Tuesday, April 9, 2024
TUESDAY APRIL 9, 2024
Well, today is the day of our departure. It’s raining. France is crying that we are leaving. The forecast was rain for the morning, so we brought most of our luggage to the car last night to avoid walking all our bags down the block in the rain.
Construction at the Marseille Airport made finding our gate a bit of a challenge. This is a good reason to leave early. Jeff and Steve returned the car there at the airport. Even though it was mud streaked and pouring, the woman picked up on the damage to the left front bumper from our tight squeeze through that archway!
The flight to Paris was a blur, as I fell asleep almost the minute I buckled my seat belt. I’m giving credit to my new neck pillow I bought, Wander +. It had been flooding my Instagram feed. Not the fact that I didn’t sleep a wink the night before.
We were separated from Susie and Jeff when we landed in Paris. Susie had to wait on board for her wheelchair support. I thought we would meet them inside at the boarding gate. But no. We walked down one of those long outside staircases onto the tarmac and into a shuttle bus. The bus ride was at least 15 minutes long. I thought, our luggage is never going to find us! We were dropped off at a building, walked down a long corridor to machines that were separated by country of origin. Thankfully US was empty. We put our passports in the reader, the doors opened and the agent stamped our passports. Then we got in an elevator and found our way onto a sky tram. Eventually we got to the gate for our flight to JFK. We thought we had almost a 3 hour layover. When we got to the gate, we only had 1:45 minutes…where were our friends? Jeff and Susie finally arrived, with only about a half hour until boarding. It was getting so close to boarding time that Susie opted to walk most of the way.
We landed in JFK. Having Global Entry was like a magic carpet ride. You breezed right through. The Customs Agent said to me: Welcome home Ellen. We got all of our bags and our driver was there in minutes. It was almost 80°. Spring is just beginning in NY.
It was another trip of a lifetime! It was very busy waking up early, driving to our destination of the day, going from town to town, that would then lead to another place since we were so close, getting home between 4-7 pm. REPEAT. Though it was something we had to do…we had FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) of seeing an unbelievable area of France…when would we ever have the opportunity again?
Where to next year? Right now I’m thinking a quiet beach with nothing to do but read, swim, knit. REPEAT.
Probably not!!
Au revoir 🇫🇷
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