Welcome to Paris!!

NOTE: Problems continue to abound. For some unknown reason my laptop keeps shutting down every time I try to access any photo file, thus making it impossible for me to share with you some of the beautiful pictures I've taken. I'm assuming the problem is a corrupt file somewhere and am not sure I can correct it, but will keep trying.

Our flight arrived in Paris at 7:25am Saturday morning. After I unfolded my legs and straightened them out, we headed down to Passport Control. Unlike Scotland and London last year, the agent (her uniform actually identified her as "Police") did not ask me if my visit was for business or pleasure. I had planned to have my answer be "I'm in the business of pleasure", but she ruined that plan.

After being allowed entry into their country, we were sent down to baggage claim. My bag and Cindy's bag came shooting out of the tube almost immediately. Cindy's mom's bag took about another 20 minutes to find its way to us, finally arriving just as were about to report to US Airways that her bag had gone AWOL. Interestingly, we assumed that our next stop would be Customs, but there was nothing that channeled us to Customs, so we just went on to the pickup point for our transportation to Montmartre.

And the adventure begins...

The directions given to us by the transportation company instructed us to go to Gate 16 for pickup. I should point out that "gate" here in France means "door", but we did not know that then. After meandering around for a few minutes looking for a gate, we stopped at the "Information Booth". But the lovely French girl there did not know anything about the company when I showed her the name on the paper we printed out from the website and could only offer that Gate 16 was down the terminal to her right by use of a sign language known as pointing. So, off to the right we walked. And walked. And walked. We finally came upon Gate 24 and saw that it was a door leading out of the terminal. Then we came to Gates 22, 20, 18 and 14.

No Gate 16.

There was, however, a lot of construction going on at the approximate spot where Gate 16 might be if it existed. I was beginning to think that perhaps this was the French version of Platform 9 3/4 to Hogwarts.

So, since lugging the baggage around the Charles de Gaulle Airport was beginning to lose its appeal, I had Cindy and her mom wait while I walked back to where I had seen a US Airways information counter. The gentleman behind the counter was very nice (their bad/good points are beginning to even out, but I still won't fly them if I have any kind of sane choice) and called the transportation company for me and let me speak to them. Turned out Gate 16 was closed for, of all things, construction, and we were to be picked up at Gate 20, which was about an eighth of a mile away. Merci, merci to all involved and off I go to round up Cindy and her mom and get to Gate 20 where our scheduled 9:00am pickup was only 3 minutes away.

We arrived at Gate 20 with a minute to spare. A couple who were also looking for their shuttle van (same company) that was supposed to have picked them up at 7:45am at Gate 16 saw us holding the printout and recognized the van's logo. They asked us if we knew where the pickup point was because THEY couldn't find Gate 16 either. We told them our story and they joined us at Gate 20.

We waited.

And waited.

Finally, around 9:20 we saw a van with the logo of our company pull up...over where Gate 16 was supposed to be but wasn't. We grabbed our luggage and tried to run with it around the construction to where the van, that was now backing out like it was about to leave. I hurdled a couple of taxi cabs and barely escaped being run over by a shuttle van from a different company before throwing myself in front of our driver's windshield. He had no orders for the other couple, but he had our name and that of 6 ladies from Charlotte, North Carolina, who we had to wait on while he looked for them. Hmmm, he didn't come looking for us! Finally, around 10am we were on our way.

I tried to watch, somewhat, and see how the roads leaving and approaching the airport looked so that when we pick up our rental car on Friday I will know how to get out and on our way to Giverny, but the driver was a maniac, lol. Five of the ladies from Charlotte, who were sitting in front of us, were saying to the 6th one "He drives like you", which caused all but the driver to chuckle. But, around 10:30am we made it safely to our destination in Montmartre, which is just outside of Paris on a hill overlooking the city.

More about Montmartre and the rest of our Saturday in the next post.