Our last adventure was getting home- and it was a little bit of an adventure! Paris had a one day transit strike that just happened to coincide with the day we were leaving…nice. Our flight was at 2 pm, so we left the apartment at 8 am just to be sure we would make it. The subway ride to the train station went very smoothly, but after that things started to fall apart.
Because of the strike there was no one working the ticket desk. The machines wouldn’t take our credit cards and only took coins. We had the 16 euros in cash, but mostly in paper money. None of the shops would make change for us. For about an hour we went round and round trying to talk people into making change for us. Finally a nice Frenchman came to our rescue. He bought us our tickets on his credit card and we gave him our cash. Now with tickets in hand (and 12 euro cents in cash left over) we headed to the track.
The next train was coming in 30 minutes. As the track started to get more crowded with people waiting we met an American family that had already taken the wrong train TWICE (thanks to some confusing track changes due to the strike). It turns out they lived in Austin!
We got to the airport about 11 and exited the train at the first airport stop. Our tickets wouldn’t let us out! I had watched the guy buy the tickets for us, so I knew we had the right ones. An attendant let us out, with a “tsk, tsk” and a disappointed head shake. I still don’t know what we did wrong!
Once we got out we almost immediately realized we should have waited until the second stop. So after an airport tram ride we were finally at the right terminal. We learned that even if we had gotten on the train to the airport before us we would have just arrived- that train broke down! Needless to say, it was a mad house.
Luckily, my status really helped us out. We got to go in the first class line to check in (significantly shorter) and then got fast tracked through security as well. All in all, I think it took us about 10 minutes before we were walking to our gate. We spent a few quiet and restful hours in the Admirals Club and then boarded our plane.
After we were all boarded the captain made an announcement that because of the transit strike air traffic control was on a slow down and our take off would be delayed approximately 90 minutes. We had a connection time in Chicago of about 2 ½ hours, so this was a little concerning. However, the captain said that if we really took off when ATC said we would only be 45 minutes late arriving to Chicago.
Luckily, we departed only 90 minutes late. We stayed up about the whole flight and ate some REALLY bad airplane food. We got through immigration and customs fine, took another tram ride, and went through Chicago security. We even had enough time to get my mom some Garrett’s popcorn- one of her favorite Chicago treats. We got on our tiny little plane and took a noisy ride back to Dallas. My parents were there to pick us our and our Parisian adventure was officially over!
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