France 2024

This was the last day of our trip with the whole day spent traveling. Unfortunately our plans started unraveling early. We received a notification the previous evening that our second flight, which was support to depart from London's Heathrow Airport was delayed. The plane, which was supposed to leave from London on Tuesday, hadn't even left yet and its departure time kept moving back later and later meaning that our flight was only going to get pushed later. We both woke up at about 4AM and checked to find that our flight that was originally supposed to leave at 2:45pm was now pushed back to 10pm, while our flight from Nice to London was still on time. I tried calling American Airlines, but they said since we were already checked in for our flight from Nice, she would need to rebook the entire reservation and there was a chance we might not get put back on our flight from Nice and she couldn't undo it if we decided new itinerary didn't work for us, so I decided to just leave things alone.

We left the apartment at 8AM and walked to the Universitaire Méditerranéen station and took the L2 tram to the airport for our flight to London's Heathrow Airport. Not knowing that the L2 has two end points, after several stops we realized we were on the one that doesn't go to the airport, so we got off at the next stop and boarded the following tram which did go to the airport. We also learned exactly why you must tap your fare card to the reader when boarding a tram, as a team of four transit police boarded and started checking everybody's cards to make sure they had paid. Luckily when we boarded the second tram I had tapped our fare card twice to register both of us, so there was no issue.

We were hoping we could get put on a different flight that left later than our originally scheduled flight, but was on time. Unfortunately when we got to the ticket counter, no one was there. We ended up spending a bit of time chatting with a movie producer who was ahead of us in line and was flying out after attending the Cannes Film Festival. When agents finally did arrive and start checking people in, we asked if we could be put on the different flight, and while she did appear to listen to us, it was clear that she was not doing anything other than checking us in for our original flight. After waiting in a long line for passport control and reaching the gate, Alexandra once again tried to get us switched to the other flight, but the gate agent said that could only be done at the ticket counter and was clearly focused on getting ready to start checking people onto the plane.

The flight from Nice to London was uneventful. Once we finally got into the terminal at Heathrow we rushed to Flight Connections to try and rebook on to a British Air flight instead of our delayed flight to Chicago, but since we were on American Airlines, they said we had to go to Terminal 3 to check with an American Airlines agent. We hopped a connections bus to Terminal 3 where we had to go through security and then found an agent who unfortunately told us that the flight we wanted was already completely booked, but she gave us meal vouchers so we could get some lunch.

Rather than wait around the airport for hours, we found Excess Baggage where we were able to have our carry-on bags held and then bought tickets for the Tube and hopped the Piccadilly line to Green Park where we walked over to Buckingham Palace. With it being London, it was overcast with a light rain and unfortunately our jackets and umbrellas were in our checked luggage. We then walked toward Parliament to get a view of Big Ben and continued on toward Piccadilly Circus. As this was London, we were able to purchase an umbrella in a gift shop.

While this was my second time in Paris, this was the first time for Alexandra. In the twenty years since I was last in Paris, some things changed, such as styles and technology, while other things stayed pretty much the same. The people in France once again proved to be very friendly, polite, and hospitable. Despite not being native French speakers and having a rather limited vocabulary (despite my attempt to learn French via Duolingo) we had very little difficulty communicating. Almost everyone we needed to communicate with spoke English or could direct us to someone who could, and for most of the things we needed such as ordering in a restaurant or patisserie my French was good enough.

Like any other first world country, the wide adoption of smart phones has dramatically changed how things are done and there's many things you can do with your phone that simplify things you need to do. Almost anywhere you go you can pay with your phone, make reservations, recharge your transit pass... Unfortunately using it for navigation can still be a little tricky as the compass in the phones wasn't accurate and it wasn't always clear which way you should head until you walked far enough to see the dot representing your location was moving in the wrong direction.

If you plan on being in Paris for a few days and enjoy visiting Museums, the Paris Museum Pass was very convenient. In addition to saving us quite a bit of money and having only one fee to visit over 50 museums, it allows you to bypass the line to buy tickets and gain quicker entry.