From the "So you think Alice had a hard time at the airport, then read this Department"

Jackie and I arrived in the Paris area about 6pm Monday evening and checked into our room at the Campanille motel. This is the French equivalent of the Motel 6, where they’ll keep the light on for ya. This room was clean, efficient and had comfortable beds, but no chocolate on the pillows. A sure sign that this trip wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. We spent the evening in our room, blogging, rearranging our stuff in the luggage, and feasting on Parma Ham and Prosicutto we bought in Milano, French Bread, three different incredible cheeses purchased in Beaune France, and of course, a beautiful Chateau Nuf Du Du Du Soui, Du Du Du Soi (some red wine) also purchased in Beaune from the beautiful, charming and informative Celine, our French Wine Appreciation Course Professor and all around nice lady. I struggled with the wireless network which curtailed my blogging activities for the evening so Jackie and I retired to the comfort of our separate twin beds. (after all, it’s Jackie’s vacation too) We awoke at 9am, to the sound of other people leaving their rooms and checking out. Hmmmm. I cannot believe we were disturbed in such a way. Bad sign. We partook in our lavabo, completed our departure preparations and dialed in the coordinates for the Hertz car return at Orly Airport. Santa Garmina guided us directly to the exact parking space designated for us, big shots. We executed a perfectly smooth transition from the Hertz counter to the l’Avion desk where a very nice Nigerian lady who speaks both English and French took care of all the check in and luggage checking procedures. No line and no delay. We moved on to the security area where of all things, Jackie was tagged for a search of her carry on luggage because she had some water in a bottle! How rude! I cannot believe that these French actually follow generally accepted security procedures! Another sign that this whole trip was a huge disaster. So after a 3.37 minute delay waiting for Jackie to get through security, we moved forward to the special reception lounge reserved only for passengers of l’Avion. We were greeted at the door by a stunningly beautiful young lady proffering a glass of Champagne (the real Champagne, you know, sparkling wine from the Champagne Region of France, not the New Jersey Pine Barrens.) But the nice young lady didn’t offer me the Japanese Shiatsu message I sorely needed. The massage she offered was merely a hot rocks and oil massage which did not fully relieve the soreness in my scapular area caused by seemingly continuous lifting and lowering of my wine drinking hand. This trip is getting worse. So we settled into the scrumptious leather seats in the lounge, finished our Champagne, and moved on first to free cappucini with croissant and pain au chocolate, then to Jack Daniels on the rocks for me, and Absolute on the rocks for Jackie. Also for free. Good thing too, because I wanted Gentleman Jack and Jackie prefers Belvedere. OK…they get a pass on that…no net loss, but certainly no net gain. So here we are, in the lounge, relaxing with free drinks, two hours from our departure time, awaiting our boarding onto a lovely aircraft to further relax in gigantic luxury business class seats, and I felt compelled to relay our dismal, disappointing, dare I say, pathetic experience in response to Alice’s whining, nay, blatting about her nothing problems at the airport in Roma. You know, some people just need to suck it up. Oh, yeah, that is what Alice offered to several airport officials in order to make her plane. Well, there you have it. Alice’s experience was far from ideal, but OURS! Well, you read it for yourself; you be the judge. I hope our actual flight is better…one can only hope. Ah, but HOPE is not a strategy. I think I will have another drink…for free.

Trip to Newark follow up.
So, they called us to board our flight a whole hour before departure time! How inconvenient! We quickly finished our free drinks and moved off toward our gate where we had to stand in line, we had to stand in line, we had to stand in an effing line! Our position in line was directly behind “The Cat Woman.” I will have en entire entry in our blog about this individual but suffice to say, she provided some perspective to our totally unfortunately and very, very disappointing experience with l’Avion. Anyway, the reason they called us so early was that they had yet another security checkpoint for us to go through and one even more rigorous than the normal security. The checkpoint had one person examine our carry on luggage by eye and by x-ray, while another shepherded us through a metal detector. Once through the metal detector, Jackie was patted down and checked with a “wand” by a female security officer. I was summarily pushed off to a male officer. There is yet another sign that this trip stinks. I had to get patted down by some snaggletoothed Frenchman with a lisp while Jackie got felt up by a babe with the French equivalent of an M-16. Damn. Anyway, we had to endure another round of humiliation and degradation while going through the security. I cannot believe they were doing it to protect us. It was just a ploy to make us Americans feel like the losers we are. We then boarded the plane to find more Champagne waiting for us at our gigantic lay down, support your head with ear cushions, adjustable foot rest equipped leather seats. How low class is that? Didn’t they know we already had Champagne in the lounge? Really. We gulped it down while enduring the gorgeous French flight attendants drone on and on about seat backs, tray tables, flotation devices and the like. Good God, another round of Champagne. I cannot take it a moment longer. After takeoff, the sexy flight attendants came by with steaming hot towels for our faces and hands. Just another slight against Americans, I suppose. I guess even the French think we are dirty! Dinner was served on glass, china and with stainless steel utensils. When I unwrapped the utensils from the napkin, I was made aware by the sheer number of individual instruments provided, that we were in for a huge volume of food, most likely designed to make us all feel totally stuffed and thus, unwell. As usual, I was right on target. They served salad with bread and large chunks of chicken. They served us Duck with a duck sauce (which was not the perfect medium rare that I asked for) with beans, potatoes and more bread. Then there was the cheese course with three, count em, three different French cheeses, or as they say in Frenchland, Frommage. More bread. Along the way, we had many, many glasses of Bordeaux wine (that is wine from the Bordeaux region for all you pikers out there) and sparkling water. For goodness sake, there was then the desert…a cream puffy pastry like thing with, you guessed it, creme in the center. The crème was some sort hazelnut flavored stuff, which Jackie does not care for, so there is yet another taste of the horrors we endured. (safety tip for all you dinner party hosts…Jackie does not care much for anything with hazelnut flavor in it. Please adjust your menus accordingly. Otherwise, Jackie may roll her eyes behind your back like she did to the flight attendant, and you know how painful that can be.) After dinner, we were forced to drink at least 3 glasses of Remy Martin cognac and then the flight attendant prepared me for my nap. She put my seat back, donned my little l’Avion supplied booties, adjusted my noise cancelling headphones, drew the window shades and tucked me in with the plush comforter. She did NOT, however, massage my temples like the brochure promised, so this part was rather a bore. Oh, I did forget to mention the personal video device provided (again, for free) so we could dial up all sorts of movies, music, TV show episodes, etc, on demand) I cannot believe they would foist upon us yet another piece of electronic equipment that we have to attempt to decipher. What a bother. We just shoved them into our respective seat pockets where the barf bags and exit maps are stored. So, as I type this record of our very, very disappointing, rather awful flight back to Newark, we are exactly 2:36 from our arrival. I don’t know what other torture these people have in store for us during the remaining time aboard this flying Gitmo, but be certain, I will provide you with the blow by blow (Sorry Alice) summary when I can. By the way Alice, Debbie was on OUR flight. She must have hitched a ride from Rome to Paris and boarded our flight right behind us. I recognized her by spying her luggage claim tag showing that she was to retrieve a large golf club at baggage claim in Newark. We did not identify ourselves, of course but we did engage her in conversation. She recalled her experience in the Rome airport only days before saying something about some crazed, broke, blonde (ish) woman who was offering “favors” to anyone at the airport who would get her on her flight. I had no idea who she was talking about but it was the best thing that happened to us on this horrendous trip. "More of anything?" asks the flight attendant. "More of EVERYTHING!" says I.