Awoke at the standard 6a or so and packed, wrapping up just before breakfast at 7:30a. Our taxi arrived at 8:30a and it quickly became apparent that not only did the driver not speak English but he wasn’t interested in putting up with my French. Fair enough. Michelle and I rode the hour mostly in silence, watching the city pass by. We got one last look at Notre Dame as we crossed Ile de la Cite. We saw a poster in northern Paris advertising the UPR, a right-wing French party, and their support of a Frexit from the EU. Ugh.
Arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport and whip out the credit card (as our hotel had said that credit was no problem and we had done our darnedest to spend all of our paper so we didn’t have them going home). He just pointed at his card reader and said “broken”. Eeeep. I had 30 euros and was trying to figure out what to do. I asked, in my broken French, if he could have another driver charge the fare and give him cash. Apparently he wasn’t keen on that but luckily Michelle was able to get 40 euros from an ATM so we could settle. Phew.
Stood in line to check-in only to have the automated kiosk ask us to go to customer service to finish the process. Stood in line there for a bit before a guy waved us to him. He chatted with us a good fifteen minutes as he sorted things out, he was in his 30s and former French military. We talked about traveling (he liked to go places out of his comfort zone, like Japan, and had also gone to Scotland, etc.), his prior career doing IT programming, etc. His supervisor stopped by and asked him why he was so laid back in his chair, the guy responding that he must need a new chair and some whisky or some such. I’m not sure if he was just stalling while some security checks were run or something or if he was just chatty but it was quite entertaining.
Sailed through security pretty quickly, looked around for something for Addison to no avail, bought some bottle water, and made it to our (quite remote, in an odd saucer-like structure) gate. There was a group of Playstation demo stations. Boarded shortly thereafter (around 11:20a) and took our seats at the rear of the plane (same row, opposite side as the trip over). A French lady and her young girl were across the aisle. Though she was occasionally a bit fussy she was really well behaved in general. Due to the headwind it was about an hour longer than the flight over, about eight and a half hours.
The UFO-shaped terminal at CDG is off to the right
Playstation 4 kiosk at CDG
A Concorde on display just off of the runway
Despite that the flight went fairly quickly as I spent the time (until the battery on the Surface died) choosing pictures for the blog. Thereafter I watched a bit of Solo and passed the time watching the progress on the in-flight map. Michelle slept some and watched a couple of movies. Food-wise we had some pasta with tomato sauce (and olives, blech) with the usual accompanying gang of roll, butter, Laughing Cow cheese, salad, and an apple crumble. Later in the flight we got a small container of chocolate ice cream. Finally, just before landing we had a barbecue hand pie snack.
Landed in Chicago about 2:30p and, after visiting the restroom, suffered through re-entry to the US. Long line for the kiosk to scan our passports followed by a long line to get our passport looked over by a human. Then proceeded to board a bus to transfer to terminal 3 (we had arrived at 5), whereupon we had to go through scanning our bags. A particularly rude and annoying woman behind us was making snide comments about the people ahead of us taking too many bins, taking too long, etc. Then when Michelle was taking out the Kindles (as it clearly stated anything larger than a phone was to be removed) she gave Michelle some lip. That was it, she and I shot back and told her to chill the heck out. Sheesh, first rule of airports — be patient and find your happy place, you’ll need to go there often.
Anyhow, past security we had some time to get some bites to eat. Michelle and I grabbed some Chinese food and I chased it down with a Starbucks frappe which was quite tasty. Boarded our plane for Raleigh at about 6p, right on time. On board we sat next to a nice lady who had been traveling around the Mountain West (Glacier, Yellowstone, etc.) with her son and husband. I also spent a good amount of time watching small towns and larger cities pass by below, including Lexington, Kentucky. As we passed over the Appalachians I could see fog in the valleys. Really neat. Landed at a bit past 9:30p, grabbed our luggage, and waited for Addison to arrive around 10:30p and take us home.
Lexington, Kentucky from the air… maybe.
It was a very interesting trip. Our first trip with just the two of us since… well, other than a brief trip to the mountains a few years earlier, 1996 or so and our trip to the UK. It was a bit more relaxed than I expected it to be, despite the compressed time frame (just eleven days, two of which were pretty much just travel). We saw a bunch of stuff, including a bucket list item in Mont Saint-Michel and many “exhibition” type things like the Tolkien exhibit, Harry Potter tour, and of course the Paris museums. Bayeux’s cathedral and Notre Dame were absolutely stunning. Despite not seeing many of the monuments of either major city (as we’d already seen them on prior trips) we did get a feel for both and ate as local as possible including regional dishes. Hamilton wowed us both, and we’ve since began afternoon tea time as time allows. In all a busy, but yet relaxing, trip.
Route for our trip, September and October, 2018