Our plane was scheduled to depart from CDG airport at about 12:30 p.m. That is an airport where you should plan to be there 3 hours before the flight departs. The last time I flew out of that airport my flight was about the same time. We had a really hard time getting on a train because it was commute time and very crowded. We had no time to spare when we arrived at the airport, checked in and got through security.
This time we decided we would leave a bit earlier to avoid the busiest commute time. I set my alarm for 5:45 a.m. and we planned to leave the apartment at 7:30 a.m. That would allow plenty of time to shower, eat a little breakfast and make sure we weren't forgetting anything. Well...we both woke up at 4:00 a.m. Bummer! Neither one of us could go back to sleep. I decided to shower and just get ready to go. Marie agreed, so we were out of the apartment by 7:00 a.m. We caught the RER B train to CDG. I had checked online and it looked like we had to go to terminal 2. We took the train to the end of the line, terminal 2. So far, so good. Uh oh...wrong terminal. We had to go to terminal 1. There was a shuttle train that took us there. No problem since we were there so early. We decided to check our larger bags since they essentially only contained our dirty clothes, and we were very tired of carrying them around. We had plenty of time to spare. That's fine, because I would rather be waiting around than to be stressing out about missing a flight. The flight ended up departing 45 minutes late. I wasn't worried because we a layover in Washington D.C. of about 3 hours 15 minutes. We should still have plenty of time to get through Immigration and Customs and catch our flight home from D.C. The flight was fine. They served us lunch, we watched movies, chatted with the other person in our row, and it went fast. Then we heard an announcement from the pilot. He said we had to divert to add fuel. The plane was smaller than I have ever flown on an overseas flight before, and it doesn't hold as much fuel. The pilot had to take a longer route because of weather, and now there wasn't enough fuel to get us to D.C. It sounded like we were diverting to Newark. I made a comment to Marie and our seatmate that we should be able to see the NYC skyline from that airport, which I have been to on a few occasions. We started coming in for a landing and all I saw were trees. It was beautiful with all the fall foliage. Obvious we were not in Newark. We were in Stewart. Stewart AFB/International Airport in New York. It was a very small airport. The pilot said he went there because we should be able to get fuel and get out in 30-40 minutes. Okay, there is still a chance we can make our flight. Everyone was in good spirits, although plenty of people knew they were not going to make their connections. Luckily there were no children on the plane. Because of weather, rain and lightning, we ended up on the ground there for almost 3 hours. Now there was no way we would make our connecting flight. There was no point in getting upset. There was nothing anyone could do. We finally landed at Dulles. After going through Immigration we had to collect our bags and go through Customs. They then had us go to a customer service line. It was a long line. They were doing their best to find other flights for people. The next flight they could get us on was at 5:25 p.m. on Saturday. What? There is nothing earlier? Can we connect somewhere else? Nope, that was it. Now we had to go to another location to get into another line in order to get vouchers for a hotel and meal. That required us to have to go through security again. After standing in that line for quite a long time we finally had our vouchers. A hotel and one meal each. By this time it was after 10:30 p.m. We were tired, but hungry. Everything up in gate area was closed. We headed to where had to pick up our bags (again) and find the shuttle that would take us to the hotel. We found a place in that area that was open, so at almost 11:00 p.m. we ate a little dinner. We got to the shuttle area and found quite a few people waiting. They had given vouchers for several different hotels. There was a foursome from our flight waiting to go to the same hotel we had a voucher for. They had called the hotel and the shuttle was going to arrive in 20 minutes. Groan.... We were tired. The shuttle for the Embassy Suites showed up and the driver said he would take anyone with a voucher for any hotel. I jumped at that. The driver said if they didn't take the voucher he would drive us home. Okay! We got to the ES and got checked in right away. We got to bed at midnight, 29 hours after we had woken up in Paris. We both woke up at 4:00 a.m. Saturday morning. Ugh... Since we didn't have to be at the airport until almost 4:00 p.m. we thought we should take advantage of being in a new place. Neither one of us had been to D.C. before. We had breakfast (cooked to order!) at 7:00 and took the hotel shuttle to the airport. I asked a cab driver how much it would be to take us to the Mall area in D.C., since the bus from the airport was not coming for almost an hour. He said $60. I don't think so! We waited for the $6 bus. After we arrived in D.C. we got the HOHO for a quick tour. They have 3 routes, but we only had time for one. After we did the HOHO we had to catch the bus back to the airport. The shuttle driver from ES brought our bags to the airport for us. We checked in, checked our bags and headed to 5 Guys for a late lunch/early dinner, using our vouchers. By the time we got to the gate we didn't have to wait too long before we boarded. We were given seats in the first row of the economy section, which usually cost more. Sweet! We had plenty of legroom. The flight was uneventful. We landed in Sacramento about 49 hours after we woke up in Paris and I had slept about 5 hours during that time.
Home sweet home!!
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