Bonjour Paris

The day we leave for Paris is the same day Britain experiences record freezing temperatures and all London airports close causing delays throughout the system.  Luckily, the train from Dundee to Edinburgh was still running and Edinburgh airport was still open.  Our flight wasn’t until 5:30PM but we decided to head to the airport early just in case the trains decided to stop running.  We started our journey at 11:45AM. 

We caught the 12:35PM train to Edinburgh and arrived at the airport at 2:30PM.  Our plane still claimed to be on time but all other planes were either showing a delay or were cancelled altogether.  At approximately 5:30PM our plane switches to a 6PM departure time, delaying departure by 30 minutes.  We wind up leaving at 7:30PM, two hours later than planned.  

As an aside, Easyjet had horrible communication throughout this process.  When we got on the plane the pilot apologized for the delay (the only apology received all day, which he did often) and said it was due to delays earlier in the day throwing off the whole day's schedule.  Apparently, Easyjet knew our plane was delayed much earlier than initially communicated and for longer than originally stated but didn’t tell anyone; terrible communication.

We landed at Charles de Gaulle at 10PM but didn’t have a gate assigned.  We were finally able to deplane an hour later, reaching the terminal at 11PM.  By the time we reached the train to Paris, RER B, and purchased our tickets we had just missed the last train due to inclement weather closures.  In our hunt for other options, we missed the last Roissy Bus into Paris.  We were told by the Information desk that the night bus would be coming along in about 15 minutes, at 12:15AM.  We waited until 12:45AM before asking another couple to share a taxi into Paris, splitting the €60 fare.  We finally arrived at our flat around 1:30AM.

This whole adventure would’ve been stressful by itself but we had the added stress of knowing there was a guy waiting at the flat, since approximately 8:30PM, to give us the key and collect the final half of our rent.  He had threatened to leave at least twice, taking our night’s accommodation with him, but Mike had talked him into staying.  Needless to say, he was not happy when we finally met him at almost 2AM.  The check-in process was tense and when he left we were not in the best of spirits.  We tucked in for the night almost immediately and hoped the morning would convince us that Paris didn’t hate us.