Italy act I

I am finally getting around to trying to document our adventures in Italy for everyone to read even though no one probably cares. Anyway, here is the first part of our trip to Italy. This is the crap ass situation we got in at teh Paris airport. I'm tired of relating this story over and over, so IU am pasting in teh email i sent teh travel agent to let her know about what happened. So it is abnormally boring, and devoid of obscentities for a post on this blog. It is also spell checked so you wont see any teh's or -ign's. enjoy

Our plane was a little late getting to Charles De Gaulle, and it landed on the tarmac (because terminal E which is where all the transatlantic flights go is under construction), so we had to take a 30 minute shuttle ride to the terminal. Then we had to go through customs (which luckily had no line), walk to terminal F, and then go through security again. At security, I notified the guard that there was diabetes medicine in my backpack as you are supposed to do according to the TSA website (at least in the US). I then went through the metal detector. Then Elizabeth went through and they asked her to take the thing off of her belt. She told them it was an insulin pump and she couldn't take it off. The Guard asked for a letter explaining it. We gave him the letter she had from her doctor, but they apparently wanted a letter from Air France. They told us to go to the Air France desk and talk to them. We did that, and they told us we had missed our flight (even though only a minute or two had passed since we left security). They told us we had to go to the transfers desk, which we had trouble finding. When we found it, the lady there gave us a new boarding pass, and we asked her to help us get through security. She came with us, and this time I didn't mention anything about the medicine in my backpack and they didn't say anything about Elizabeth's insulin pump (the guy who gave us a hard time before was gone). So we got through with no trouble and I tried to call the transfer people and let them know we would be late. First I tired a calling card my parents gave me, but I forgot that it wouldn't work since it was a 1-888 number and therefore wouldn't work from France. Then I tried my credit card, and when I put it in it said something about some price in euros, but when it didn't work and I hung up, it said "0,00 euros" or something to that effect, so I thought I wasn't being charged. I think it actually was going through some of the times I tried, but the European ring sounds like an American busy tone, and I was flustered and it confused me. It turns out that each of the like 10 times I called I was charged like 19 bucks. eventually at like 9, I bought a French calling card from the store at the airport, and since it was a card especially for those phones, it was a lot simpler to figure out and I got through. They said that the pickup was already at the airport and there was nothing they could do. Another thing that helped me get through at this point was that before 9 I was calling the 24 hr number, which didn't have a country code with it, so I didn't know what country it was in or what code to use. After 9 I could call the business hours number which had a country code with it. At some point before I eventually got through we had tried to board our flight, which left at 8-something, and they told us that the boarding pass we had was for the next day (right time and flight, just wrong date). So we went to the transfers desk in the terminal and they said that it was too late to get on the same flight (even though we could see it was still boarding), and that the next flight was full, so they put us on the flight that left at like 11-something. They also couldn't get us seats next to each other. Since we now had lots of time, I talked to a manager, and he said there was nothing he could do to help us out, but to file a complaint, and also that they should not have given us any trouble at security. Anyway, I think we got to Rome at 2-something, and my bag was in the unclaimed baggage room ( as it had come on the original flight at 9:20), one of Elizabeth's bags came around on the conveyor belt (it had come on the plane with us), and her other bag was no where to be found. We reported it missing, and it came 2 days later. It was still in Paris and we think it was probably put with the bags for the first rescheduled flight we were on which left the next day. We took a taxi from the airport, where we got our first experience with Italian drivers. The taxi cost 60 Euros with tip.

I don't really know who's to blame for all of this, Air France, Charles De Gaulle Airport, our own naivete. And really in the end, the trip was so much fun that we forgot how pissed we were for the first day. It would be nice if we could get reimbersed by the transfer company for either the missed transfer or the taxi ride. That seems fair. I am going to send an angry letter to Air France, and also talk to my credit card company about the phone calls (I know I need to get on that quickly). I know there is nothing you could have done to prevent our problems, but I would only suggest that when scheduling transfers at Charles De Gaulle, keep in mind that there is a significant amount of time required to get to the terminal from the tarmac if the plane is arriving or leaving at terminal E. So an hour between flights is probabaly not enough.