Instead of reuniting with Alice after a five -year hiatus, walking through Nice eating late night street food, I am ensconced in a soulless ibis hotel near the paris orly airport after eating a soulless buffet at midnight, after waiting at the Lannion airport for five hours and missing all possibility of making my connection to Nice.
My plane landed in Paris and, after a bunch of announcements in French, the one woman who knew my connection was Nice practically pushed me off the plane. "Go!" She said. "You are a lucky one." It was me and a man with his son who were whisked onto a shuttle to chase down our connecting planes. It was a wild ride, dodging planes and luggage trolleys. But we weren't fast enough. I was then ushered to the air france rerouting counter where a man peered at me over his readers as he hummed and mumbled.
"Is there a problem?" I asked after 30 minutes of this.
"Yes. America is "special.'"
Turns out the interface or whatever didn't work, so while the rest of the people on the flight - who did not get the wild ride - were being taken to the ibis, I waited and waited, the special American.
Finally I did it. After an hour at the counter I teared up.
French man looked up. "You are sad?" He asked with concern.
"Yes."
"Why?"
What came to mind was, "I'm missing a party with a friend I haven't seen in a long time."
And within two minutes of these fallen tears I had my luggage and was on a shuttle to food and sleep.
You do what you gotta do.
I'm sorry this happened, Marjie. You are special; don't let anyone tell you different!
ReplyDeleteWhen Marjie and I flew to France from Italy we faced several obstacles to picking up our rental car, not the least of which were that we'd arrived on separate flights, the agency was closing (who knew?), Orly Airport is the size of Edmonds, and finding where to get the car was like finding a secret hideout. I got to the covert rental office first, and had to stall the dour agents, because Marjie was (angelically) going to be our driver and had to sign the contract. I didn't think of the snot technique, and was fresh out of tears, but I showed them my locked bag of heavy meds and pulled the proverbial cancer card, "Woe is me, we must wait for my friend!" The stuffy agents weren't too impressed, but perhaps sufficiently guilted into waiting a bit more. Marjie, in her own hellish journey of stress understandably couldn't find us. Then I pulled out all the stops, when two of the three guys finally went on a hunt to locate her at the spot she articulated perfectly over the phone, but they second guessed and missed for a while: I told them she was a beautiful, lovely woman, and they would not be sorry they'd waited until 12:30am, a half hour after closing time, to fetch her. I'm not sure she was feeling so lovely at that point, having been trying to find us for 45 minutes in the dark as the entire airport closed (yes, that is not a typo, a major, international *Paris* airport closed at midnight), but it did the trick in terms of us getting the car with Marjie as driver! The three agents transformed, visibly, nay, spectacularly cheering up; one started dancing to Michael Jackson music amplified from his phone. As Marjie says, you do what ya gotta do. As a side note, we got to our hotel, supposedly 45 minutes away, at 3:00am, with me as navigator. All that and Marjie is still talking to me!
ReplyDeleteOften it's the near misses and the side-tracks that are more exciting than the hits and the on-times. These are how cherished memories are created, and this is why we keep reading. How fun to get the other side of this story! Thanks, Liza!
ReplyDeleteLiza, that story needed to be told, by you. It's already kind of funny now from this distance. Ah the good old days at Orly...
ReplyDeleteLOLIFIS (laughing out loud in fact in stitches). Yes, the air! So fresh in the Orly parking garage! The the agents so romantic! And wasn't the moon bright on our bleary-eyed adventure finding the industrial district where our sweet beds awaited at the hotel serving authentic fruit salad breakfast for €10 that the website said we'd already paid for but apparently not! [Brian, you're still right, point well taken. For example, our stop Caen was random, and really turned into an interesting, walkable overnight that we both enjoyed a lot, with gracious people interactions. I just had to riff on Marjie's comment.]
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