Not much to say! Took the train to Paris. Rode along the Seine from
the Gare d'Austerlitz to our hotel on the right bank. It is very fun
to be in Paris; last time Sue and I were there together was 12 years
previous.
Our hotel is the Hôtel du Lion
D'Or which is a well-located small, clean and friendly and (by
Paris standards) inexpensive hotel.
We meet Bill's dad Chip (who is coincidentally in Europe) for dinner
at the Café Ruc which seem expensive and overcrowded to us country
folk, but is nevertheless good.
Sue and I walk down to Ile Saint-Louis before bed.
Breakfast in the hotel. We say goodbye (for the moment) to Bill and
Teresa, and take out our bikes for a spin around the neighborhood. We
sit in the Tuileries until it is time to head for the airport. Then
we take our bikes through the metro (fully loaded, which seems
painless), and get to the airport quite early.
At the airport, in spite of our pains to be early, things get chaotic.
There are lines for each _flight_ rather than lines for each airline,
and no line for our flight yet. I try to find an American Airline
employee to ask about our bikes. No one will look at me, or everyone
has a long line of people waiting. Finally I find someone who doesn't
look busy, and he says if we turn our handlebars sideways and remove
the pedals, they'll put the bikes right on the plane.
OK, so we go off to do this, and pack up. Then we get in line with
our pedal-less, loose handlebar bikes (while we were disassembling our
bikes the line situation went from "no line for our flight" to "much
longer line for our flight than can be processed before the heat death
of the universe").
In line for 45 minutes, no motion. _One_ person checking in
passengers. About 8 people to do security checks, so most of them are
standing around doing absolutely nothing because the bottleneck is the
check in. Another person directing traffic. Just when it seems like
we might actually be getting near the check in person, the traffic
director spots our bikes. She comes up to us, very excited, and
explains we need bike boxes. At this point there is clearly no way
for us to get them in time for the plane, so she goes and gets us two
bike boxes, tells us to pack things up, check in, and _then_ go stand
in another hour long line to _pay_ for the bike boxes (of course we
can't pay for them when we check in).
We do as told (no extra charge for handling the bike boxes this
direction, just stress), and I even get in this line for 10 minutes.
But it becomes clear that I'll never get to the front before we need
to go through security (and that really no one cares if we pay 10
euros each for the stupid bike boxes), so we just go through security
and get on the plane.
