Traveling Home (Paris and Frankfurt)

July 18th-Day 18- City 10 and back to City 1!
Attempt number one at leaving to go home. As Abbey promised getting home was no easy task. We ventured out to the subway station at 7 am and got to the airport around 8. We didn't have the right ticket for the metro but the people in front of us got stopped so Taylor and I were able to get through with out question, that saved us about €8! We found the check in line and as all things in Paris is was crazy long. The line at security which was a standstill for 30 minutes and a lot of chaos due to sending an entire flight back through the scanners. When we finally got through we waited in the lines to find out about standby. We were offered one seat home but we didn't take it because we didn't want to split up. Looking back now I wish i would have taken it because I could have gotten home and I'm sure Taylor could have handled himself or maybe have gotten on a different one than me. Who knows?

I went back over to say I'd take the seat and the gate agent said that all standbys were closed. So I waited by the gate to make sure there were no no shows while Taylor waited at our back up flight to Chicago. We didn't get on that one either and we had to ask like four different agents to list us on the next flight. Someone needs to help France out with logical organization, maybe the Germans. We met a bunch of people who had been trying to get home for a couple days and decided the odds were not in our favor. We didn't get any of the flights and in the end, after Taylor had tried to get us set up for flights the day after and the lady being very upset and inconvenienced by helping us we decided to go to Frankfurt to try getting home from there.

We made it to the Paris train station after paying a hefty €9 metro ticket price and tried to reserve a direct train to Frankfurt. The train lady laughed at us and asked us if we were sure we wanted to travel that day. We said yes and she gave us a few switches that eventually got us to Frankfurt but we has to pay for half price tickets they didn't even check on one of the trains. The next order of business was sleep. Should we pay for a hotel or hostel if we are going to  be there less than 12 hours. We decided a shower might be nice after the long day and I'm all for sleeping at airports but beds are probably better for our health. So dad found us a cheap hotel for the night with a shuttle to the airport. ( it also had a free shuttle from the airport but it stopped running before we got to Frankfurt so free turned into Taxi). On the train we met and tried to help a man from Columbia figure out where he could sleep for the night. People always asked us, all 4 of us, questions I we look like we actually know what we are doing. All those years of acting paid off. We finally got to the hotel and turns out they had booked us at the wrong one but they were nice enough to give us the same rate and a super nice room with no questions asked.

July 19th-Day 19- Time to go home!
We got to the airport with no problem and there were no lines!  We got on the first flight to Dulles! I sat next to man in the  military who was on his way home from Afghanistan. It was really cool to talk to him and learn all that he had gone through between my movie watching and napping. At Dulles I sat at one gate while Taylor sat at the other one. I got on to a flight and left Taylor behind but he got on one about 30 minutes later headed to Colorado Springs. Home at last.