I had a super lousy sleep prior to wake-up just after 3 am.  Too many things running around in my brain, I suppose. 

The airport was dark and quiet when we arrived - ours was among the first flights of the day at 6 am. But lots of people got to the airport at the same time and we were all waiting for the Air France check-in desks to open. Check-in was easy, and in the random luck of travellers, the AF agent let my bag get checked for free even though I’m supposed to pay. Sometimes you win!  The Canadians in line ahead of me were supposed to get the first bag free because of having a Westjet credit card, but they get dinged 70 euros per suitcase. They’re polite but unhappy. Mel paid the same 70 euro fee for her bike bag, which instead of making her angry also feels like a win because the Air France/KLM bike fees can be super high. The agent asked Mel how much Westjet would charge, and aimed to match it. The agent also didn’t weigh the bag - she just asked Mel how much it weighed - the answer, of course, was exactly the permitted weight. 😀

Our flight was full, and I suspect that almost everyone was making a connection. Otherwise, I think people would take a TGV train to Paris. Or at least I would.

We had no passport control in Nice since it was an internal flight. We were very early and sat a long while before boarding. But that’s better than being late and stressed. 

A Monaco-based American sat next to us in the waiting area. He told us that he had been scammed and pickpocketed yesterday in Nice. A woman asked him to buy her a tram ticket because the machine wouldn’t take her cash (no doubt a lie). They she watched him enter his credit card PIN and where he put his wallet. Then he got swarmed on the tram and suddenly his wallet was gone. Rotten. He said that he lost all his cards, but he had all his cash in a different wallet in another pocket and didn’t lose that. Still, a rotten experience. We took the tram twice yesterday. Were we careful, or just lucky?  We tapped a card to pay our fares, so no PINs were entered.

Of course, since we were super early for our Paris connection, the travel gods made sure there were ZERO lineups. Passport control at CDG took about 30 seconds, and there was also no line for the bus to the international terminal, so we then had over 4 hours to wait for scheduled boarding. The only glitch in the beginning was that the electronic boards and our boarding passes showed different terminal numbers. That was sorted out relatively quickly, since only one of the terminals had international flights. 

Our incoming Westjet flight was late, resulting in an hour delay of our departure on a completely full Paris-Calgary flight.  So in the end, we probably didn't need to catch that 6 am flight... 

Once on board the plane to Calgary, I had a super weird conversation with the young and large American woman (early 20s) sitting next to me who had come to Paris with the sole purpose of visiting Euro Disney. She was going to transit to Phoenix from Calgary, and was wearing only a t-shirt and very short shorts, which seemed more appropriate for Phoenix summer rather than Calgary in May.  She was annoyed with the use of Celsius to measure temperatures in both France and Canada, and tried (without much success) to explain to me how Celsius might be good for measuring water temperatures, but Fahrenheit is better for measuring air temperatures, because the Fahrenheit air temperature is closer to our body temperature. What????  And this person is eligible to vote.  Scary.  I wish I had recorded her attempted reasoning.  I didn’t ask her about kilos and pounds - I’m sure that would’ve been interesting too. In contrast, the similarly aged young Canadian woman sitting on the aisle was heading to Vancouver for the summer after her school year ended at the prestigious Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Paris. She’s a smart cookie, I’d say. 

The rest of the flight was uneventful.  We arrived in Calgary late afternoon.  I stayed at Mel and Marc’s because I needed a good night’s sleep before driving the 400 km back to Revelstoke the next day. It certainly was a delight driving on straight roads! 

Heart

1

Comment

0

Link

Log in to comment or reply