Digital Johnny, Real Johnny

My Paris Trip: Episode I

As I'm starting this entry, it's about 9:30am in Paris, but only 12:25am in California. While most of you may read the title of this blog and desperately wish you were in Paris too, you may have second thoughts when you hear what I went through to get here.

Me on the Pont Neuf on Thursday, June 30. Can you tell it's raining?

Check out the rest of my pictures here! (Episode 1: pictures 1-43)

I got up at about 7am (PST) on Tuesday the 28th, got myself ready and, of course, made some last minute packing changes and checked my flight status online. Aaron came home at about 9:30, bearing gifts of BK breakfast sandwiches and hashbrown pieces. After installing a DVD playing program on my laptop, we headed to the airport at about 10am to make my 12pm flight. Our goodbye was short but sweet and I was very proud of myself for not crying. I got in the self check-in line, but after 10 minutes I was informed that I had to go to the other blue-roped line (red is for special people in First Class) because my final destination was international. Thanks for the heads up American Airlines. After about 10 minutes in that line, an employee asked if anyone was on the 12pm flight to JFK and instructed me to go to yet another, although shorter line. However, this one only had two attendants instead of five, so by the time I checked my bag for the JFK flight and got my boarding pass, the girl who was in front of me in the 2nd blue line was just 5 people behind me in the security line. Of course, First Class passengers, even those with non-quickly-approaching boarding times, got to go in a special line.

After all the usual (post 9/11) security fun, just as I was walking up to my gate, I saw the gate attendant slide a "canceled" sign under my flight number. My heart sank and then began racing when I realized that I was to be on a 9pm EST flight from JFK to Paris, arriving in Paris 4 hours before my sister Joy who was flying from Ireland to spend time with me in Paris. I immediately walked to the desk, but some woman had already been standing there before the sign was placed. Of couse there was just one gate attendant who seemed more interested in informing us that she was the only one there than telling us how we were supposed to deal with this "minor inconvenience". She placed a pile of cards with American Airlines' customer service number on the desk and told people to call because she was the only person there and she couldn't rebook everyone. I decided to wait in line because I was only second and I had packed my cell phone in my checked bag because I'd figured there'd be no reason for me to have it.

For about 10 minutes, the desk attendant silently tapped away on her keyboard, sighed wearily every few minutes and impressively completely ignored every question and comment made by the (French) lady ahead of me, who was also supposed to by on my 9pm flight to Paris. Finally, she made a call to someone somewhere to complain about how she was the only attendant although there were still about 50 people left in line and how she couldn't find anything for those of us connecting to Charles de Gaulle until the next day. At first I was mad that she had "told" us this news while on the phone with someone, rather than announcing it like a normal human being with a heart, but then I went into some kind of panic/shock about arriving in Paris 24 hours late with no way to contact Joy or my prospective landlord to let them know about how American had screwed me out of two flights for which I'd paid what seems like a lot of money to someone who makes as little as I do. When her call ended, I asked her if it was true that there was nothing for tomorrow, thinking that I should immediately call Aaron to get him to come back and get me. She very rudely told me that she was going to have to take care of the people going to Heathrow (London) first because they had a chance of getting out that day whereas the Paris people would have to wait until tomorrow. I don't think she could have sounded any more nasty if she had simply told me to "fuck off".

Me at the Palai Royal/Musee du Louvre Metro entrance. A lot of Metro entrances are cool, but this one is awesome.

So, I went to a payphone to tell Aaron that he might have to come back to get me, but of course the first three I tried were out of order and I had to wait for another stranded JFK passenger to get off the phone with customer service. I was relieved when Aaron seemed so cool about coming back to get me, but I wanted to call customer service before I gave him the official green light. The lady who helped me had a thick Indian accent (foreign call center perhaps?), and was very efficient and friendly. She got me booked on a flight to Dallas that was starting boarding in 10 minutes, then a flight from Dallas to Paris. Luckily, the Dallas flight was boarding right next to my original gate, but I had to wait for some other stranded JFK passenger to get his new boarding pass before I could get mine. By the time I got to the counter, First Class and special club members where already done boarding and I wasn't encouraged by my attendant's ultra laid back attitude and slow typing. He was a very large guy, wearing to much jewelry, by the last name of Beermann. However, he was fairly responsive to my questions about whether my bag would make it onto this Dallas flight and then to Paris with me. He honestly but kindly told me that it wasn't likely, that I'd probably get it a day after I arrived and that he would put a note in the computer directing the bag to end up at Charles de Gaulle no matter what.

So, I got on the Dallas flight about 20 minutes after the nice Indian lady had booked me and noted the average size of the flight's passengers, thinking about "Super Size Me" and how awesome the show "30 Days" is. Later in the flight, when we encountered turbulance, the captain told us that they couldn't fly higher to get out of the clouds because of the weight of the plane. Flying scares the crap out of me, but knowing that people's size can put my life in danger makes me plain mad. Anyway, I was seated next to a fairly hefty 30-something SF resident who was also headed to Paris, but to attend his female friend's underground (literally AND figuratively) theater performance. Throughout the flight told me his about entire life story, his dreams, his sense of loss over his high-maintenance ex-girlfriend and his "art". Great. I hadn't brought anything to read and wanted to save my iPod's power anyway, so I talked to him for almost the whole flight, trying to be nice but everyonce in a while giving off an "I'm bored with this conversation" signal.

Once we were closer to Dallas, the lady on the other side of the isle from me, who was also going to Paris, remarked that our scheduled landing time gave us only 15 minutes to get to our connecting flight. Several other people around us were in the same boat - since we'd all been put on because our JFK flight was canceled we were all sitting in the very back and would be getting off dead last. We all figured we'd have to run to our next flight, but as we pulled into the gate, the flight attendant told us to wait at the gate. This was confusing, but right as we exited the plane, an attendant asked if we were going to Paris, and took us down a rolling staircase to the tarmac, where were boarded a shuttle bus that would take us to our gate. After leaving SF, Dallas' 97 degree weather was quite a shock.

When we got onto our Paris flight, everyone else was already seated and starring at us as if to say "so these are the dumbasses that were holding us up." Some French girl was in my seat because she wanted to sit next to her friends, so I got to sit next to the lady who'd been across from me on the first flight. She turned out to be really nice: Meredit, teacher from Contra Costa County, going to France's countryside to teach English, and doesn't know any French. We talked, we drank together, we watched both in-flight movies, I made her listen to Bollywood when she said she liked "world music", we exchanged email addresses at the end of the seemingly endless, most restless flight of my life. I think I dozed off for about 20 minutes, but didn't get a wink otherwise.

It was terribly hot in the Charles de Gaulle airport and we walked for what seemed like over a mile from our gate to the immigration and baggage area. The immigration officer just looked at my passport and then me, without asking a single question or getting me to say anything. Meredith tried to wait with me so we could exit together, but I had to stay until all the baggage was out before I could report it missing to the luggage desk. That was a fairly easy process and the ladies were very nice. At customs... oh, I wasn't subject to a customs check... Once I got out into the airport, I discovered that I was already in Terminal 2 although I thought we landed in Terminal 1. So I found my way to where Joy was supposed to land, hot and tired, hungry but too delirious to actually implement a plan to feed myself and depressed by the weight of my carry-on (thanks dumb laptop) and the fact that we'd arrived one hour ahead of my original schedule, so I now had 5 hours to wait for Joy instead of just 4. I wandered around, I listend to my new iPod, i tried to log into de Gaulle's wireless on their free wireless promotion, but I guess that's not real b/c there's no real link on their website to sign up. At about 2 hours to go, Joy's flight appeared on the board as delayed and I swear I could have committed a serious felony at that moment. I was so mad at the airline industry, tired from having been up for almost 24 hours, and hungry but too tired to really do anything about it. At about the time the plane was supposed to land, the board predicted it would be an hour late. Once it arrived, I stood in front of the only exit Joy could have come out of, I saw her inside the door, but then she didn't come out and I thought she had attempted to find another exit (although there aren't any). I got really mad at this point and seriously wanted to jump over the customs line to grab her and force her to come to Montmartre with me just so I could get to bed a little faster. Eventually she came out the entrance and we made our way to the RER station to take the train into town. The electronic ticket machines wouldn't accept our cards, so we had to stand in line for tickets and then got onto the incredibly hot RER train downstairs where Joy struck up a conversation in Spanish with the train attendant. At this point it was about 5pm and I'd been up for 25 hours and hadn't eaten anything substantial since my airplane dinner about 13 hours earlier... so I wasn't very friendly. By the time the train got to the Gare du Nord, it was more full than any BART train you've ever seen and so hot that it was impossible for me to stay awake.

Upon arriving at the Gare du Nord we went on a quest for Metro tickets, not realizing that we were still in the train station and our RER tickets were good on the Metro... mostly because the train station has a mall in it - it even has a Claire's. So, we got to the Metro line 2, too the train to Anvers and came to our apartment. We were greeted by my landlady's 20-something son, Vincent, who speaks fairly good English and is very quiet and nice. Joy went out for food and cash and I crashed on the couch until Edith, my landlady, arrived. She was double parked so she didn't have time to receive my traveler's cheques for the rest of the rent, but she seemed very nice and kind of reminded me of my mom.

The apartment is a good size, large living room, decent sized bedroom w/ a comfy bed near the window, small kitchen but with a nice seating area and a good sized bathroom. The tub is square and has strange bumps where I guess your feet are supposed to go, but I haven't quite figured it out yet. The water heater is very small and only turns on to make more hot water after 11pm, so hot water is plentiful in the mornings but could possibly run out at night. The only real problems I have with the place is that because no one really lives here (Edith teaches in South Africa a lot and her husband lives closer to his work) the cat is the only usual resident. This means that there's cat stuff around that makes me stuffy and no one's cleaned this place in years. After our outing yesterday, Joy and I cleaned the house as well as we could and I even got a bottle of anti-allergen Febreze, but I still seem to be stuffy. Oh well, maybe we'll vacuum some more later and maybe time will do the trick. The biggest result of no one cleaning was the sad state the bathroom was in and it has to be the dirtiest bathroom I've ever cleaned. But now it's been given the ol' Almquist treatment and we now walk around in bare feet with confidence. Cleaning was tricky because we had to go out and buy gloves, sponges, cleaning supplies and a mop because there were none to be found in the house. Luckily there's a grocery store nearby that has good prices AND every household item you could ever want. Also, we're on the 6th floor, but we have the world's smallest elevator to make that easier. It says the weight limit is 225kg's (3 people), but Joy and I barely fit in there together so I'm not sure which 3 people they could possibly mean.

Oh, my bag finally arrived at 1pm yesterday - 24 hours after I landed in Paris. While it was inconvenient, it was kind of a blessing in that I didn't have to lug that 46lb. monster around the airport and on the trains.

The weather's been strange. It was hot when we arrived, and it rained for brief periods yesterday, but it was still warm and the sun would come out and bake us to death between showers. So we were walking around with our jacket in our bags but our umbrellas ready for any sudden change. Today seems like it'll be more of the same, but that's just fine with me. We're going to visit Notre Dame and the Louvre. I'm excited.

My favorite place in Paris: La Fontaine de Medicis in the Jardin du Luxembourg

So, that's my story so far. For info on our first real day out in Paris, see the first 43 pictures in my Kris' 2005 Paris Trip album. I'm sure things will be much more calm now and we're finally enjoying ourselves. I love my bed and having a kitchen to make my own food, but I can't wait to get out today and explore some more before my job starts on the 5th. Check back for more updates! A bientot!

Posted by Kristina at July 1, 2005 12:51 AM