This was our “leave Paris”-day, very sad. There was still much to see and do that we simply did not have time to do or the weather did not permit the activity. Activities like visiting the Dinosaur exhibit at the Natural History Museum, venture to the top of the Eiffel Tower, climb to the top of Notre Dame, visit the Plasis Royale, and many more will have to wait until our next visit. Before we departed Natalie and I headed out on a very short walk at the Place de Voage. I say very short because it was well below freezing and just did not make a very long walk. We left Jean-Pierre’s house around 11:30a to head to CDG. We had over 3 hours to make our flight, but we were anticipating very poor traffic or other delays, none of which came. We were forced to say some quick goodbyes as the drop-off area at CDG was a long line of anxious drivers.
Air France, well to put it simply: they suck. We went to go check-in and check our bag. The lady at the desk spoke very good English, and quickly processed our boarding passes and checked our bag. She informed us of the gate and boarding times. I quickly pointed out the handwritten gate she put on our boarding pass did not match the one printed above it. She replied, “Oh assumed you were on the flight that was boarding right now.” As I watched our checked bag disappear under the rubber wall on the conveyor belt, I asked what would happen to the bag. In hindsight we should have insisted that she not do anything with the bag, but did insist that it would be easy to fix and reissued a new checked-bag receipt. As you may have guessed, our bag did not arrive in Frankfurt and Air France has no idea where it is . Fortunately, it contained only extra shoes, some gifts, and coats. Nothing that we needed at the moment, but would dearly like to have back.
Once we arrived at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Frankfurt, the front desk lady had recommended an excellent German restaurant just a few blocks from the hotel. It was a little hole-in-wall restaurant and offered a wide range of German food. Needless to say, the food was amazing and it provided a much welcome break to the exclusive-French food cycle we had been on for the past two weeks.
