HEADING HOME

 This is the last I am going to write about this trip. On Sept. 10th we took a taxi to Gare Du Nord, the same train station where we had arrived on the Eurostar. Bear in mind that the French, especially Parisians, are not particularly helpful to travelers but with clever guesswork we did manage to buy tickets to the Charles de Gaulle Airport. I am leaving out many details about this trip to the airport but it did involve a lot of clever guesswork on our part in order to find the correct train. The return flight to the U.S. was fairly good except that the woman next to me, although nice, was rather large and her hip and buttocks lapped over into my space...sort of like being a Siamese twin.

Upon arriving in Dallas I realized that I had "community acquired pneumonia" and that was causing me to be absolutely miserable. We landed about 30 minutes late which caused all sorts of delays along the route. My 5:30 p.m. flight was cancelled and I was booked to leave at 10:30 so I spent that time being wheeled around by a very pleasant gentleman from India. There are phases of this period that I don't remember because I was so upset and ill and had been awake for more than eighteen hours. My helper tried to find me a flight that would leave before 10:30 so our wanderings through the airport were much like the scene in the movie "Airport" where the plane was announced as arriving at Gate 12, then 13, then 14 and so on with all the people inside rushing from one to the other. My kind Indian helper had to leave so a man from the Islands (which ones, I don't know) took over pushing me around. I met some ladies from San Antonio who were in the same predicament as I and they helped me stay awake. 

My sweet husband, who had made several aborted attempts to get to the airport in San Antonio, met me at the gate and how overjoyed I was to see him! He had planned several things to welcome me one of which was a four-pack of champagne in our car cooler. While jabbering away, I drank two and slept the rest of the way home. He also had a dozen beautiful red roses waiting for me at home which was 3:00 a.m.! What a guy!

Turned out I did have pneumonia but it wasn't as bad as the regular kind. All in all it was a very entertaining and interesting trip and I learned a lot. The best part was visiting with my daughter and her husband.



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