Stranded en Paris!

After returning from an enjoyable visit at my parents house in France, I was due to fly to Holland to visit my aunt for another week away – anything to distract myself from my studies! I’m a very nervous flyer so it’s easy for my mind to jump from 0-100 within a matter of minutes. As I was boarding my little Air France plane (to make my connection to Amsterdam), I received an email stating that my flight from ‘Paris to Amsterdam had been cancelled, sorry, bye’ – this was pretty much the communication that I received.

You can imagine my nervousness as multiple irrational things began to run through my head – first of all panic: ‘what on earth do I do? Sleep at the airport?’, shortly followed by confusion: ‘do I make a quick dash out of the queue, run down the jetty and stand in the middle of the airport until I decide to break down in tears and someone escorts me to a McDonald’s?, finished off by : ‘shall I just go home and pretend none of this happened and I don’t ever have to board a plane again?’.

Anyway, at the time I was being herded like cattle down a narrow jetty linking to the plane and it was difficult to abort the aircraft. So, I decided to make my connection to Paris as I knew the airline would compensate me upon my arrival. When I landed, the airport was pretty much deserted. Practicing my best GCSE french, I opted for my leading line ‘parlez-vous anglais?’. After being directed in about a million different directions, I finally made it to the shuttle bus stop. I awaited the bus and enjoyed the industrial views until I got to my hotel. It appeared there were a few others in the same boat – we all had that exhausted look on our faces.

I’m just about to go down to dinner (complimentary of Air France), which will be very interesting as a vegetarian. So far the menu pretty much reads ‘viande,viande,viande’ – meat, meat, meat!