What do the Pope and Ike have in common?

Well, for me, they both interferred with my travel plans on my way back from Paris. The Pope's effect was a bit more painful.

I got up Saturday morning, packed up, and headed out to the train stop that would get me to the Notre Dame station for the train to the airport. Took me about 5 mins to walk there even with my bags and then I found the station closed. no problem, I had found a backup plan using the bus system. So I start walking over to the bus stop down the street. Now I realized there was a problem. They had metal barriers blocking any car traffic on the street. Only the sidewalks were open. And there were a lot of people up & about for it being 7AM. I figured it wasn't a big deal, I could just keep walking and get past the barriers and to another bus stop. That didn't work so well. Turns out that the barriers were there because the Pope was in town and people were assembling for an appearance that morning. Apparently the train was shut down since it ran under or near his path. And the bus? Same thing, it would have tried to cross some of the closed down streets.

I kept walking until I got on the other side of the assembly area and past the metal barriers. I found the 63 bus stop that I was looking for and noticed that the electronic sign showed the 63 bus was not running. great. I pulled out the GPS and it estimated only 20 mins to walk to the train station I needed. Apparently it had not accounted for the two large bags that i was carrying/rolling with me. I did go ahead and finish walking to the train station and arrived there about an hour after I had hoped to be there. Thankfully I had left extra early that morning.

I got to CDG easily on the train. I then had a bit of a runaround with checking in since I had changed my ticket from Sunday to Saturday. Once that was resolved i was all set. I managed to find a couple mins to drop by the post office and get some things shipped to people in Europe and then went back up to the gates. Just as I came through security I was at the right gate and they just started boarding. Perfect! Too bad I had not gotten my upgrade to business class though.

I did have a pretty decent seat still. The plan seating was 2-3-2. I was on an aisle for one of the sets of 2. After they closed the doors the woman sitting next to me apologized and asked if I'd mind if she moved to sit with her two friends. Not bad luck there. I had the 2 seats all the myself for the entire flight. it was a good thing too since it was a 10 hour flight. We circled for a while over Dallas before going in for a landing. The rainstorms from Ike were hitting Dallas prety well when we got in. Many people started clapping when the pilot nailed a smooth landing even though there was very little visibility until we were close to the runway.

After unloading I noticed I had just over an hour before my next flight. I went quickly through passport control, and then to baggage claim. I grabbed my bag as it came off in the first set, and then ran smack into a giant line for customs. I started to get nervous as the line was moving very slow. It took me 45 minutes to get through even though the guys were really not doing that much. I then took the airtram to the next flight and found it to have a 10 minute delay due to the weather. At least that gave me a bit more time on the ground. I asked the woman at the counter if first class had checked in full (it hadn't) and if I was on the upgrade list. She said no and then took a minute or two and handed me a ticket for first class. Not bad!

And that was it, I was back on my way home to Seattle. What a trip this was.