November 7, 2023
Day 73: Valencia to Cobble Hill
We got up at 2 a.m., to be ready for our 6 a.m. flight from Valencia. That's a little excessive, but they do often ask passengers to arrive 3 hours early for especially international flights, so our walk to the airport putting us there at 3 a.m. was technically ok. As it happens, Air France did not show up at the kiosks until 4 a.m. and we then had a nice long wait for the actual boarding. The gate arrangement was unusual in that it had no seating, just tape demarcating a waiting line. No matter, we joined two ladies who had arrived in wheelchairs, and who were dropped at the head of the line that would eventually form. Dodie's stick and genuine difficulty with long airport walks usually qualifies us for advance boarding and later assistance in moving through airports.
This time we were going Air France all the way, with a hop first to Paris, and then direct to Vancouver. In simplistic terms, it looks like the maps below. These have little information, but do illustrate that it's quite far to home.
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Getting to Paris was easy enough, but the "fun" really began once we landed there. We were coming in on a European flight and proposing to go out on a long distance international one. In Charles de Gaulle airport that is apparently a tall order, but we did have 2 hours to make the transfer.
We had asked for assistance, and the procedure started out great. A large specialized vehicle was brought up to the back of the plane, and we walked straight off into its seating. It drove us away, with several very personable staffers along, and eventually it lowered itself down so we could walk straight into some sort of lounge. Equally personable staffers took our boarding passes, and soon we were on another shuttle. This dropped us "somewhere", as our boarding passes were handed off, and Dodie got wheel chaired up and down several elevators, to - some other place, where our passes were handed off and we got into a shuttle that drove for a long time to ... somewhere. The exact number of boarding pass handoffs and personable staffers is a blur now, but we were deposited at last in a lounge, where our previous staffer handed off our passes to a lady at a desk. This lady had piles of boarding passes on the desk, that she periodically shuffled. She would then call out names, and other people needing assistance would then be met by personable staffers and be spirited away in shuttle vans. The person who had brought us to the lounge had meanwhile disappeared, so the desk lady was it. But at least we had spotted that our passes had gone to her. And there we sat, for about 40 minutes, until I observed that our flight to Vancouver was now boarding. We sent first me and then Dodie to consult with the desk lady, and were both told to stay cool and wait.
Eventually a further blur of vans and in-terminal electric conveyances ensued, somewhere including a line up to clear immigration. We eventually arrived at our gate, where we got to be the last ones onto the plane!
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As we walked down the aisle of the plane to our seats, a personable flight attendant asked how we were doing. "Rotten!" (or equivalent) complained Dodie, to the dismay of the poor lady. But to the credit of Air France, sometime before the actual take off, a (yes again) very personable flight attendant appeared and crouched beside us. She had been given to understand that we somehow were not happy, and she wanted to understand the problem. So we recounted the story of the multiple shuttle busses and lounges and staffers, the boarding pass shell game, and most particularly the fact that we were never told what was going on.
The lady absorbed all this, and reappeared later in the flight to say that she had written and filed a report on the thing. Interestingly her focus on what the problem was was that we had been kept in the dark about what was happening and about who had our boarding passes now, and why. However when I suggested that one good metric was that all this staff and all these vans had taken over 2 hours to move us from plane A to plane B, she balked. She explained that at CDG it could easily and legitimately take two hours to go from A to B. She recommended that maybe 3 hours would be more reasonable for anyone hoping to change planes at CDG . Yikes!
Beyond this, the Air France staff were all nice, the seats good, seat back entertainment good, and food excellent. But next time if we can stay away from CDG, we will.
Vancouver's airport was noticeably cleaner, brighter, and better organized than either Valencia or Paris. As usual we noticed the extensive use of indigenous carving, which is something we look on as an unfair cultural appropriation. In fact, the statues below, for example, seem none too pleased to be greeting the hoards of foreigners.
Although we think we have been quick learners with transit systems,such as the Valencia metro, it was pleasant to know exactly what we were doing/where we were going in shifting from Vancouver airport to the ferry and home.
Our friend Sandra picked us up when the ferry arrived, for the run to home. So sweet!
The weather on Vancouver Island was sunny and 10 degrees today, something Sandra tells us has not been the case recently, and which will not last. The house, of course, felt terribly cold, but a fire in the wood stove is fixing that .
That's it for now, but stay tuned for the customary summary and analysis of costs. And then, watch for us to be back on the road, real soon.
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| Comment on this entry | Comment | 12 |
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Thank you for your adventures in print and photos which were greatly enjoyed by those of us in the seating area of our own homes.( mostly).
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Thank you for the informative journaling. I frequently reference you when planning our next tour.
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I’ve never figured it by the mile before, only by the day.
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