:)
Okay, lets get into the story.
Paris, the city of wine and cheese and love.
I got to go to Paris, with my lovely Aunt M... ;-)
Paris was a dream come true. I had read so much about this city, French culture, tourist attractions, the language...I was like a highly caffeinated monkey...buzzing around wanting to touch everything and go everywhere. It was a lovely weekend...every meal in Paris is a feast too!
So while spending time with my aunt, we happened to mention an incident that took place a few years back where my mum had missed a flight because of how she interpreted the time of the flight. It was an early morning flight, something like thirty minutes past midnight(say on Monday morning), but she interpreted it as a late night flight on the Monday night...get it? This 24-hour clock, heh heh!
It is one of those little things that just never occurs to you and then when you realize, you can't imagine how you could have missed it.
Fast forward, say, 5 years later, here comes Kathleen, my mother's daughter. While booking my trip to Paris, in my head I knew I wanted to arrive Friday afternoon and leave Sunday evening. So when I saw a trip that had a return at 0630hrs on Sunday, I quickly took it, "Good price, how lucky," I thought. In my head, that 6.30 was automatically pm and for the other 100 times I looked at my ticket to double check the time, it never occurred to me to think otherwise.
"Departure at 6.30pm," I kept telling myself.
When Aunt M. asked if I had checked and doubled checked the time, told her I had even triple checked it. So we checked out of our hotel early enough, took a shuttle to the airport. Our terminals we totally different so the shuttle dropped her off first and we had a somewhat sentimental goodbye, wondering what soil we would be standing on when our paths once again crossed. Little did we know...ha ha!
I got to my terminal and as I checked departures, I noticed there was none headed in my direction at 6.30pm. The butterflies began, but I kept telling myself to relax, I was two hours early, whatever was amiss could be fixed. Tried to check in at the self-check in kiosk, but the machine kept telling me that boarding time for my flight had already passed. I could not understand how, since I was two hours early.
At the counter of my airline the lady took one look at my ticket and then looked up at me and said, "...Miss, why are you coming to the airport at 4.00pm? This flight left at 6.30am!"
I would have burst into tears right there and then, but I still had some strength in me. So I asked the lady if I could be put on a different flight to my destination and she dropped the second bomb-shell, "Sorry miss, your ticket is non-transferable. You will need to purchase another one."
PANIC!!!!!!! I kept going though, kept my cool and asked her when the next flight to Poznan was...she checked and said that the next flight with a free seat was in two days time. Keep in mind I had to be at work at 9.00am the next day. There was the third bombshell...and if you thought that misfortune only comes in threes, there was a fourth...the only seats available on that flight were first class tickets, about 3 times the cost of a normal ticket and I could not buy a single trip because I was not an EU citizen, I had to buy a round trip(technical something with immigration laws.)
And in that moment I ceased to be the mature, responsible young lady that had been looking after herself all alone in a foreign land and I was once again my mummy's little girl, I could not stop the tears. In between sobs I thanked the lady, dragged my suitcase to a nearby bench, took out a pack of napkins and just sat there and cried for a few minutes wishing I was at home with mum, wondering what would become of me...
SUSPENSE!!!!
Did Kathleen ever get home?
Or was she forever stranded in Paris, lost and alone in the most beautiful city in Europe(2nd most beautiful I think...)
Part 2 coming soon.
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| Notre Dame Cathedral |
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| Our breakfast joint! |
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| Eiffel Tower!!!!! |
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| Add caption |
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