Paris – Day 10

Paris – Day 9 can be found here.

Where has the trip gone? How is it already time to go home?

It seems like it was both a moment and a lifetime ago since we first landed in Casablanca, which generally suggests the trip has been a complete success. But there’s no question, it’s time to get back to real life.

Still, I wouldn’t have minded just one more day to laze about in Parisian park, nibbling baguette sandwiches and sipping on iced chocolate, bathed in the soft spring sunshine.

“Never hurts to have a reason to go back,” I like to say. Well, sometimes it hurts a little bit. But that’s the price of travel.

Alarms were set for 7:30 am on our final day, but we were up a bit before then. We’d mostly packed the night before, so there was little left to do but eat breakfast, take out the garbage and tidy up our Airbnb before BT Transfer picks up at 9 am.

I’m not usually a big fan of having to clean out a rental before we leave, but this apartment was very well priced for what it offered, so I’m not going to complain.

In any case, it wasn’t long before we’d shuffled down via the elevator, and my son and I were waiting for our driver along the narrow sidewalks of Rue St Dominique.

We were there for only a few minutes before we realized our driver was parked nearby, perhaps 50 feet further down the road – so I sent my son back to get the rest of our family while I loaded the first few bags.

Five minutes later and we were on our way, ahead of schedule.

I checked our flight. Everything was on time.

It was at this point that I considered restarting my data plan – I’d had a few strange charges on my phone despite having turned roaming data off, so I’d turned off data at the network level via our Bell account. But we figured I could just do this once we landed by tethering off my wife’s phone, if needed.

This ended up being a mistake – but I wouldn’t discover how serious until after we landed.

We reached Charles de Gaulle airport about an hour later, and roughly 3 hours in advance of our flight. There was a significant line in front of the Air Canada check-in desk, but thankfully we had priority due to us having managed to snag Signature class seats on points. So it only took us a few minutes to get our bags checked in.

Air Canada’s lounge was under construction, so the desk agent explained that we should head to the Extime lounge instead – we were a bit leery as we’d seen how busy the Air Canada lounge was in Toronto, but figured it was the best we were going to get.

Strangely, she also mentioned that the lounge was before customs – while Air Canada had told us it was after security. We spoke with one of the red-jacketed information assistants, and he confirmed that yes, it was indeed after security. Very helpful – wish Toronto Pearson had people to help us figure out how to navigate its maze-like passages.

Security was also relatively quick and painless – again, we had a shorter line due to Signature class being considered ‘priority’, but unfortunately we still had to take out liquids, electronics, etc.. But we got through soon enough, and started to keep our eyes out for the Extime lounge.

Found it – and it was really, really nice.

Spacious, excellent food, and pour-your-own champagne. What’s not to like?

Croque monsieur and boeuf bourguignon, anyone?

We hung out in the lounge for about an hour and a half, and then went through immigration. Again we had priority access, though none of the lines were particularly long.

Unfortunately all the seating at our gate was full, but we found a few extra seats one gate down. We only had about 10 minutes to wait before I got a ping on my phone – boarding had begun.

We had to jostle a bit to get to the line for Zone 1 – as usual, people were eager to board and the line had spread everywhere. But some were a bit cheeky and tried to get through despite it not yet being their turn.

But soon we were settled in our pods, ready to jet back home. Interestingly, this plane did not have the shoulder belts that we had on our way down – and the seats had a different massage function. Otherwise they were largely identical.

The flight was largely uneventful and had some excellent food.

The smoked prawns:

The chicken in spicy tomato sauce:

And the artistically shot, partially-eaten cheesecake:

I then lay down on my fold-flat seat and managed a two-hour nap. Sorely needed, as we would have many hours of driving ahead of us after landing in Montreal.

Still, I’m glad we didn’t fly directly to Toronto as that flight was massively delayed – and we’d still have driving ahead of us anyway.

They served a light snack of smoked salmon, fruit, and bread.

And I fortified myself with a few more cappuccinos.

We ended up landing around 5 minutes late – though at one point we were expected to land 40 minutes early. There was quite the headwind, so I suspect that was the culprit. It was a shaky landing but the flight crew managed to get us down without incident.

We cleared customs quickly and had our bags within about 20 minutes of arriving. I used this window to tether to my wife’s phone and resume our data plans. Hers worked immediately, while mine seemed a bit finicky – though it seemed fine after restarting my phone.

I then went to take the Park ‘n’ Fly shuttle to pick up our car. Normally – in Toronto – this would be when my wife would take the kids to pick up some food (Tim Hortons, usually) and I’d pick her up outside the airport. This way we don’t have to load bags on and off the shuttle.

Unfortunately, it didn’t quite go to plan this time around – I waited 10 to 15 minutes for the shuttle, paid up and got in my car. It was only then that I discovered I had no data connection for my phone. I tried to retrace my steps, but ended up getting turned around – and stuck in Montreal’s rush hour traffic to boot.

Eventually I managed to access a free wifi station and got my directions sorted out. I was only delayed by an extra 10 to 15 minutes, but next time I think we’ll all just take the shuttle together rather than sending me out as advance party. It was a pain, but we learned something – different airports demand different strategies.

From there, it was mostly smooth sailing – my phone was still having issues so I ended up buying an eSIM package so I’d have data. Montreal traffic added perhaps another 15 minutes to the drive, but not as bad as it could’ve been. The ONroute we stopped at for dinner was immensely slow. That’s about it.

And some 18 hours after we left our apartment in Paris, we were back home in Canada – with two very sleepy children in the backseat of our car, and an attention-starved cat yowling for our attention.

So much judgement on one tiny litle face

It was a fantastic trip – and it’s good to be home.

Thank you all for joining us, and please stay tuned for further travels. We have plenty of photos and videos that are yet to be posted, plus a trip-in-review post where we look at some points to sustain and to improve, and reviews of the companies involved.

But for now – bslaama and au revoir!