We Made It

We had a completely uneventful trip (plane on time, no hassles) except for a couple of things. First, my mom, with the bionic knee, set off the alarms at security and so had to undergo a complete personalized screening. When we arrived in Paris, the French family staying in our house had arranged for a shuttle to meet us at the airport. It was about 30 minutes late, and when it showed up, the driver was a guy who had three cell phones (one with an earpiece and two freestanding) and seemed to talk on all three at once. After picking us up, he went to another terminal to pick up another passenger, only to be confronted by machine-gun toting army officers, who had apparently evacuated the terminal because of a bomb threat ("I don't think so," Mr. Three-Cell advised us). So he parks the van and wanders off for 20 minutes, after which he returned, drove to another terminal, got into an argument with a security officer there, and finally, finally drove us to our apartment, talking on one one or more cell phones the whole time (and listening, I should add, to a French station playing exclusively American country music; very surreal). After getting to the airport at 11 am, we finally made it home by 1:45, even though the drive was 20 minutes.

Then another bizarre thing happened. Three of us (me, Suzie, and Will) got on the elevator and pushed the button for the 5th floor, where the apartment is located. The elevator door opened up on the opposite side into a hallway that was pitch dark. So we went back down to the first floor. But there, the elevator also opened on the other side, and while we could hear the other two of our party (my mom and Andrew), we couldn't see them. It was like an elevator out of the Twilight Zone, dispatching people to a netherworld where only their voices could be heard. We finally noticed that there were two buttons for "1" (each on the appropriate side) and finally all got together again, but it took a lot longer than it should have.

Our apartment is in a beautiful area. We had a snack and are about to go out exploring.