As every good spring break goes, there must be a downfall. Some downfalls include your favorite ice cream shop closing early due to that crazy snow blizzard, or experiencing some flooding in your basement. I’ve never done much for spring break before. So when given the opportunity to go to Paris, I had already booked the cheapest ticket available. The trip to Paris filled itself with cheese and baguettes. Before I knew it, I had eaten all the macarons in France… but it wasn’t the trip itself you’re following me on today. Follow me on my spring break downfall. The trip was never meant to be.
You’re going to follow me to the Orly Airport. Orly Airport is a dainty little airport south of Paris that’s perfect for flying within the country or to any of the surrounding European countries. The airport doesn’t offer too much for those with long layovers, but it’s better than nothing.
Due to the crazy weather of the Northeast over this spring break, I figured we may have some trouble getting home. But it wasn’t long before I started asking myself…
I’ve never experienced an cancelled flight, but I would soon know the feeling well. The first step of this weekend at Orly Airport had to do with that fact that my flight got delayed for two hours.
Then, I got another dreaded text. The flight got delayed, again. This meant I missed my second flight that left from Iceland. Although the blizzard in New England was causing a crazy amount of travel issues, it wasn’t the reason for ours. This time the trouble was the snow in Iceland.
We figured we would be stuck at the airport. There’s nothing to do. I’m a college student, I can’t just buy another ticket home. I have to take whatever IcelandAir can give me. So I did what logical people at the airport do in desperate times of cancelled flights.
After hours of waiting in lines, we starting talking to all the people on our cancelled flight. We congratulated each other when other people go on flights to finally go home. We weren’t that lucky, but the airline gave us a room for the night. We settled in to watch the most shocking Bachelor while we waited for our flight the next day. During the episode, I realized I may have agreed with Arie about something.
The next morning, we got to the airport three hours early as all knowledgeable international flyers do. To our surprise, this was not enough time. The airport didn’t schedule us on a flight and we may have had to be stuck in France for even longer. We waited on the sidelines of the check in desk, listening to people speak in French just trying to get us on a flight to Boston.
Finally, about an entire day after we got to airport in the first place, we took off on our first flight to Iceland. From that plane, we ran to catch a flight to JFK. After landing back in the US, we had to wait five hours to catch a forty minute flight to Boston. After all the waiting, it was worth it because…