Farewell France, now at Liverpool

This has been a weird day, as all travel days are. It is midnight here, which means it’s 1am in Paris, and yesterday that would have been 2am as today was the first day off daylight saving…so I am going to be very brief.

The first part of the day was just lovely. After breakfast Omnia had some friends to meet, and Amr and I went walking round the familiar and favourite little streets, went into the botanical garden and had a great time. The rain predicted for 11 am didn’t happen, in fact it was bright, so it was perfect. Went back to the hotel at 1pm to check out, left the bags and walked to Bastille to have a latish lunch because we knew we wouldn’t have dinner as we had an evening flight…that was lovely too, but it had started to rain a little by 1 o’clock…still walked back to get bags and get a bus to Gare du Nord, where we could get the RER to the airport.

That was when things went downhill…the bus to the station was fine, in fact quite a nice circuit through the city. But when we found the right platform, and we had seen departures signed for CDG, there was a small notice saying there were works (track works) and you needed to get the train to a station at the end of the line that doesn’t normally go to CDG, and there transfer to a bus…sort of fine, but there was confusion as it wasn’t a large or clear sign…anyway, after waiting a while we did get that train (which stopped at every station, was a locale, not the usual express through)…and we did all cram into a bus and end up at CDG….but that was just the beginning. When we found the EasyJet bag drop we found that it was a gigantic queue, as there aren’t the bag drop machines, and it was virtually a check in queue, for at least 10 or more flights, as everyone had to be individually dealt with at the desk. We were early (as always) and thank goodness as it took well over an hour to get through, and you had to produce not just passport, but covid certificate (fine) and the UK’s latest bureaucratic nightmare to all arriving passengers - a locator form which you fill out on line…this is to say that you have booked and paid for a covid test 2 days after arrival at an approved place and you get a number…(this is so they can check strains apparently)…so this why it was all so lengthy and complicated…we had ours but it is so crazy. Then security with all that carryon, and boarding more checking.

Then finally boarded, no action and finally an announcement that there was a medical problem and they were waiting for paramedics (who took the passenger off the plane, thank god he didn’t have a bag to get out of the hold!), so we left late, but only arrived about 20 mins late at Manchester. And the passport check on actually entering the UK was just a formality…no asking for any forms. They let the airlines do all the hard work…

Anyway, we are now here at Omnia’s house, and all good. She had organised “her” driver to collect us all (she travels quite often, or did pre covid, so knows a regular driver)…so that was a good ending, (although it is English weather - cold, wet and windy) and now we will try and un-hype and get to sleep…Read more