Adventures in Europe; Day of Travel

 Running, Traveling, and Happy Anniversary!


I could barely sleep our last night in Paris.  Finally, about 30 minutes before my alarm was set to go off I hopped out of bed to go for a run.  I had told myself I would run in every country and it still hadn't happened in Paris. 

How bad would I have regretted not running?!?  A lot. 

I knew I didn't have much time, so I headed straight for... you know where.

Good morning Paris!

The Eiffel Tower is much different the day after.  The lawn was nearly (nearly) empty.  Trash littered the ground from the night before and a few stragglers were keeping the party going into the morning. 

Dang hooligans.

Without the crowds to fight I was able to run right under the tower.  I'm so glad I got up for this!

Under the tower.

What's up with the sky?

I ran a bit further (gotta get those miles in!) and hit the Seine River.  There were several folks out running!  I struggled with the rule that you aren't supposed to wave or smile at strangers.  That's just my nature, especially when running!  The Parisians must think I'm nuts.

The Seine.

After a bit I flipped around and headed back to the hotel... through the tower again... of course.

Goodbye for real this time.

 

I arrived back to Drew hollering at me to "Get ready!  We gotta go!"

 

The travel day began.  Did I mention it was our anniversary?  Six years!  AND, we were traveling back in time so we got 8 extra hours to celebrate our anniversary.  Sounds fun, right?  Riiiiight.

 

We started with a subway ride to the train station.  The train to the airport was riddled with more crazies trying to scam money from you.  By the time we arrived at the airport we were so relieved... until we saw that our flight had been delayed 2 1/2 hours.  Awesome.

 

When we got in line, a lovely French woman kindly told us that since we were going to miss our connecting flight in Chicago, we were not allowed to check into our flight.  She gave us a number to call (in France) and told us to get out of line and use the payphones to rebook.  Then she was done with us.  Done.  Would not speak to us.

 

Yeah, you might say we were pissed.  Biggest understatement of the year.

 

That woman will go down in history as the biggest b*otch of all time.

 

Eventually we did get checked in.  We got on our flight to Chicago.  We caught the last flight of the night from Chicago to KC.  We had a lovely anniversary dinner at the Chili's in the O'Hair airport.  We arrived home around midnight.  Done.

 

What an amazing trip, right?  Again with the cheese; I am so grateful for the experience.  I had so much fun traveling and exploring the world with Drew.  We had our ups and downs.  We got lost and got grumpy.  But we had the most amazing time.  I am truly grateful.

 

Lessons learned:

1.  Running in different countries is so worth it!  Even if you would rather sleep in, go run!

2.  Paris is full of crazies, and you cannot get away from them.  Not even on the train.

3.  There are a-holes all over the world.  The biggest one works at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.