The Longest Day

I am home, but my gosh, that was THE worst day of travel in my life. Anything that could go wrong, did go wrong. Here's how my day played out, bullet-point style (warning: this is a long, ranting post):

• I left my apartment around 6 am on Sunday morning and walked to the closest metro line to take the metro to a different train line that takes you to the airport. Got there to find it was closed. The metro apparently opens late on Sunday... I should have known that this was a sign of bad things to come. Luckily that main train station I needed to get to was only about a 1.5 mile walk I think? But still - not the best start to my day.
• I got to the airport at 7:30 am and was told that my flight had just been cancelled. I was pretty much like - wtf? Turns out it was cancelled due to weather - which just totally shocked me because it had been beautiful all week while I was gone. So hearing that MSP was getting 12-15" of snow? No way!
• So I got in line to re-book my flight. They let me choose what airport I flew into, so I chose Atlanta because it is a Delta hub and I figured there would be multiple flight options to Minneapolis once I landed there. I would have preferred to fly into Chicago as that's the closest airport, but I figured they'd get hit by this same storm so I thought it was best to avoid that airport.
• Paris's airport is officially the most expensive place to spend any length of time. Case in point: I bought a coke (I was dying for caffeine and needed a serious pick-me-up). It was 5 Euro for 33 ml. So basically ~$7 for the equivalent of can of coke. I felt ridiculous spending that much on a non-alcoholic carbonated beverage. I mean, for that price, shouldn't it have at least come with a glow stick?
• Boarded my flight to Atlanta at 1 pm. Pulled away from gate. Returned to gate for medical emergency - it was a nose bleed??? So we spent an extra 1.5 hours on the plane due to that delay.
• Landed in Atlanta. Airport was utter chaos due to all the cancellations in Minneapolis. No one seemed to know what was going on. I was told by one person that my flight was still on, albeit moved to 10:30 pm. Then 2 other people told me it was cancelled? Can't you, I don't know, look that kind of thing up in a computer people? When I went to get my bag tagged, the gate agent said, "there is no way you are getting to Minneapolis tonight." Taps keys... "Ok, you are all set, you will arrive in Minneapolis at midnight."
• Boarded flight around 10 pm. Took forever to take off because they did not have enough ice? At this point I was like - I think people would rather get home than have ice in their freaking drinks! But I digress... Pulled away from gate. Returned to gate for medical emergency #2. This time - gull bladder attack. I wanted to stand up at this point and shout, "IF YOU DO NOT FEEL WELL, DO NOT GET ON A FREAKING AIRPLANE PEOPLE." I bit my tongue instead and cursed the fact that we had now spent an extra 2 hours on the plane between delayed leaving the gate and the medical emergency.
• Landed in Minneapolis at around 2 am (I think). At this point, all concept of time was lost. You could have told me it was 5 pm on a Tuesday and I wouldn't have argued with you. The exhaustion had set in.
• Now for the fun part. Collecting my bag. 3 flights from Atlanta landed at the same time, including my flight which was a 747 with 400+ people. It was as if the ground baggage people decided to play plinko with our luggage amongst 3 different carousels. It was utter chaos. I have never seen since disorder and chaos, honestly. Here is a picture.




That is all the unclaimed luggage that arrived

• My bag did not arrive. Which REALLY pissed me off because I had collected my bag after customs and it was re-tagged for Atlanta about 3-4 hours before that flight left. There is NO REASON why my bag shouldn't have been on that flight. And the Delta agent who tracked my bag didn't once utter the words, "I am sorry" or "I apologize for the inconvience."
• At this point, it was 3 am. I had pre-booked a Super Shuttle home so I headed over to that area and was told that the shuttle doesn't run at 3 am, but they would cancel my reservation and I'd be refunded in 5-10 business days. Um, I'd just like to know how they can charge my card on the very same day that I book the freaking reservation, but it take 5-10 business days to refund? Whatever.
• Got in line for the taxi. Taxi ride home was interesting because the road to main road to my condo had not been plowed so we had to take a little detour. That taxi ride cost more than my round trip shuttle would have cost me but at that point, I was like, whatever, I just need to get home.

So there you have it. At 4 am CST, I finally arrived home. After being awake for 30+ hours, I was very, very, very happy to crawl into my bed.

So a pretty epically craptastic end to what was an amazing vacation. I of course am not letting the ridiculous trip home color my thoughts on my vacation at all, though. It was amazing trip.

When everything kept going wrong, I kept thinking - this is the universe's way of telling me I am not meant to leave Paris.

I'll probably do one more 'final thoughts' post about Paris and then will shut the lights off on this blog until my next trip...