Last October we went to Italy. Spent several days each in Florence and Siena and did a mini-tour of the Tuscan countryside while chasing a bit of the grape.
Can’t recommend it highly enough; great people, (except for that little jerk at the café outside Siena who threatened to call the policia because my husband used his restroom without buying anything – it WAS an emergency), great food (think pizza, pig and panna cotta), great wine, great shopping (leopard skin spotted suede gloves and lambskin jackets), and great art (so many Madonnas, so little time). And, of course, we made the obligatory visit to the Accademia Gallery to view Michelangelo’s David. It was swell.
On the way home we were treated to a night at Disneyland Paris, a little lagniappe, courtesy of Air France and Mother Nature. I like to call it the unhappiest place on earth.
To really appreciate the adventure you have to start back in Florence, when our commuter flight to Paris was cancelled due to weather. (I swear, at this juncture the sun was shining.) After standing in line for a hour and a half to book a new flight, we were told, “the line you need is ‘over there.’” God forgive us, but before we could stop ourselves, we exercised our prerogative to be ugly Americans and simply pushed our way to the front of the appropriate queue, cutting ahead of a group of Japanese schoolgirls. Since they didn’t speak English, or we Japanese, we have no idea what they were saying, or to whom, as they transmitted our pictures over their cell phones and spat gibberish into to the receivers. Fortunately it did not become necessary to remind them who won WWII.
Alas, the brazen and boorish usually get their comeuppance, especially when they’re us. We got ours when we learned we would need to take a bus to Pisa, (‘maybe we’ll get to see the leaning tower,’ we thought, but you just know we did not), fly from Pisa to Paris, overnight, and then on to Los Angeles the next morning. Might even squeeze in a nice dinner in the City of Lights. What could be bad? Plenty.
Our flight left Pisa more than two hours late so we didn’t even get to Paris until around midnight. Once there we were hustled aboard a bus with a veritable United Nations of about 50 other stranded travelers, all bound for the Hotel Cheyenne at Disneyland Paris, an hour’s drive away. (If anybody knew why we were being exiled to the fringes, they weren’t saying.) Then we sit on bus for an hour and a half waiting for “six Nigerians,” in route from London to Lagos, to obtain visas, since their stay in France will now exceed the non-visa window of 12 hours. A young Brazilian woman two rows behind us begins to have an anxiety attack, flailing and wailing in a language we likely wouldn’t have been able to understand even if we had known what it was. Revolution is thick in the air. An inebriated Scotsman asserts loudly that he knows how to drive a bus if anyone knows how to hot wire it. Several brave souls venture out to confront and demand answers from the Air France employees assigned to monitor the bus. Said employees quietly slip into the terminal and lock the doors. I’m not making any of this up.
The Nigerians finally arrive, tired, chagrined and wearing dripping wet dashikis. (Did I mention it was raining?) Then we have to wait for the bus driver. Then, finally, we leave.
The Hotel Cheyenne, a western movie set of a ghost town, was surely designed by Walt himself in league with Rod Serling and Franz Kafka. It is 2:30 AM by the time we arrive, and our driver tells us another bus will pick those of us with morning flights up at 6:30 AM and transport us back to the airport. Great.
The desk clerks, Eastern European youths wearing name tags that style them as “Francoise” and “Jacques,” (for sure), are duded up like zombie square dancers. Their English is poor. Our French is worse. The “Chuck Wagon” is closed. The lodgings are two story “bunkhouses” with names like “The Wyatt Earp,” “The Jail,” “The OK Corral,” and “The Gallows.” Our bunkhouse, “The Calamity Jane,” is at the very end of a really long, really dark, really muddy, street. (I did mention it was raining, didn’t I?) The shuttle, needless to say, is not running this late at night so we must walk. There is no elevator, no soft drink or water vending machines, no en suite mini-bar. Our room has bunk beds, a wagon wheel ‘chandelier,’ and a single boot shaped table lamp. (The entire space is approximately the size of the box the boot came in.) The sole amenities in the bathroom are a single roll of toilet tissue and a bar of soap with Mickey Mouse embossed on the side. We decide to save it as a souvenir of the occasion.
Three hours later our automated wake up call comes. I kid you not, in flawless English, “Good morning buckaroos! Do you know what time it is? It’s time to rise and shine!”
It’s time to leave France. Only problem is Air France has canceled the 6:30 AM bus. Not that anyone bothers to tell us. When one of our group goes to the desk and inquires why our bus is late, “Francoise” explains that we have two choices, either take a cab to the airport, at a cost of something like 90 Euros, or wait until 8:00 for a EuroDisney bus. Since our flight isn’t until 10, and there’s a half hour wait for a cab anyway, we opt for the latter. (At least this way we’re able to avail ourselves of our “complimentary breakfast” in the “Chuck Wagon,” were we discover there is indeed bad food in France.)
But that’s another story, and to tell you about the EuroDisney bus, filled with developmentally disabled young adults who sang “Happy Birthday” to someone all the way to Charles DeGaulle would just be wrong. But it probably wouldn’t be wrong to mention that the bus made stops at all the other Disneyland Hotels before heading for the airport and then encountered a massive, rush hour traffic jam on the way. Fortunately our driver, (the same one we later figured out charged us double what our fare should’ve been), turned out to be very adroit at driving on the shoulder, cutting through petrol station lots, and squeezing the enormous vehicle through narrow alleys clearly designed for foot traffic.
We made our flight with just moments to spare. And then something very wonderful happened. We discovered that we had an empty seat between us for the flight home. Maybe there is a God after all.
We look forward to going to Italy again soon, but not on Air France.
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