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A Life in Plastic Baggies

~ Travel adventure & absurdity

A Life in Plastic Baggies

Monthly Archives: July 2012

Airports I’ve Known and Loathed, Part I – CDG

26 Thursday Jul 2012

Posted by alifeinplasticbaggies in Adventures Abroad, With love from the Tarmac

≈ 2 Comments

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all out disasters, by request

I mentioned in my last post that I’d write a future installment with commentary on specific airports that have caused me headaches (and blisters!). What was mostly meant as an off-handed comment actually brought some very specific requests for these posts to take place. So, much like the deconstructed baggie post, away we go!

L’Arc de Triomphe, safely taken from the center of traffic by my father.

I bet you thought I’d start with ATL but honestly, some of the most poignantly awful experiences I’ve had in an airport reside at Charles de Gaulle in Paris. I know that this has the propensity to sound like a White Whine submission, but it’s the truth. Here are the top three memories I have from disasters at CDG:

  1. The time that kid threw up. E spent a year at LSE getting a Master’s so after I graduated undergrad, we thought a European jaunt would be the perfect celebration. Since he was in London, we decided to meet in Paris. Très romantique, n’est-ce pas? After landing at CDG, I was surprised/not surprised to find that we couldn’t pull up to a gate. I was surprised because we were on a HUGE plane filled with hundreds of passengers (I had connected through Detroit) and not surprised because CDG is always a hot mess of construction. On the Tarmac, we were loaded into a tram/bus thing to get to the main terminal. I wasn’t wild about this, but what are you going to do? Unfortunately, one of my fellow travelers, a little girl who was probably about six years-old, was even less excited. No sooner had she uttered “Je me sens mal” to her mother and she was throwing up all over the back of the tram. It was not awesome. Everyone just kind of looked at each other with grimaces and edged away from the mess. Exactly the kick-off to vacation I was hoping for!
  2. Notre Dame by night.

    The time the baggage carousels were closed. As repeatedly mentioned, I usually carry on luggage. However, when I was traveling to Paris in 2004 to study abroad, I needed a few more pairs of shoes than I usually bring on vacation so I had checked luggage. Upon arrival we were, of course, routed to Customs. I was 20 years-old, completely alone, and not really at a point of mastering my French skills so you can guess how terrifying this was. After clearing Customs, I went to baggage and looked around frantically for a monitor that would tell me which carousel held my bag. As CDG is perpetually under construction, all the carousels were closed. I kid you not. Every single bag was coming out of ONE hole. The chaos was palpable. I still do not understand what travel gods were looking out for me, but the second I deduced what was going on and edged my way to the hole of baggage, my bag came through. I know, it’s a mystery to me, too. Let’s all pause to say a prayer of merci.

  3. The time that new KLM agent lost my luggage. At the end of my study abroad session, my dad came over to visit and we flew home together. When we got to CDG, we queued for check-in at KLM and had an agent who was clearly new on the job. Although a supervisor was theoretically helping her, she still managed to get everything wrong. We were connecting home through Amsterdam and NYC and she booked our bags all the way to Minneapolis. Imagine our surprise at JFK when our bags never showed up and we had to explain to Customs that we weren’t doing anything untoward. Considering the amount of precious cargo I was bringing back stateside, I thought I was going to lose my mind. Not to mention that when we got to Minneapolis, one of the bags was missing altogether (naturally the one with all the expensive wine), and wouldn’t be located and delivered until the following day. Don’t worry, the wine survived.

I should probably note at this point that Paris is my all time favorite city. I could/would/probably should live there.

Still my favorite tourist attraction.

I should also probably note that I flew to CDG about a year ago and everything was running much more smoothly than when I encountered the above situations. Regardless, a million disasters at CDG could never diminish my love of Paris.

If they run out of wine, we may have to reassess.

LaLa Land

16 Monday Jul 2012

Posted by alifeinplasticbaggies in With love from the Tarmac

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Delta, Oy, vacay!

Trip type: Personal

Airline: Delta

Route: MSP-LAX

Have you missed me? I’ve missed you, too. My apologies for the hiatus; after a big job change, there are no more monthly trips to Atlanta. I will miss the blog fodder but not much beyond that.

Griffith Park Observatory

Griffith Park

At any rate, don’t be too worried about the blog! There are a few more trips coming up this year that should provide good stories, starting with this past week’s trip to visit  our dear friends M and E in L.A.

After not traveling since May (I still can’t believe I went the entire month of June without going to the airport), I was nearly giddy to be back at the airport. (I know; I’m seeking therapy.) It didn’t last long.

As expected, the plane for L.A. was huge which meant the perfect storm of half boarding vultures and half people who were in lala land (either because they weren’t native English speakers or because they were en route to an island destination but hadn’t flown in a decade). Seriously, just people wandering aimlessly around the gate, asking each other what zone was being boarded and if this was in fact the plane to L.A.

The Getty, Los Angeles

The view from the Getty

Once aboard, I still retained some of the initial giddiness of the day and excitedly took stock of our compatriots. My analysis started and stopped with the gentleman across the aisle from E who was blowing his shirt in his t-shirt collar. No, not wiping his nose to alleviate an itch, legitimately blowing his nose. Attractive. (He would later play a game on his iPhone for about 40 minutes with the phone on full volume and no headphones in sight.)

Arriving on time, we were excited to get our trip going. Unfortunately, this was thwarted by the inefficiency that is LAX. (I will save the detailed rundown of how much I hate this airport for when I write a future post on airports I’ve known and loathed, but suffice it to say LAX is right up there among the worst.)

We taxied for what seemed like an hour but stopped short of the terminal. Several minutes later, the pilot came on to tell us that our gate wasn’t ready and that we’d have to wait a bit longer. Ten minutes went by and the pilot came back on to tell us that the plane occupying our gate hadn’t pushed off yet but was supposed to do so soon. After another ten minutes, the pilot finally gave us the good news that our gate was open and we’d be pulling up shortly. Excellent. We creeped over to the Delta terminal–we were so close I could see the open gate–but were stopped again by all the ground traffic. The pilot came on to apologize for the congestion and asked us to stay put while we waited for the other taxing planes and various baggage carts to go by. Sigh. Maybe the ground crew was in lala land, too, because it certainly didn’t appear as though anything was happening in a hurry. Luckily, it was only five more minutes until we were finally at the gate and awaiting the jet bridge.

Griffith Park, Los Angeles

Probably professional models.

Inside the airport it was smooth sailing to the sea of chaos that is baggage claim and ground transport and an amazing weekend in LaLa Land commenced.

Also, M and I are apparently LuLuLemon models (see right; photo credit to E).

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