My First Trip to Remulak

I enjoy the adventure of travel and, sometimes, I expect the journey itself to become part of that adventure such as a train ride across Asia or a drive down the Mississippi River. For other trips I expect the transportation should be nothing more than a means to move me from home to the destination from which my adventure will begin. The latter was my expectation when I planned to join the Performance Today river cruise from Paris to Normandy and back.

It should have been simple: Board a plane in Dulles, Virginia Monday night, wake up Tuesday morning in Roissy-en-France 18 kilometers from Paris, meet my friend Patricia whose flight from San Francisco was conveniently scheduled to arrive 10 minutes before mine, and share a ride to the Méridien Etoile Hotel. However, Air France and Mother Nature conspired to add layers of complexity forcing an early change to a trip whose planning had begun some seven months before.

No Lemony Snicket but a series of (mildly) unfortunate events.

Event the first.

Although its roots were hidden, I noticed the bud of the first problem I was about to encounter on Friday 20 April when I received an email from the trip’s organizer – Earthbound Expeditions – alerting those of us who had booked flights through Air France, or its American partner Delta, to a planned strike by the former.

The bud blossomed into full flower Sunday afternoon at 13:30 while I was sitting in the suite I share with three friends awaiting the start of the men’s lacrosse game between Maryland and Ohio State. My phone chirped and, expecting the worst, I opened my email to the terse message from Delta notifying me that my flight had been canceled. Then, shockingly using my cell phone as a phone, I immediately called them. After navigating the hellish automated response maze, the airline promised me a wait time of more than two hours before I could speak with an agent, I decided to watch the game (Maryland lost 12-10 😢) and deal with the requisite rescheduling afterward.

Prepared with some fertile advice from Bradford at Earthbound, I called Delta, and with a new option provided, planted my phone number in their callback queue and waited for that seed to sprout. The call came nearly two hours later and, after hoeing through the weedy suggestions of Delta’s ticket agent, I was able to change my flight. I’d now have to fly to Atlanta where I would connect with a flight to Charles De Gaulle. My newly scheduled arrival entailed a two and a half hour delay from the original time.

With some foresight born from experience, I opted for a three and a half hour layover in Atlanta rather than the 42 minute connection time that the Delta agent had tried to convince me to take. Now, it’s possible that the winds that delayed my departure from Dulles by 45 minutes would have abated in time but had I chosen the later departure I would have arrived in Atlanta after the flight to Paris was scheduled to depart. Then again, as the night progressed, the weather in Atlanta might have rendered that issue moot.

Event the second.

Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International is the busiest airport in the world. More than 100 million travelers pass through it annually. Yet, if the Catholic Church had a facility there, I think its name would be Our Lady of Perpetual Thunderstorms because severe weather seems to pass over the area with a regularity that strangles it in a kudzu like grip. All appeared well when we boarded the plane on time anticipating a 22:25 departure. I should have known better.

[Photo from Wikimedia Commons.]

As we neared that departure time, someone from the flight deck announced the approach of a cell of powerful thunderstorms and, with the threat of lightning, all runway personnel had been evacuated to safety. The expectation was that the storms would pass in 15 to 20 minutes and we would be on our way after a slight delay.

That initial forecast was correct. That first line of storms passed the airport in about 15 minutes. Unfortunately for those of us confined on the plane, another cell cropped up followed by a third, a fourth, then a fifth. After more than an hour’s delay, we finally received clearance to leave the gate. But, per the pilot, the combination of wind and rain conspired to delay our departure just a bit longer.

The explanation for the new delay was that the wind had blown enough rain through the small gap between the jetway and the plane that it caused a short circuit in the system the flight attendants use to communicate with the passengers. We had to wait until a new unit was procured and installed. Sometime after midnight we finally had wheels up.

One benefit of the wait at the gate was that it afforded me the opportunity to get an early start watching the in-flight entertainment. (One of the reasons the pilot expressed concern about the impact of the faulty unit was that the short circuit was causing the system to think an announcement was in perpetual progress. This, in turn would keep all the entertainment options on perpetual pause.)

I started with Coco, and before the flight was through, had also watched Wonder and The Greatest Showman. Of the three, the only one I would have likely gone to see in the theater was Coco. But, since they were all available for no additional charge on the flight and I didn’t want to do more than catnap overnight, they certainly helped pass the time without taxing my intellect.

Event the third.

This element sprouted from the previous delays and changes. For those in our large group who arrived early enough, the tour organizers had arranged for a group lunch on one of Paris’ famous Bateaux Mouches – the open excursion boats that provide visitors views of the city from the river Seine. Those of us scheduled to arrive too late would receive a similar though smaller dinner cruise.

Since we had coincidentally scheduled our original flights with arrival times about 10:30, Patricia and I were placed for the dinner cruise. Her flight had arrived on time and she’d settled comfortably into our hotel room while I was still in transit. (For those of you who didn’t follow the tale of my 2016 trip through the Balkans or who simply don’t remember, Patricia was part of that small group tour and was also among the five who went on the Budapest extension. We struck up a friendship during those days, have stayed in regular communication in the year and a half since, and decided to share this adventure.)

Among the other consequences of having to reschedule to a later flight was an additional hour flying time. Still, had the flight from Atlanta not been delayed, I’d have arrived in Paris with ample time to pass through immigration and find transportation to the hotel to join her on the dinner cruise. With the added delays, the schedule tightened considerably. Messaging Pat through WhatsApp every step of the way (“Wheels on the ground”; Still taxiing”; “At the gate”; “Long line at immigration”), I was still sending messages while on Le Bus as the deadline crept ever closer. Luckily, I arrived at the hotel with 15 minutes to spare – barely enough time to drop my luggage in our room and change my shirt before hopping in one of the four cabs taking the group’s later arrivals to the boat.

When we arrived at the boarding point for this cruise, we were greeted by this rather unusual T-Rex sculpture.

 I never learned anything about its relationship with these sightseeing boats.

Even in late April, Paris is far enough north that sunsets are late – between 21:00 and 22:00. So, while the sky was intermittently overcast during our dinner cruise, it was never dark. I snapped a few more photos including this one of a river barge.

I took this picture because David Downie (whom you will meet later in this narrative) wrote eloquently about this aspect of life on the Seine in his book Paris, Paris which I’d read in anticipation of my journey to the City of Light. It’s a life now largely absent from the immediate environs of the French capital city but one in which Jerome, the captain of our upcoming river cruise to Normandy on the Amadeus Diamond, was raised and one that we would encounter briefly in our first stop in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine a few days hence.

It was on this dinner cruise that Patricia and I first met our Performance Today host, Fred Child. As we chatted he offhandedly suggested something he planned to do Wednesday. Pat and I almost immediately decided to try and do the same.

The real fun begins tomorrow with a daylight walk through a small section of Paris and a night filled with jazz and sparkles.

For those of you who don’t recall the reference in the title of today’s entry, here’s a video explanation.