Sunday, February 01, 2009

Mon trajet

I recently found myself on an aeroplane, which is what happens when one decides to fly instead of drive, walk, ride horses etc. in order to transport oneself from one location to another. In this instance, I was flying from Krakow-Balice in Poland to Paris Orly-Sud in France. My flight was scheduled to take off at 20:10 and land at about 22:25. I checked in on time, after arriving at the airport at 19:00 and standing in the check-in queue for quite sometime, only to be informed that the plane had been delayed. By between 2 and 3 hours. This meant that we didn't take off from Krakow until about 22:40 or 22:45 or so, which was about 20minutes after we were supposed to have landed in Paris. We finally landed at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport at 01:00, because Orly-Sud was closed, and so we needed to take a detour in order to land. If the RER B had still been operating, this would have been fine and dandy, but the last RER B train from the airport to Paris leaves the airport at 00:53 on Friday and Saturday nights.
By the time we'd collected out luggage and made it on to the buses outside the airport, it was about 1:35 or so.
The airline provided us with a voucher for a restaurant at Krakow-Balice, and free shuttle buses from CDG airport to Orly or Porte Maillot. I took the bus to Porte Maillot and then got a taxi from there because the metro had stopped and I was tired and it's only 12euro from Porte Maillot to Chatelet. It was after 2am when I arrived at Porte Maillot, and I think I got into my apartment at about 2:30am or so.
The airline was nice and helpful, and I understand that problems happen from time to time - this particular problem was caused by a technical fault in the aircraft which meant we had to wait for another plane to be flown to Krakow - but I was exhausted by the time I got home, and didn't sleep well, so now I feel slightly jetlagged even though it was only a 2-hour flight and I didn't cross any time zones. I left Bielsko-Biala by bus at 3pm, so from the bus station in Bielsko to my apartment, I was travelling for 11 and a half hours.

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