Bonjour!

We’ve just returned from our every 5+ year trip to France. Paris and Versailles, to be exact. The trip involved coordinating for seven individuals, as Robert’s mother, two sisters and their significant others met us the day after we arrived in Paris.

Now, to backtrack, we left DFW Airport aboard my husband’s dream mode of transportation – the British Airways A380, the big, double-decker airplane that looks like there’s no way it can take off, much less stay aloft. We took off a bit later than expected – around 10:00 PM, but that allowed a quick dinner and a couple of beverages, followed by everyone putting their chairs back into completely flat beddy-bye mode and snoring in unison for the next 6-7 hours. Here are the seating positions – two seats facing each other with a little partition you can raise if you are flying with someone you don’t know. Or are pretending you don’t know. I was lucky enough to get the window seat, as… this is hard to explain, but… once the seats are completely reclined, the person on the aisle will be subjected to the window seat passenger on the next row having to step over their feet if they need to make their way to the restroom. Robert opted to take that position lest a passenger accidentally kick my post-surgery foot while climbing over me. Wise, considering it was already feeling the stress of walking around Terminal D.

Now that’s one LONG wing.

After tossing and turning for hours, the lights came back on and breakfast was served. They made up some time so we touched down without incident at Heathrow. There, we made our way to the next gate where we waited… and waited… and waited…

At this point, I probably should have checked Twitter, or X, because the news was everywhere except coming to us from the gate crew. Apparently, Heathrow’s air traffic system was down, and there was no estimate regarding when it would be functioning again. Planes were backing up waiting to take off, everything was being manually. We didn’t find this out until we were already (finally) on board and the pilot let us know we were in for a LONG wait which was going to take place away from the gate. Sitting. On the tarmac somewhere. I was scrambling through my phone trying to determine if we could hop a train to Paris instead of flying and plotting how to be removed from the plane without being placed under arrest when we got the miraculous news that instead of serving us some beverages, the crew needed to hightail it back to their seats because we were cleared to take off NOW. We were going to be the last plane allowed to go wheels-up. The travel gods were smiling on us!

At Charles de Gualle, well, I’m not sure what they were thinking. My guess is they were told we were not going to arrive, so they had nowhere to put us. It was about 6:00 PM on a Monday, yet there was no jet bridge. We were trotted down the stairs of the plane and loaded onto buses, where we stood. And stood. Like sardines. Robert and I masked up in the close quarters, then decided as we watched all the airline staff and bus drivers chatting out on the tarmac, that we would exit the bus and at least get some air.

Tired people packed on the bus going nowhere.

Eventually we heard the reason they weren’t taking us to the terminal was that there was nowhere to take us. No customs/security.

WHAT?? WHY??

After a slight rebellion in which the cutest, sassiest young man dressed in shorts and a swingy coat stomped over to the pilot and his group, removed his sunglasses and started gesturing wildly. Then, a father who had just been wet on by his toddler daughter charged even more aggressively toward the group. Suddenly they decided to fire up the buses. Wise decision.

By this time, the driver who was going to take us to our hotel in Paris had long ago given up on us so we caught a cab and beelined it to The Renaissance Arc de Triumphe hotel. We checked in, had a glass of wine while admiring the view, then dragged our tired little selves out to locate food and begin our two week vacation. Triumph indeed.