Last day in Europe

11/6/2012

3 weeks. 4 adults. 5 cities. Along the way, 10 castles, 10 museums, 2 operas, 2 musicals, and more train and metro rides than I'd ever care to ride on. While staying in 4 star hotels and spacious (more importantly, centrally located) vacation rentals. 

Oh, and did I mention the 100 kg worth of food, clothing & souvenirs we brought back home? It was probably more than that when you add on our carry-ons, but I gotta subtract something for our original luggage weight :T.

All this for the princely sum of $2224 per person. 

That's less than a month's rent in some parts of the US.

Logistics is always a nightmare, especially when you're in a country where you don't speak the language. For example, in Paris, the metro directs you by giving you the name of the end station, which makes you think you're getting on the correct train. Only to find out that it forks at the end, so you'll have to get off and get on the correct train. It hasn't happened to us yet (thank God), but I'll spend a good hour researching to ensure that doesn't happen and that we'll actually be taking the right train, or metro, or flight, etc.

Our flight was at 12:25pm but online, people said it could take anywhere from 28-45 minute to get to Charles de Gaulle from Paris, so we played it safe by leaving early. We walked the trek yesterday from our apartment to the RER station; we tend to do that in most cities, just to scope out escalators and elevators the day before so we’re not rushing like mad the day of. The route wasn’t too bad, as the RER station is right across the street from our apartment. 

That is, it’s not too bad until you have heavy luggage you need to lug around. 

And two of them are broken (the wheels gave out on Dad’s and Angel’s). 

What was a five-minute walk yesterday turned out to be a half-hour walk today. It was pretty gross, how much we were sweating underneath our layers of clothing in the end—hey, it was pretty damn cold when we left the apartment! 

Les Halles is undergoing massive construction right now, so thank God the route we took had working escalators! It was the most direct route as well, which is a nice sigh of relief. The picture of what it’ll look like when it’s done looks really nice (eco-friendly), but it won’t be completed until late 2013. Right now, it’s just a really large piece of land that’s all dug up, with construction crew and cranes and trucks strewn all over the place.

Carnet tickets don’t work for the RER if you are going outside zone 1 (on the other hand, if you are just traveling in zone 1, then you can ride both the RER and metro). We bought single one-way fares from the ticket machines—it’s 9.25 euros per person from Paris to CDG. Yikes, that’s expensive. Charles de Gaulle is zone 5. You need to take the train that goes to Aeroport Charles de Gaulle—any train starting with the letter “E” goes there. Do NOT take the train going in the same direction, but ending at Migny—you’ll be screwed, as you’ve landed yourself in Parisian suburbia.

The train was completely packed; we had nowhere to sit. For most of the ride over, it just kept getting more and more packed. But towards the end, at the Parc Exposition, the whole train emptied out. I guess there was a conference going on there? Mom and Dad got out first, at the Terminal 1 stop. It’s actually the stop for Terminal 3, and they’ll have to take the free shuttle to Terminal 1 from there. 

We rode to the next stop, the last one, Terminal 2. Terminal 3 is actually in the middle of Terminal 1 and 2. Confusing, hunh? I’ll never get their numbering system.

Terminal 2 is the largest, and it subdivides into 2A, 2B, 2C… down to 2G. After we got off the train, we had to go up two flights of escalators to get to the main terminal, and then we walked down, down, down… we got to the very end of Terminal 2, where 2A was supposed to be. British Airways is supposedly located in 2A so naturally, that’s where I thought to check-in.

I was wrong.

They moved. Not only did they move, but they moved to 2C DOWNSTAIRS. There’s a specific elevator you need to take in order to get to that part of the airport. And the signs indicating this genius move was only posted in the opposite direction; you can't see the signs if you're walking in the direction we were walking in. 

It wasn't until we turned around in confusion–after having arrived at 2A and not being able to locate British Airways–that we saw the signs. ARGH! The luggage I had was the one with the broken wheel, so I was sweating bullets trying to move it along properly. We had to walk back to 2C >.< and go down the elevators. 

As I was checking in, handing over our passports and what not, one of the workers came up to Angel, who was behind me. She asked Angel if our carry-ons could fit in the carry-on luggage bin. I started to have a panic attack. I did not want to be stuck with a ridiculous surcharge fee if we could not fit the carry-ons into that damn bin. 

Angel had no choice but to put the luggage in the bin... but just as she was doing so, the lady turned around to talk to a coworker. When she turned back, Angel was pretending to take it out of the bin (she never quite got to putting it in in the first place). Angel said angelically that it fit. So the lady stuck a tag on both of our carry-ons declaring that they were inspected and cleared for carry-on baggage. Whew.

I had measured our carry-ons beforehand and the size was perfectly within the allowance. I swear the bin is deliberately undersized so they can charge more fees on passengers.

When going through security here, Angel got her first pat-down. EVER. I get patted down every time for some reason (Angel says cuz I look like a terrorist… moi?), but Angel, Angel... 

I was laughing at her the entire time. Although to be fair, I think the Parisian security workers are quite industriously bored. They patted down just about everyone… even their own workers! My God. And they're quite slow at it, too. If you ever find yourself at Charles de Gaulle, allow time for that, as they don’t care that they’re holding up the line. They seriously patted almost every person down. Geesh.

The flight from Paris to London was short and smooth. Europeans like to travel lightly, so many of them didn’t even have carry-ons; only a jacket or small purse. That was good for us, as our carry-ons were pretty big (again, in my defense, I did measure them and they were well within British Airway’s allowance for carry-on size). 

At Heathrow, we had to go through security yet again, and they have two different check points. One has the workers checking all the carry-ons, making sure that they fit in the carry-on bins (really?!). We lost one of the "cleared for carry-on" tags, as the sticker wasn’t too sticky, so we were panicking…  a worker pulled a guy aside and demanded that he put his carry-on in the bin to see if it would fit or not. We took that opportunity to rush past that security check point—the worker was preoccupied with the poor man (his carry-on luggage was smaller than ours!). We went up the escalators to the real security checkpoint, where you have to put everything on the conveyor belt and you have to step through the scanner.

The worker moving our baggage along was not Chinese, but he knew how to speak it! He spoke quite well for a non-Chinese guy, actually. He said to me, “Ni hen piao liang.” When I told Angel that (she went first in front of me), she rolled her eyes and said something to the tune of "the guy must be blind." This is also the brat that calls me a pig... and a toad, fyi, and calls our mother a witch~

Our flight was delayed by an hour because of a problem with the cargo door; they couldn’t keep it open to properly load the luggage. When it finally came time to board, Angel and I were first in line, but they announced that boarding was by groups—and this being our luck, they started with the back rows first. 

However, I noticed a bunch of people rushing past me who were not in the group they had just called out. Why bother announcing boarding groups if you’re not going to enforce it?! Grrr… so naturally, I rushed in as well, and the British Airways flight attendants didn’t care. 

I had the heavy carry-on (British Airways allows carry-on to be 40 pounds max). The plan was that Angel and I would lift it together to the overhead compartment, but Angel got stuck somewhere behind me, so I had to lift it all by myself. Obviously, it was too heavy to lift; I had a horrible cold and was tired from lifting all the luggage earlier in the day. There I was, teetering with the luggage over my head, not quite able to make it into the compartment. A nice flight attendant came over to help me with it, thank God. Angel came later, and we lifted hers together. 

Poor baby had the unfortunate luck to sit next to a really big lady. We think it was the lady's first time flying. She was so obnoxious. Her arm took up a quarter of Angel’s seat! She kept inadvertently pressing Angel’s menu buttons. Angel would be watching a movie and all of a sudden, the volume would go up or down because the lady had accidentally pressed it. The lady had accidentally turned on her light button, and for the good part of six hours, she was trying to go to sleep with her light shining on her. She couldn’t figure out how to turn it off, so she kept pressing Angel’s buttons. Angel finally angrily pointed to the lady’s own set of buttons, but she couldn’t get the hint. The funny part was that her husband had accidentally turned on his own light button, and somehow figured how to turn his off. But he didn’t help his wife turn hers off. 

It made for a miserable plane ride for Angel. I was on one side, hacking and coughing the entire time (I was getting feverish at that point) and the obnoxious lady on her other side, leaning toward her and heck, staring at Angel. It was freakish how Angel would turn and there she was, staring at Angel. *shudder* Later on, the lady polished off half of her sandwich… and offered the other half to Angel. WTF?!

At long last, we landed at SFO. I tried to get the carry-on out of the overhead by my own, but I was struggling so the girl next to me was kind enough to help. It was still very heavy, and hit me on my cheek and mouth as it was coming down. Ouch. 

I had called customs before we left for Europe, asking if foie gras was ok. On their website, they had it as a “maybe.” WTF? They should be clear on that! What if one worker allows it, and another doesn’t? The worker I talked to said they go through months of training to know what is definitely allowable and what isn’t… then shouldn’t it be somewhere in your “months of training” to figure out the maybes? That makes a huge difference in the lives of the millions of travelers walking through SFO every year, ya think?

We were nervous the whole time, because we were carrying foie gras with us. Do we declare it? Do we check the box “carrying animal products”? In the end, we decided to be truthful and checked “yes.” We even wrote it down on the other side, on the list side, as “canned foie gras.” Somehow, somewhere… it was a miracle we went through customs and no questions were asked. I wore no bling, walked behind Angel… and we walked right through customs. It was a breeze.

Mom and Dad were delayed, as United somehow managed to misdirect their luggage. AGAIN. Brilliant people, no? After their incompetency and their rudeness, Mom said she’s never flying United again. She really wants to fly British, so I’ll need to somehow find a way to conjure up cheap seats for them next time for British. Here’s hoping I can J And here's a toast to end our journey:

To a prosperous year! 

To the new chandelier...!