Layovers at the Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris

Traveling the world for many years to the most remarkable, but sometimes also "interesting" places, from luxury resorts to adventure to just simply fun locations, I finally understand, what can make a vacation actually "the unforgettable" trip or simply said "the opposite". It is not the perhaps atrocious hotel, crammed with livelihood in an animalistic way, or the indefinable food, which some of us might already lost in a fairly unusual method on the journey back home, it is precisely that… the flight and everything linked with this occurrence, which is plainly the AIRPORT.

I suppose inexperienced flyers would not know the difference between good and bad airports. Let's not be rude, let's say unorganized airports. But the frequent flyers know… do not go through Paris! The raison d'être (the reason of being) for this statement is in fact dreadfully understandable once explained, and also very widespread. Only last summer, the best vacation of my life was overshadowed with a few things that just seem to come about at the Charles - De - Gaulle airport a little more often than anywhere else. I will tell this humorous little story, so all other flyers can pay exceptional attention to avoid the mistakes I made.

First thing to keep in mind is: Ensure how long the lay-over time is that you have. It is amusing that lay-overs in Paris seem always to be only one hour long or even less. A ha, stop! I know that a good number of you ought to think now that this is awesome, why spend more mind-numbing time at an airport than necessary? Well, let me tell you about point number two! Sadly, the majority of the flights arrive habitually with a petite delay, which makes an hour of lay-over just a little bit shorter. Another important thing is that often a bus is picking you up from the plane and then drives you to the gate. This process takes as well a couple more minutes off your lay-over.

And then there comes the significant knowledge you usually only gain after the first time you walked from one Terminal to another, good old Charles - De - Gaulle is gigantic! It takes you approximately one hour to walk from Terminal to Terminal, so you better wear running shoes, as I did last summer, with the awareness of what awaits me in Paris! And I ran, I ran like an Olympic Champion sprinter, after my flight was delayed as planned and the bus was stuck in a mega "airport-bus-traffic-jam", not as planned by the way. So when you run, like I did, through the airport, do not expect any valuable information on the boards about where to run! There are just numbers. It is not like at all other airports in the world, where you have only one number for the gate, like GATE 58… and you know where to go. No, here you have two, akin to
BA 2025 to London4875.

You fancy knowing what that means? Great, me too. Well, one number is the Check-in counter number and the other is actually the Gate number. But don't expect it to be written somewhere!

OK, envision you figured out where to jog and that is exactly what you do, to witness what?! To see the Gate closing right in front of your nose. And because French people are always so comfortable and don't really think that missing a flight is a big deal, the chances that they will get you through real quick and let you get the flight is incredibly little. And this is what happened to me last summer. Rage was pumping through my veins, as I saw the last bus leaving right in front of me for the plane and all I got was an: "I am very sorry, but the Gate is closed now!" Well, I guess I had to get over my rage and go to the information desk to get the next connection flight. Did I say next? Yes, that was my intention, but I should have known that not only did I miss a flight, but plenty of other people had as well missed one.

So I couldn't get the next flight, because it was already jam-packed, or the one after, or the one after that. I finally got a flight at 5pm. I have to reveal at this point that my actual flight would have left Paris at 7am. So I was just trapped at lovely Charles - De - Gaulle for 10 hours. Luckily, "Charles" is equipped with a small number of uncomfortable white metal seats. I mean, I didn't really want to be comfortable for that long anyway, in case I would have gotten a place to sit somewhere. One thing helped me to get through this marvelous experience: I was not alone in this situation.

I unquestionably learned something out of this: Check the lay-over time, especially in Paris! And amusingly this is the most "attention-grabbing" story I can tell from my great New York trip. But I prefer not to tell another one of those stories again too soon.