December 26, 2007
Master Yoda has been here with me for a week now, and fun times are being had all over the place! We went to Venice for the weekend, and I will write about that once I get caught up on life. The story I want to tell today, however, is about coming BACK from Venice.
Sunday afternoon in Venice, Yoda and I are thinking through the rest of our afternoon, and how we will get to the busstop at 5:45pm to catch the bus that comes at 6pm to take us to the airport. We had checked out of our hotel early that morning, and checked our suitcase into the left luggage area of the train station, which was conveniently near the bus station. We guessed that if we did this and did that, we would have plenty of time to pick up our luggage and make it back to the bus station. There was a little bit of running involved once the actual hour arrived, but we did get our suitcase and make it to the bus station on time. Step #1 of the journey home was going smoothly.
Now, this particular airline only flies from Venice to Paris once daily, and that flight touches down in Paris at 10:20pm. However, it doesn't actually touchdown in Paris, but in a town about an hour outside of Paris called Beauvais. Yoda and I, after having checked in, began calculating times.
Touchdown at 10:20. (Because the airline had boasted that 98% of their flights land on time).
Pick up luggage by 10:40. (Because it is a small airline and therefore luggage won't take long.)
Catch bus back to Paris at 10:45. (Because we are optimists.)
Arrive in Paris at 11:30 (Because the ride won't take the 1h 15 min it took the other day because there will be no traffic at that time of night.)
Catch the metro to the train, and have no problem being on the train to my house before public transport ends at 1am.
No problem, right?
At 8:30, instead of announcing that we were going to begin boarding, the airline announces that our flight is delayed. Projected departure: 9:45, an hour later than the original departure.
Problems begin.
Yoda assures me not to stress out, because there is nothing I can do at this point, and stressing is only going to make me feel worse. All I can do is sit there and (a) calculate times of when we will arrive in Paris after the bus ride from the airport, and (b) calculate how difficult it will be in the middle of the night to get from Paris to my apartment that is outside of Paris.
We finally began boarding at 9:40. Somehow, I managed to get priority boarding, so I hurried my way to a seat in the very front row of the plane. (The cheap airlines in Europe work alot like Southwest airlines, with no assigned seating). I saved a seat for Yoda, and we hoped that being first off the plane would get us home all the sooner. I think we took off some time around 10pm, and both of us drifted off to sleep.
Somewhere in the dreamyland of sleep, I hear the captain speaking. I hear words like, "weather, Lille (another town in France), instead, cannot land," and I pull myself awake to listen more clearly. All I catch is, "landing in Liege, Belgium."
HUH?! Did he just say we're landing in Belgium?!
I called the stewardess over, and asked what was happening. She explained that due to weather in Beauvais, and really all of northern France, we could not land. The captain was rerouting us to Liege, Belgium, where the mist was thin enough to allow for a safe landing. I asked how were we supposed to get to Paris from there, and she replied, "Oh, we won't leave you stranded! There will be busses that will drive you from there back to Beauvais. It will only take 2-3 hours."
She walked away, and all of this began to sink in. Landing in Belgium (which is northEAST of Paris), bussing to Beauvais, (which is northWEST of Paris), then bussing back into Paris, then taking night busses because the metro and train doesn't run that late to get back to apartment (which is EAST of Paris). AHHH. I called her back and asked if there was any way for the busses to drop people off directly in Paris, (for those who wanted to), instead of all the way back in Beauvais, so we could avoid the extra two hours of travel. She assured us that, yes, that was possible.
We got off the airplane at midnight, got our luggage and exited the airport to find the busses that would take us back to France, laughing all the while at how bizarre the whole situation was. When I thought about it, it was a bit like wanting to land in Nashville, and being rerouted to Memphis instead. But to an American, landing in a whole other country seems absurd. (Note: Liege is 190 miles from the dropoff point of the Beauvais airport bus in Paris).
There was some mass confusion for nearly an hour with the bus drivers, who originally insisted on only going to Beauvais. I guess after awhile, enough people wore them down, and two of them agreed to go to Paris instead. We were already on one of those busses, so we didn't have to fight the mad rush to find a seat on one of the ones going to Paris instead of Beauvais. We finally pulled out of Liege around 1am. Yoda and I immediately fell right asleep.
We woke up at 4:45am, as the bus was pulling around a round-a-bout, and I caught a glimpse of the Arc de Triomphe. Oh! We were in Paris. Thankfully! As we stepped off the bus, Yoda looked at me with a "what now?" look on his face. I'd never been in Paris at the pre-dawn hour. I knew trains began running at 5am, so I was hoping that the metro did too. We decided to walk to the Arc (a) to kill time, (b) so Yoda could see it for the first time, (c) to keep the blood flowing cause man alive was it cold out, and (c) there is a train station underneath it, and that would prevent us from having to take the metro to the train.
We arrived back at my house at 6:15am, weary but happy. I was thrilled to not have had to pay the 26 euros for the bus from Beauvais back to Paris, and to not have had to deal with night busses in the city. We both loved to have a great story about being in Belgium in the middle of the night. And...the sight of beds to crash into was just pure bliss. It sure was fun.
Tales from Venice to come in the next few days.
