The Great European Adventure, Day 18: Paris to Chicagofeatured

Leaving Paris for Chicago was bad enough. A 4:30 am wakeup call so we could leave this beautiful place we’d spent weeks exploring? That’s just torturous.

We had to be out of the hotel by 5:30 am to have enough time to check in for our flight, validate and process our VAT return, check our luggage and make our way through security before our 9:30 am flight. So even though we were up super early, the staff at the Hyatt Paris Madeleine were ready to help us depart, taking our embarrassing large volume of luggage from our room to a taxi they had arranged for us.

The meter starts on a taxi in Paris when it’s called and arrives, not when you begin your ride, so when Mom was gabbing with the door staff before we left, our meter was running and we had a €12 charge before we even left!

The sun was just beginning to rise as we drove through the streets of Madeleine on our way to Charles De Gaulle, casting a cold grey glow across the shadows of the streets we’d fallen in love with over the past three days. I kept my eyes on the road ahead, not daring to look back behind me. The three weeks we’d spent in Europe was nothing short of magnificent, and not only would I be back at work the next day, but to even get to that, I had a ten hour flight ahead of me. I hadn’t combed through my pictures, saving it for that ten hour flight to give myself something to look forward to and an apt way to reminisce as we departed.

Charles de Gaulle is to Paris much like O’Hare is to Chicago – a large airport serving a large city, but not existing quite within those city limits. The drive to the airport was about a half hour and a €60 fare.

The airport hadn’t quite opened when we’d arrived – the check-in desks for American flights hadn’t even opened yet – so we roamed around looking for the office where we’d need to process the VAT refunds for our handbags. Once we found the machines and office, it was quick and painless. We put our validated forms in the mailbox, packed our new handbags back in our suitcases and headed off to check in for our flight.

As we were checking in to our flight, we saw the one word on the kiosk that we could only laugh at, given how our trip had began: DELAYED. A fitting bookend to this trip, I suppose. The inbound flight to Paris was delayed in Boston, and as such, we were looking at a (minimum) three hour flight delay. We made our way through a Customs checkpoint, checked our luggage, passed through security and made our way to the gate, now having almost five hours to kill until our flight. Thankfully, Charles de Gaulle has free wifi and these nifty charging stations where you could lock up your device to charge while you roam around.

We grabbed a quick breakfast – some croissants and subpar cappuccinos – and checked in on our flight, our emails and started getting back into the life we’d left at home.

Once we were caffeinated, we set out to explore the airport. On the list of airports I’ve been delayed in (and there are many), Charles de Gaulle ranks amongst the best. Every shop I could have wanted to stop in was right there in the international departures lounge, from Fauchon to La Duree to Maxsim, every Parisian delicacy I could want was available right in the airport. And that doesn’t even touch the luxury shopping, with stores like Dior, Chanel, Hermes and Miu Miu lining the corridors. It was easy to pretend I wasn’t bumming around an airport for hours waiting for my delayed flight to board and instead was wandering around a high-end luxury shopping mall in Paris. I don’t even know if they have high-end luxury shopping malls in Paris (let alone shopping malls at all), but this game of pretend was exactly what I needed to power through this extended delay.

All these random Euros floating in my purse wasn’t going to do me any good back at home, so I spent the remainder on small souvenirs and treats to enjoy on the flight home.

Okay, and I have to talk about the restrooms, too. Because Charles de Gaulle has some of the cleanest, most modern facilities I’ve ever seen in an airport. We went to freshen up before our flight and were impressed. Impressed by restrooms. Yeah. I don’t even know what else to say there, but props to the French.

As we settled back at our gate, they announced that our flight was overbooked. Very overbooked. And anyone willing to take the next flight out (the next morning) would be bumped up to first class, given overnight hotel accommodations and a $1000 flight voucher. Another day in Paris, a first class flight home and enough to cover most of another flight to Europe? I was about to jump at it, but then I realized I’d be in Paris alone and flying home 10 hours alone – my employer has a generous time off policy, but Stephanie’s employer has a rather restrictive one, and if it wasn’t an option for her, it wasn’t an option for us.

The flight in from Boston arrived a little earlier than anticipated and before we knew it, we were boarding a large (but old and outdated) airplane and jetting eastbound towards the States.

Unlike our flight to Europe, which required a layover, our flight home was direct. And unlike the overnight flight that allowed us to reset our sleep schedule enough to acclimate, our flight home was during the day. Our flight left Paris at noon, and we were scheduled to land in Chicago just past 2:00 pm. On the same day. We were flying backwards in a space where time didn’t really pass or exist. The ride was smooth and peaceful, so we settled in with some wine from the beverage cart and a cheese basket and Fauchon macarons we’d purchased in the airport.

A couple of hours later, they served lunch: an option between chicken and ravioli. I had the chicken, Stephanie and Mom had the ravioli. Both options were adequate for an economy meal service. They were accompanied with a soft breadstick, a fresh salad, crackers and spreadable cheese, a crumb cake dessert and a water bottle.

Time passed by in a blur. I took a nap. I watched a movie on my iPad. I went through the pictures on my camera and I looked out the window before napping again. A ten hour flight can pass by quickly when it’s as peaceful and smooth as ours was.

There are few things I take more seriously (when I travel) than staying hydrated and keeping my skin hydrated on long flights. A little extra hydration goes a long way. My sister says I take it a few yards too far, but screw jetlag — the only bags I planned on showing up to work with were filled with souvenirs.

Just as I’d settled in with my undereye pads and a movie, the snack cart came around with ice cream and another round of beverages.

And less than an hour before we landed, they served us another meal: a warm tomato and pesto wrap sandwich and a cake square. We may have been flying economy, but American kept us fed and comfortable throughout the entire flight.

Just as we finished our bonus lunch, we began our descent into Chicago, trying to spot my high rise apartment building as we glided along the skyline. It took awhile to taxi to O’Hare’s international terminal and the walk from the gate to Customs after such a long flight was brutal. It took less than an hour to collect (all of) our luggage and cross through Customs.

And from there? We went home. I spent a couple hours at Mom’s house to do my laundry before Stephanie drove me back to my apartment. And as quickly as it came on, it was over, and all that was left was the jetlag (which took me two weeks and a long weekend trip to Mexico to fully recover from, by the way).

I hope someone in the great big beyond of the Internet world found something helpful in this. Planning for this trip having never been to Europe before was daunting to say the least. But having done it (and done it well, if I do say so myself) once, we’re prepared to dive into it headfirst next time. Six more months. I hope you’ll join along for that adventure, too, and all of the adventures in between.