Sarah's Churchill Adventure: Missed flight

Well the day began in a fairly relaxed manner until we consulted the travel documents just to confirm our flight times for tomorrow. Actually the date on the documents was today – que? There had been some mix up at Melbourne airport about dates but Geoffrey just assumed it was all sorted out etc etc and long story short Geoffrey and the kids missed their flight home. By the time we realised there was still about 3 hours until the flight left Heathrow but we were in Paris – impossible. Several calls to Qantas and guess what – no available seats until next Friday – one whole week away. So for an hour or so we went through several expensive and not so expensive options for filling in a week in either Paris or back in Romenay or in England or wherever but nothing seemed to fit. Really they just wanted to go home – lovely as it is here when it’s time to go home its time to go home. And besides I’m leaving tomorrow for New York so I’ll be taking all the fun with me.

So another hour or so goes by and we explore other airlines by phone – no joy – nothing for a week, so then I get online and finally I found an Emirates flight with availability leaving in 2 days – that’s only a day later than we thought they were leaving …. But it cost us more than $3000 – plus the cost of an extra night in this apartment, which thankfully had a vacancy. The flight has a 7 hour stop in Dubai too so there’s still more pain to come. So after 5 hours of pretending to the children that I’m not really stressed and everything’s going to get sorted out – it actually was sorted out, at a hefty cost.

22 years ago when I was in France with my friend Mark we had an incident with a flight from Paris to London where they weren’t going to let him board because he hadn’t confirmed the flight the day before. I argued until I was blue in the face with the man at the counter to let us on the flight as we had tried to confirm the flight but it was a Sunday and we were in Alsace and we couldn’t get through on the phone. After what Mark described as an Oscar winning performance before an immovable French bureaucrat, I finally convinced him to let us on the flight (at one point I suggested that the alternative was for us to sleep at his house). So 2 days ago Mark sends me a funny message say “I hope you don’t miss your flight from Paris like we nearly did last time.” Thanks mate – this time I couldn’t talk my way out of anything.

So after 5 hours of phone calls, online flight shopping and excessive credit card use there wasn’t much more we could do. 2pm finally time to get out and make the most of the rest of the day.

Curtis had his heart set on seeing the Arc de Triomph and so we did. We also saw the Citroen Showroom on the Champs Elysees, some very cool French break dancing and lovely views form the Arc. It’s all in the pictures and the video clip. I'd love to upload more of the dancing but the clips take ages to upload and I want to go to bed. Let me know if you want to see more and I'll try again over the next few days.

Tomorrow New York for me and a bit more Paris for the family.