Wednesday, December 14

brilliant notion

will someone please remind me whose fabulous idea it was to take an 8 am flight out of charles de gaulle???

oh, right, that brilliant notion would have been MINE.
:: smacks forehead ::

what in-the-sam-hill was i thinking?

8am departure - international flight = minimum of 6am arrival at airport = 1h30 train ride to airport = 4h30am departure from home.

but wait! there's more!!

first of all - the RER B (which runs to the airport) is on strike. so there are only 2 trains running an hour, instead of one roughly every 10 or 15 min.

second of all - i have to leave at such a ridiculous hour that none of the public transport is in operation. metro - rer - air france bus - air shuttle - these don't start running until 5:40 at the earliest. this does not help me.

a helpful ::snort :: suggestion was to take the nightbus to the airport. um. right. with two pieces of luggage and a laptop - with the connection i'd have to take to make that feasible, it would take me about 3 hours to get there? (i'd like to point out that this amount of luggage is not normal - but i haven't been home in a year and have a lot of stuff to haul back (christmas treasures!!!!))

um.
no.

a taxi? i'd have to call one anyway - and i'm not sure what that will run. and i've always got the feeling i'm getting ripped off somehow in a taxi.

so i did an internet search and now have a shuttle picking me up at my door at 4:50 am. driving me straight to my gate. and they are charging my credit card nine days after the trip is completed. hip hip huzzah.

i'm going home for the holly-days.

3 comments:

Vivi said...

If it makes you feel any better, I have to get up at 5am next week so I can drive for 1/2 an hour, take an hour and a half train, and then wait for the same RER B line to pick up my Dad, who thought it would be a great idea to arrive in Paris at 8:45 in the morning.

I think the shuttle/taxi is totally worth it - dragging luggage around the metro is the worst kind of hell I can think of, and doing it alone is ten times worse.

Anonymous said...

Just to make everyone here feel so special I have a complete week off from Christams until right after New Years Day. I love vacation time.

Anonymous said...

We found the shuttle deal on the internet also when we went to Paris. It was fantastic and really quite reasonable.