got to check-in at British Airways, I asked what happened to our bags when we didn't get on the flight this morning. The BA woman said that as a security measure, checked bags cannot travel without their passengers, so the bags stayed in London when we did not board the flight. She then said that if we would hand them over, she could enter in our bag-tag numbers there and have the bags put on that evenings flight for us. Sounded perfect, except I that didn't have my bag tag. I just want to say, fully admitting here that I committed the travel faux pas of losing my bag tag, that, in my opinion the airline does not make it sufficiently clear how important that postage-stamp sized piece of paper is if you ever want to see your bag again when the put it in your hand. I spent the next hour at Heathrow talking with three different customer service desks to try to find out how they could locate my bag without the tag and get it on my flight to Toulouse. We got there in the end.
I was (of course) chosen for the full body search at security. There was a HUGE line at customs, and it was a sign of our journey thus far that by the time we got though, there was no line behind us. Isn't that the worst? The only pleasurable part about waiting in a long line is when you turn around halfway and see that the size has since doubled after you, so that you can turn to your partner next to you and with raised eyebrows, nod and congratulate yourselves that you "got on line when we did." It's the worst to be the last in line.
Finally we boarded the flight to Toulouse, after checking one final time with the woman at the gate that our bags were on that flight, and touched down 2 hours later. How surprised were we when we were the last ones standing at the baggage carousel in Toulouse without our bags? Honestly? Not very. It was that kind of trip.
Blagnac is a tiny airport, plus it's in France, so we were out of luck (if we ever had any in the first place) at 11pm when we were looking for someone to talk to about our lost luggage. I would tally the staff count to less than 10 people in the entire place. No joke. I finally found someone to talk to, who told me that 1. Airline workers always lie when passengers ask about their bags boarding a flight because they don't want them to panic, and that 2. The airlines had lost thousands of bags due to the confusion with the snow before and after the holidays - if that was supposed to make me feel better or worse I still don't know. I created a lost baggage claim and we took a cab home, awaiting notification via text that our bags were found so we could come get them (faster than waiting for them to be shipped we were told).
We returned to the airport a total of 3 times during the following 2 days Dyan and Loren were in Toulouse. On the third time we were told to come back to the airport at 9:30pm as our luggage was on that evening's flight. Loren's bag came out next to last on the carousel after about 30 minutes of waiting and looked as though it was dragged behind the plane. Mine was in fact not on the carousel, but in a pile of bags sitting in the middle of the floor of the airport, and according to the timestamp on the tag had been there since noon. Dyan's never came. Not feeling at all confident, nor hopeful, we left a forwarding address in the US for Dyan's as we were leaving for Paris the next morning. Luckily my cousins are awesome sports and we were laughing about the situation even as it was happening.
Cut to 8:00am, ten minutes after the flight from Heathrow to Toulouse had taken off: Loren, Dyan and Lindsay sound asleep. Whoops. Yeah, not much to say about that. After a $60 phone call to British Airways to change our flight to the one at 6:45pm, we headed downstairs, tails between our legs, to the complimentary breakfast (which Silver-Lining-Dyan optimistically reminded us that we would have missed had we been on our flight). As London was about an hour away from the hotel, and we did not want to risk anything causing us to miss our second flight to Toulouse, the highlights of our day in London included taking a double-decker bus about 30 minutes away to Uxbridge - a tiny town with a shopping mall. My midday we were running low (count: 2) on pounds with the unaccounted for cab ride the night before, and extra day we had not factored into our pound budget when converting $$ at Heathrow. We were also feeling a bit humbled after our $1 per minute phone call to the airport, so we got thrifty and bought 3 Coke's for 1 pound and a bag of tortilla chips for another pound at Poundland for lunch. We then justified that the 2 pound lunch and absence of fee to change our plane tickets evened out the phone call.
We got to Heathrow close to 3 hours early that evening - NOTHING was going to make us miss this flight. When we got to check-in at British Airways, I asked what happened to our bags when we didn't get on the flight this morning. The BA woman said that as a security measure, checked bags cannot travel without their passengers, so the bags stayed in London when we did not board the flight. She then said that if we would hand them over, she could enter in our bag-tag numbers there and have the bags put on that evenings flight for us. Sounded perfect, except I that didn't have my bag tag. I just want to say, fully admitting here that I committed the travel faux pas of losing my bag tag, that, in my opinion the airline does not make it sufficiently clear how important that postage-stamp sized piece of paper is if you ever want to see your bag again when the put it in your hand. I spent the next hour at Heathrow talking with three different customer service desks to try to find out how they could locate my bag without the tag and get it on my flight to Toulouse. We got there in the end.
I was (of course) chosen for the full body search at security. There was a HUGE line at customs, and it was a sign of our journey thus far that by the time we got though, there was no line behind us. Isn't that the worst? The only pleasurable part about waiting in a long line is when you turn around halfway and see that the size has since doubled after you, so that you can turn to your partner next to you and with raised eyebrows, nod and congratulate yourselves that you "got on line when we did." It's the worst to be the last in line.
Finally we boarded the flight to Toulouse, after checking one final time with the woman at the gate that our bags were on that flight, and touched down 2 hours later. How surprised were we when we were the last ones standing at the baggage carousel in Toulouse without our bags? Honestly? Not very. It was that kind of trip.
Blagnac is a tiny airport, plus it's in France, so we were out of luck (if we ever had any in the first place) at 11pm when we were looking for someone to talk to about our lost luggage. I would tally the staff count to less than 10 people in the entire place. No joke. I finally found someone to talk to, who told me that 1. Airline workers always lie when passengers ask about their bags boarding a flight because they don't want them to panic, and that 2. The airlines had lost thousands of bags due to the confusion with the snow before and after the holidays - if that was supposed to make me feel better or worse I still don't know. I created a lost baggage claim and we took a cab home, awaiting notification via text that our bags were found so we could come get them (faster than waiting for them to be shipped we were told).
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| Loren, Dyan and I at eating dinner at home |
We returned to the airport a total of 3 times during the following 2 days Dyan and Loren were in Toulouse. On the third time we were told to come back to the airport at 9:30pm as our luggage was on that evening's flight. Loren's bag came out next to last on the carousel after about 30 minutes of waiting and looked as though it was dragged behind the plane. Mine was in fact not on the carousel, but in a pile of bags sitting in the middle of the floor of the airport, and according to the timestamp on the tag had been there since noon. Dyan's never came. Not feeling at all confident, nor hopeful, we left a forwarding address in the US for Dyan's as we were leaving for Paris the next morning. Luckily my cousins are awesome sports and we were laughing about the situation even as it was happening.
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| View from our apartment |
Paris for New Years was fabulous. We met up with my friend Emma who is a teaching assistant in Rennes where we studied abroad together and stayed in a wonderful apartment in the 5th arrondissement she had found for us. We did all the touristy sights for my cousins Loren and Dyan – La Tour Eiffel, Le Notre Dame de Paris, the Latin Quarter, and the Pantheon. The night of the 30th we had a delicious traditional French dinner at a restaurant I had found a few months back called Au Petit Marguery and on the 30th we had our own little picnic in the apartment before going out. My favorite part of Paris this trip was when we were out walking around New Years Eve and watching all the Parisians shopping at the outdoor markets buying their NYE feast ingredients; there were oyster kiosks, fromageries, boulangeries, and plenty of wine and champagne open into the evening.
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| The Notre Dame de Paris |
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| The Seine by the Eiffel Tower overflowing from all the snow in December |
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| The French version of Bloomingdales or Macy's |
So now, looking forward to 2011, my New Years Resolutions are:
- Learn how to dance Salsa
- Learn how to cook Indian Food
- Learn how to knit
- Blog weekly
A bientot!
okay I LOVE this recap. I laughed out loud all over again. We are such nightmares. Miss you lots... any news on staying out there? Do I get to look forward to seeing you at HOME in May or in FRANCE in August? :-)
ReplyDeleteLove you, Lindz!