Fun with flying and a heat wave

Up and gone by ten – plenty of time to jump on the metro and RER train to the airport, check in and relax before our flight at 12.30, right?  Wrong.  So, so wrong.  The trip on the metro wasn’t so bad – figured out which station we needed to get to for the RER and got there fine.  The fun began when trying to buy a couple of RER tickets – was the ticket machine interested in taking any of our credit cards?  Hell no.  Was the ticket booth open?  Nope.  Would the ticket machine take notes?  Not a chance.  Would the shopkeepers give change for 10 Euro?  I think you know the answer…

Finally got that sorted (via tracking down another ticket booth elsewhere in the station) and went to the platform … to find that all trains were stopping at Gard du Nord.  Hmmm.  That’s not the airport.  Not even close.  Bec ascertained from a local that (surprise!) there was a drivers strike of some sort on.  Brilliant.  So, rapidly running out of time we made like a scene from the Amazing Race, bolted up and out of the station, flagged down a passing cab and sped to the airport.  Got to check-in a few minutes before they closed it (and endured a million questions about where we’d been, how, why, where we were going, blah blah blah … and bear in mind this is just getting out of the country), walked briskly to the security screening, endured even more questions, coupled with shoe removal, pat down and promises to surrender my first born, and made the flight with a few minutes to spare.  Oh.  What.  Fun.

The flight itself was fine (except for the laughing hyena masquerading as a hostess) … until we came into land at Dulles airport.  It did seem we were moving pretty quickly as the plane descended … a fact borne out by the heavy landing and almost immediate roaring of the engines as the pilot hit full thrust and sent us back up into the air!  My first (and hopefully last) experience of a touch and go in a commercial airliner!  I was actually expecting more panic from the rest of the passengers, especially given the turbulence as we came back around to try again, but most people were reasonably calm.  Second landing was much more successful (ie, we stayed on the ground this time) and as we taxied to the terminal we were informed that it was 36 degrees C and going to get hotter.  Awesome.  I had no idea that DC could get that hot in June.  It’s a lovely humid heat too, just to really make things that much more enjoyable when walking around the sights.

Anyhoo … customs and immigration was totally painless (yes, in the US – a much more pleasant experience than leaving Paris), we met Dearne (an old friend of Bec’s and the hostess with the most-est for the next few days) and walked out into the blast furnace for the trip home.  Dearne and her other half Andrew live in an incredible old place in Arlington, just over the river from DC itself.  They are in the midst of fullscale renovations at the moment but it’s obvious that the place is going to be just amazing when they are done.

The rest of the day was pretty relaxed (we were both knackered from the flight etc) – bbq, a couple of beers, watching the squirrels and chipmunks do their thing, and then an awesome storm to cool things down a bit.  Wonderful stuff!