World Quest

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.

NOTE: If you've been looking us here, thanks. The Wi-Fi signal where we're at went on the fritz and just came back up. Hopefully, we're good to go now for the remainder of the trip.

I forgot to mention my digital media player. LOL

It's not my intention to turn this into a US Airways bashing site, but they really just keep on demonstrating how poorly they operate.

At the ticketing desk in Orlando, the agent told us that when we arrived in Philadelphia we would have to go to a different US Airways terminal to catch our connecting flight. That seemed kind of odd, so at the gate I asked the agent if we would have to go through security again since the ticket agent had told us we had to go to a different terminal. The gate agent said we actually only had to go one gate over from our arriving gate, so I felt some better, though still not trusting the fact that I was getting differing stories.

Our flight from Orlando to Philadelphia was scheduled to leave at 2:35 pm, but we didn't go wheels up until 3:00 pm. We were already on a short turn-around for catching our connecting flight from Philadelphia to Paris, and this delay cut further into that time. I was really hoping that the gate agent, and not the ticket agent, had the right story.

When we finally arrived in Philadelphia and disembarked from the flight, it turned out the gate agent was correct. We were so late arriving that we literally walked off our flight and into the line that was already loading for the next flight. We had just enough time for me to stand in line while Cindy and her mom went to the ladies room and then for me to go to the men's restroom while they held out place, before we were herded onto the A303.

And this harkened back to an earlier problem we had with US Airways. We booked our flight in January, purchasing our 3 tickets at the same time and receiving our seat assignments, 3 seats together. In March, when Cindy called to do a check on our seats, we were told first that we weren't even booked (though we had the e-mail confirmation) and then we were told that there had been an "equipment change" (meaning a different airplane was going to be used) and that the new seating configuration had us spread out around the plane.

Uh, no.

We got that straightened out, only to have the SAME thing happen again when we checked again in April (Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me). I was truly beginning to think these people were monkeys with keyboards. I finally demanded and received a confirmation in writing from a supervisor regarding our seating assignments a week before we left.

So, we load onto the bigger plane that was substituted for the previous one. You would hope that "bigger" would translate into "more comfortable", but instead it simply means "add more seats, make more money". Trust me when I tell you that coach seats are not made for a 6' 4" 270 pound passenger. My knees were jammed up against the back of the seat in front of me and my upper body extended so far over the top of my seat that if I tried to lay my head back I simply ended up staring at the ceiling, lol. That's not a complaint against US Airways per se, because all the airlines try to cram as many paying customers into the plane as is possible, But it was an uncomfortable 7 hour flight. It was impossible for me to sleep so I read, listened to my digital media player and did some work on my laptop, though that too was a convoluted ballet consisting of me placing pillows under the seatback tray to raise the level up to my chest level and then angling the laptop into a "V" with the front edge resting on my chest so I could see the screen.

Kudos to the pilot who performed the smoothest take off I have ever experienced, and for doing his best to minimize the effect of the turbulence we ran into over the middle of the north Atlantic Ocean. And he got us into Paris 20 minutes early!

Next up, our first day in France.

Thanks for reading

We arrived at Orlando International Airport at approximately 11:15 this morning and almost began the trip with disaster. It was just another nail in the coffin for our intentions of ever flying US Airways again.

Pulling up to the curb there was a prominent sign that baggage could be checked at the curb for a $2 per bag fee. Ok, that sounds good and while we're talking it over a skycap approaches, looks at our e-tickets and passports and says he can check the bags so we give him our 3 checked bags and he takes off to his little counter to start putting all the information into his computer.

While standing there I notice a sign behind his counter that reads: "ATTENTION INTERNATIONAL CUSTOMERS. Please proceed to the ticket counters inside the terminal to check your baggage." I begin trying to get the skycap's attention by calling out to him, but I'm blocked by several carts of luggage as well as by his constant talking to some employee seated about 10 feet behind him instead of paying attention to his customer (me). Finally, another skycap tells him I'm trying to talk to him and when I point out the sign, he acts like he had no idea we were on an international flight. I guess looking at our e-ticket (which is another anomaly for us because we have a stop and plane change in Philadelphia, yet the e-ticket states Orlando to Paris) was a pointless exercise. I'm glad I saw the sign or we could have arrived in Paris only to find our checked baggage was still sitting in Philadelphia.

So, it's inside we go and we get our baggage checked and run through the big x-ray machines, get our paper tickets and head off for the security checkpoint.

We had already packed our 3 ounce or less liquids in plastic Ziploc bags as current TSA regulations dictate. The rest of the process got a little more involved. I should probably call myself "Mr. Digital" since I'm traveling with my laptop, digital video camera, digital still camera, digital voice recorder, digital wireless signal detector, 5 GB flash drive and cell phone. The laptop and cameras have to be out of their cases and in the plastic tubs, along with my shoes. Even though it was a little hectic, I thought the process went pretty quickly, and thank goodness none of us were pulled out for the extra once over. It's aggravating in some respects, but I'd much rather go through checks than end up with some nut job in the air.

We grabbed lunch at the Miami Subs Grill outside our gate area, strolled through a newsstand and finally made our way down to our gate where we're now waiting for a scheduled 2:05 boarding and 2:35 departure. We'll only have an hour between flights in Philadelphia and we have to go to a different terminal to get to a different gate to get on a different plane, so I doubt I'll get anything posted until sometime after we arrive in Paris, which will be Saturday morning at 7:45 local time and 1:45 EST.

Thanks for reading!