Although I am not new to transcontinental flying, this was my first time traveling at Christmas. I was tightly scheduled to take a bus from New Hampshire to Boston where I would catch my plane that went from Boston to Toronto Canada, Toronto to Frankfurt Germany, and Frankfurt to Brussels Belgium where I would be picked up by my French Partner in Crime (FPIC) and drive south to Lille, France to visit his family for the holiday.
The only problem was that my flight from Boston never left. In fact there were no planes available on any AirCanada flights as they were all stuck in a giant snow storm in Montreal. By the time I got to Toronto, my flight to Germany had left long before without me and my only option was to wait in line with all the other lost passengers to speak with someone who could put me on another flight. For two hours. You make friends when you wait in a line for two hours. I became very friendly with a lovely family of five who were coming from Victoria and heading to Norway to visit family, a nice German girl who was heading home for the holiday, and an American guy who was trying to make it to London to see his girlfriend. We swapped travel horror stories and complimented each other on being insane enough to get into international relationships.
When it was my turn at the front I was informed that the next flight to Frankfurt was the next day. I quickly explained that I didn't care about going to Frankfort as long as my final destination was Brussels. The lady then said there was a flight to Munich in 10 minutes and if I ran I could make it on that flight. I ran.
In Munich I found I had to wait six hours for a flight to Brussels. The only thing to do was have 9 cups of complimentary coffee, attempt to read a German newspaper and fall asleep on a bench across from 5 Spanish guys doing the same thing. The best part of the trip came when it was time to board. The stewardess came on and said..."the boarding of the flight to Brussels will be delayed because we have no plane and we have no crew".
Fair enough. We'll wait.
A bit more concerning was when she came back an hour later and said..."we found a plane and will begin boarding as soon as I check to see if the captain is ok"...and then shuttled us out on the tarmac to the very end of the airstrip to a tiny plane that we boarded via stairs. I had many questions. Where did they find this plane? What happened to the captain?
I finally arrived in Belgium, a little late, ragged and without luggage. My FPIC was there to greet me, laughed at my lack of bags, and took me to have a hot wine and a waffle. I decided I like Brussels.
We then drove to Lille, bought me some clothes for Christmas and spent a very lovely time with my FPIC's family. The Pere Noel came and put presents in my shoes, we ate a buche de Noel, and shared wine from the year I was born. It was a Christmas just like my grade school French lesson book described.
Ok, enough talking. I would like to share a bit of travel advice before I end this. Lille, France is amazing. It is old and beautiful and colorful. It is filled with amazing shops, wonderful cafes, and very friendly people. I would argue that it is better than Paris. I would recommend anyone who has a soft spot for European charm to visit Lille. Even though it was rainy and cold, I loved every part of it.
That's all for today.
Thanks for reading.
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| Ferris Wheel in Lille Set up for Christmas |
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| Streets of Lille |
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| Lille Train Station |
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| One of me learning to ski...you may notice that I am not actually in this picture. That is because I learned to ski wearing a bright red, full body snowsuit that my FPIC wore when he was 14 and do not wish to share the photos of me. Not only was I a beginner on the french slopes, but I was easy to spot. |
As horror as it may have been for you I had a blast reading about it. I really wish I was on a plane reading about it though. :)
ReplyDeleteTwo years ago I still was new at traveling, I visited United Kingdom for two weeks, I should've stayed for a lot longer than that but I had to leave for Italy, unfortunately the flight I had was at 4 PM but I had to leave the house at 7 AM, arrived at Heathrow around 9 AM so I had to wait 7 hours for a flight to Milan with a connection via Rome. If you ever have to travel to Italy or perhaps have a flight with a connection via Italy know that Alitalia, the italian airline is one of the worst one, not from a maintenance pint of view, their planes and pilots are fine, but they count hours and hours of delays everyday, don't know why, never had to find out why, well anyways. We took off from London with one and a half hours delay, I was hoping I would catch my next flight from Rome to Milan. I wasn't really stressed out because of that i love flying, it's just it was night, and I supposed to arrive in Milan at 11 PM. But the bastards from Alitalia took off from Rome right on time, not a minute sooner, not a minute later. In London they had a big fat delay, but no, in Rome they couldn't wait for two minutes, exactly two minutes, 'cause I arrived at the gate two minutes late, I would've arrived on time if I didn't get lost after I passed security on arrivals :-P
Luckily they admitted it was their fault so they gave me a room at one of the airport's hotels where I had a blast, met couple of people, we chatted a bit, they opened the kitchen for us and we had some quality food, and then I took a long bath in that four star hotel room :)
The second day, early in the morning I was in big horror as I realized I didn't changed time zone on my phone, so I was one whole hour late, just by a miracle airport staff have special proceedings for cases like this and I underwent last minute check in and i was on my way to Milan. so that was my horror story but I'd have nothing against going through something like that some time in the future :-p
If you have more stories like this one please share them :)