3 days in French hell… A multi country epic tale (part 2)

International airspace somewhere in the atlantic 9:00am

Finally on a moving plane , flying somewhere over the atlantic .
so far for those keeping track .

Delay times

  1. 1.5 – 2 hours – Logan Airport
  2. 5 hours – broken plane out of gate – philidelphia airport inside of plane
  3. 45minutes – 1 hour – attempt #2 at taking off philidelphia airport illegal flight crew.
  4. 5 hours – inside gate 22(?) at airport finding new crew .

Total delays to this point:
12hours 15mins (min)
13 hours 0 mins (max)

Having not slept since thurday , Stress building on delays lies and such is getting to me. since this flight included food or so i thought it would temporarly get my mind off things . well not so much . as the tray came down the isle the woman handed me a soda of my choice and a bag of mini-pretzels. Apperently in all the plane switching they did not include meals with this flight . And the ability to get food in the Philidelphia airport was hindered by not much was open so all i managed to get was a candy bar or two and a soda . plus the fact of what was open from the 5 hour wait the place had a line of at least 200 people. so , so much for the idea of food. the flight to paris was unenventful with one exception . that if everyone did not sit down while we were taking off that they would delay the flight.

Arrival paris international airport. 7:00 pm

entering paris airport. from all the delays from the start of the flight i try to find any help possible for my next flight because the connection time was only less 15 minutes(or passed by 15mins) or so to stockholme , so finding that the plane leaves from gate 7(?) again across an entire airport. while heading across this airport the i relized that the setup of the airport is a horrible horrible setup and very hard to manipulate your way through to get to your next location . figuring i should call someone on my phone i look at my phone to see that there is no signal at all and no way to call from that phone i just continued my way hoping i’d catch the flight and be able to just call from the airport in stockholme. i finally get to the right gate and see the flight not listed , so i asked around and found out it was gone an hour before .

paris international airport: 8:00pm

relizing my options are slowly wearing down and having no profitioncy in french i go seek out the first information desk i see , which with the airport setup , and it being horribly confusing. so asking almost almost every 3rd person for directions lead in a circle and getting more lost. finally finding my way to the information desk and someone that actaully took the time to help me out , because it this point im on the verge of panic. because the phones dont accept any currency including euros which at that point i converted a few dollars to Euro , in order to find food and a way to call someone. so after finding help that was actaully helpful , they lead me to the US Airways Help desk , so i headed to this desk and looked around, not one person at this desk, looking a bit more there was a sign saying they closed at 18:00 and they would be back at 09:00 , so waiting around around a bit more i saw some people i reconized from the air france flight . one swedish woman , 4 people from the US , all were traveling through stockhólme or flights near the same times .

Paris international Airport outside – 9:30pm

one of the persons on that flight and were in same situation called US air and was told that we’d have to goto a hotel for the night , so before we headed out of the airport we found the information desk and got the closest location for a hotel , so a tram ride to the hotel aboard this train “termanal 3 rosybelle” (spelling is off) . heading there there was 3 hotels one 5 stars which was insanly expensive , another which was just a sign and a 2 star hotel which was 97€ a night , anyways following everyone in they got rooms and i had to ask where a bank is in order to get more euros , heading to the atm i had withdrawn 105 € , heading back to the hotel , going to the desk i asked for a room and was Immediatly returned with the responce of “do have a reservation ?” me: no? responce : ” well you dont reservation it will be 150€”. I head back to the ATM and try to get money at this momment i relize i will be stuck in france over night, tryt o withdraw money and the card is acting up (turns out i was overdrawn , which you cant withdraw from savings for whatever reason). so im sitting in front of a hotel , no way to get room , no idea what to do , hungry , on the way to the hotel i saw a vending machine , i head to the vending machine notice theres no way to put in a a euro , and theres no way to get change for a euro bill i had asked at the desk , so now with euros. being completely useless to me because the machine only accepted coin . so at this point i just head back to the airport. sit, with nothing else to do .

to be continued………