2:45 am Lisbon time / 9:45 pm D.C. time
taxi pick up at our hotel
5:30 am Lisbon time / 12:30 am D.C. time
flight to Paris
8:55 am Paris time / 2:55 am D.C. time
land in Paris
2:15 pm Paris time / 8:15 am D.C. time
flight to JFK
3:55 pm D.C. time
land at JFK
10:45 pm D.C. time
arrive at home
Total travel time from taxi pick up at the hotel to arriving at home: 25 hours!
Highlights and Lowlights of our travel day:
- Air France is very problematic in many ways, including seat selection, so we had to sit aisle/aisle. C had a mom and toddler with him and he entertained the toddler for the entire flight because he is so good with kids. Adorable!
- When we were boarding that flight, a lady tried to put what was clearly a too-heavy suitcase in the overhead bin and ended up dropping it and it landed very hard on a man's head. She did not seem concerned, but the passengers around him checked on him and luckily he seemed okay.
- When we landed in Paris, it was snowing, and if you know me, that made me incredibly happy!
- As I mentioned in the Day 1 post, CDG is a terrible airport for connections and this was absolutely the case once again. Large crowds, no information, rude employees, terrible/nonexistent signage...I could go on and on. However, I will say that the passport control officer was the shocking exception to the rule because he was warm, friendly, welcoming, and a delight to chat with!
- Air France messed up our seats on our second flight; we had originally booked a pair of seats (once again, a 2-4-2 configuration) with Delta, but when we checked in for our Air France flight to Paris, we were randomly assigned seats on the Delta flight, which we weren't notified about. Naturally, Air France employees were of no help. When we finally spoke with a Delta employee, of course the flight was full and they couldn't make any changes. So we were pretty annoyed for a few hours, anticipating having to sit apart in less-than-ideal seats, and that annoyance was not lessened by a very chatty lady at the gate who would not stop talking about shopping despite me putting in my earbuds and staring at my phone. When they made an announcement for passengers to bring the Covid paperwork up to the employees for verification, C ended up speaking to yet another Delta employee and explained what had happened, and she was very kind and told him she couldn't promise anything, but she'd see what she could do. Once again, the universe was smiling down on us at CDG, because about 20 minutes before boarding, we got called to the podium and that employee had worked some magic and got us a pair of seats together! Even better they turned out to be the last row in one of the sections of the plane, so we didn't have anyone sitting right behind us. Perfection!
- As were we deplaning at JFK, things were going very smoothly until a group of six people blocked the aisle and took forever getting their million pieces of luggage down from the overhead bins. This went on and on and they were clearly not even trying to move quickly. It was obvious people were very irritated with them, so finally I yelled down the aisle, "Can we get a move on?!?" and many other passengers chimed in with "Get out of the aisle!" and "Move out of the way!" and finally the pressure from the rest of us got them to hurry up. After a week of inconsiderate and rude behavior almost everywhere we went, I had simply had enough of people's selfish behavior!
- Along those lines, neither Delta nor Air France enforced any limitations on carry-on luggage, which is absurd. People might not like Spirit or Frontier, but at least both of those airlines enforce their rules and treats all passengers equally. Allowing some people to carry three or four bags onto a flight creates issues with overhead bin space and annoys the rest of the people who follow the rules.
- Global Entry made our time at JFK super quick and painless, and although traffic was heavy, we made it home at 10:45 last night.
Bottom line, travel is never dull!
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| I love this man so much! |
Happy Tails to you!
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