Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Paris to Venice, Day 9

Hmm…Where to start?

Today turned out to be a very rough day, and Jenni and I appreciate all of the prayers you have said for us as God definitely helped us get through a very rough day. Well, I guess I’ll just start at the beginning.

Today was supposed to be another travel day, with us hopping a flight from Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris to Marco Polo airport in Venice; easy enough right? :-) Well, to start with we left the hotel late, then the train to the airport—which was supposed to take no more than 45 minutes—ended up taking over 1 ½ hours; and after literally running through the airport to catch our flight before they closed the check-in, we missed the cut-off by 2-3 minutes. No biggie, right? Ha-ha…read on.

So, we went to the ticket counter to change our flight, well we booked with a budget airline that has a no refunds policy and since we were late, they could book us on the next flight but we would have to pay full price; so we reluctantly said “fine”. One problem, the next flight wasn’t until tomorrow. :-( We decided to hold on, and try to get a flight out with another carrier that same day; we knew it would be expensive, but we just decided to find out how bad. After searching for a couple of hours, we realized that option wasn’t going to work; so we decided to take the tickets for tomorrow and just get a hotel at the airport. One problem, they were sold out now, so we would have to wait 2 days. At this point, we had been at the airport for about 3-4 hours and were at our last wits for the most part. Finally, we decided to try one more option; a night train to Venice. Guess what, no luck there either.

However, we just happened upon a wonderful man at the SNCF counter (French trains), who tried every route possible to get us to Venice that same day, and voila! We got a 1st class sleeper from Paris to Bologna (about 1 ½ hours away from Venice), and a regular ticket from Bologna to Venice. So, we trudged back across Paris to the correct train station, and waited. Fortunately, we made it on the train, and everything worked out just fine (incidentally, even though the trip took about 14 hrs, traveling via train is very nice).

So, here we are, ready to sleep in our little private sleeper car. Au revoir…

3 comments:

Unknown said...

We were so sorry to hear that you had such a trying day, and it does make me glad that I have prayed for you every day. You are an inspiration in how you still keep putting a positive spin on everything.

I did want to let you know that David's dad was put in the hospital Sunday & is still there. He was taken to the hospital because of stomach pain. She said they were just sitting there in the emergency room waiting for his test results to get back when 4 doctors came in and everyone started "doing everything real fast, I mean real fast."

When "Grampy" expressed concern about what they were about to do, a hospital personnel said, "...right now we are just trying to save his life. He is in renal failure."

Test results showed that his kidneys are "great" though, so they are looking at other causes. He also has a lot of pain in a bone in his back.

Paul's wedding is this weekend. David may go to that (will explain later) & to see his dad.

Clousseau is doing great.

We love you guys. Hope to read that your next day was a whole lot better. (It had to be, right?)

Can't wait to hear how Venice smelled.

Love,
Mom

Unknown said...

A first class sleeper car sounds so fun.....as I am sure it was for about the first 1, 2, 5, 6 hours! What a nice diversion from a boring old airplane flight! Now if only they had a train from here to England, I might could visit Europe one day!

Sally Wright said...

Awe. I hate to hear the bad news, but at least it all worked out in the end and you have even more stories to tell later. :o)