I will begin this with a quote from Charles Dickens “ It was the best of times and it was the worst of times.” The tour guide was excellent, knowledgeable and a lot of fun to be with. The first three days in Paris where exciting except for the crowds, we have been to Paris several times in the past and this time the crowds were literally shoulder to shoulder in the Notre Dame, The Louve, Saint Chapelle and The D’Orsay museum. To make things even more of a challenge, Air France lost my wife’s bag and assured us it was coming later that day and they would deliver it to our Hotel. We always only travel with “carry on “ over the last 12 years but this one time she thought that it would be nice to have some room to bring a few things back with us. Well, the bag did not show up we found trying to get through to Air France via telephone and e-mail an exercise in futility. So, we spent our free time one afternoon buying new clothes for my wife, I think she actually enjoyed it!!
It was a relief to leave Paris and head to the Chateau country. The Chambord Chateau was huge and almost overwhelming when you consider it was just a “hunting lodge”! The Chateau Chenonceau truly a wonderful experience, period furniture was present and it looked as if you could move in and start living there today. We enjoyed the Castle that is being built at Bourges (living museum), it was very interesting and the guide made it come alive.
We were feeling better now even though the bag was still stuck at the CDG airport. Mount St. Michel is majestic and we loved arriving and getting settled in our hotel and having a great supper, but when we went to bed we had to leave the window open due to the heat and no air conditioning and the seagulls cried all night long, I mean they never stopped! We didn’t get any sleep and the next morning we climbed to the top to see the church and ended up walking up or down a total of 1000 steps that morning. Between the lost bag, heat and lack of sleep we still managed to have a good experience. We next visited Normandy and the guide was excellent, we saw both Utah and Omaha landing beaches and the American cemetery ( Very emotionally moving to experience).
We headed back to Paris with a stop at Monet’s garden in Giverny, France but again the crowds where enormous, even the guides from different tours were getting testy with each other, we did a quick run through the garden and left and found a great hotel with a a shaded patio and had an excellent lunch at our leisure.
On returning to Paris we found that our Hotel’s air conditioning had broken down and our room on the 6th floor was an oven and the overall condition of the hotel was poor so we opted to book a room at the airport Sheraton and we called a taxi. We hated to miss the final group tour dinner but we were exhausted by then. On the way to the airport our taxi ran out of gas but we were able to coast down hill to a gas station (I know this sounds like a National Lampoon movie). After filling up we made it to the airport hotel and since we had a few hours before bedtime, we went over to Air France baggage and asked if they would help us with the lost bag and one lady came to our rescue and spent an hour tracking the bag down and we finally got it!!
Now some of you probably think that this was the trip from hell and at times we didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but
I want you all to know that the group of people we were with was wonderful and they kept our spirits up and we look back now and can say it was a great experience!
PS: Delta lost my wife’s bag at Atlanta on the way home and it was finally delivered to our house this morning! We are back to carry on only from now on!!!