What is the difference between Paris, France and Frankfurt, Germany?
Well, let’s face it. There are many. But at the moment the one I’m most interested in is that one is the city I was supposed to fly into and the other is the city that I actually flew into.
My flight out of St. Louis was almost 5 hours late departing for Chicago (because of clouds up there), so, not surprisingly, I missed my flight to Paris. And it was looking likely that it would be two days later before they could get me to Paris on another flight (from anywhere). So, luckily, I had noticed that there was a flight to Frankfurt leaving from a nearby gate and asked if I could get onto that plane. The agent said she couldn’t connect me to Paris out of Frankfurt, but I figured it would be easier to get to Arles, my destination in Provence, from anywhere in Europe than from a Chicago airport full of passengers with cancelled flights and missed connections.
My luck changed a little when I got to the gate of the Frankfurt flight and they assigned me a seat in Business class (the agent never commented on it; he just gave me the boarding pass with a single digit row number; I suspect the flight was otherwise full). So at least I got what turned out to be a very nice meal and a few hours of uninterrupted sleep in the lay-flat seat.
Now, I’m in the middle of 3 train rides (plus a Metro connection in Paris and a bus ride to my final destination) totaling almost 9 hours. Which will put my travel time at approximately 29 hours from my hotel across from Lambert St. Louis to my hotel in Arles. But, in the end, I only really missed about one half day of sightseeing.
Did I mention that my car wouldn’t start Tuesday afternoon while I was out running errands with a full load of stuff during my process of moving? This trip is starting out just a bit challenging.