It's Me, Sara Louise

You know how I was in England this past week (Devon and Essex to be precise), and Paris before that, and Dublin before that? Well before I tell you about our latest trip, and the weekend in Paris, and finish up my Dublin Days tale, I’m going to tell you about my journey home because we finally arrived back in The LPV about 54 hours late last night(that’s totally a guesstimate). It was a calamity and I need to vent. Thank you for listening. 

“What day do you want to come back?”

That was Mr. London asking about our trip to Devon (To answer the question that I’m sure you are all thinking… we were going to Devon because Mr. London was taking part in a charity rugby event and he wanted The Husband to participate. Plus that’s where Mr. London’s family lives and I’m pretty sure that he wanted to take his new boyfriend home to meet them.)

“How about Tuesday morning so we can spend a day in London before flying home.” 

And that was me making a mistake. 

If only I had said Monday. We would have been fine if I had said Monday. Easy peasy pudding pie if I had said Monday. We would have flown home to France before the strike got out of hand. But no, I thought we should have an extra day in London after our long weekend in Devon. And we did, and then at the end of that day, we got a message saying that our 7:30 Tuesday morning flight was cancelled, and since the next available flight wasn’t until Wednesday evening, we got an extra, extra day. 

We arrived at Gatwick late Wednesday afternoon and at 7PM when we walked up to our gate in time for boarding, we were told that our flight had been cancelled. But get this… this flight wasn’t cancelled due to the strike in France, no no no, that would be too normal for me and my crowd… our flight was cancelled because they didn’t have enough cabin crew for the plane. AND THEY ONLY REALIZED THAT TWENTY MINUTES BEFORE TAKE OFF??!! 

After waiting in a line for over two hours, we found out that 1. there wasn’t another available flight to Nice until the following Tuesday, 2. we could however fly to Lyon in the morning, 3. but the flight to Lyon was leaving from Heathrow not Gatwick, 4. all of the hotels at Heathrow they could put us up in were already fully booked, 5. we could stay at a hotel at Gatwick but the only one with rooms left was a fifteen minute taxi ride away and the coach to Heathrow that we would have to take was leaving from Gatwick at 3:50AM, 6. a coach would drive us from Lyon airport to Nice airport.

Taking all of those fun facts on board we decided to 1. take the flight to Lyon, 2. forgo the roach motel and butt crack of dawn departure and instead take a taxi to my friend Sarah’s house (you may remember Sarah from this post, or this one, or maybe this one), 3. skip the Lyon to Nice coach which you know would take F O R E V E R and be 100% pure T O R T U RE  and rent a car instead.

Our taxi to Heathrow picked us up at 6AM and miraculously, our 8:30AM flight to Lyon actually took off. By a little after noon we were back in France, in a rental car driving four hours southeast to Nice airport. And after picking up Mr. London’s car in the parking lot, driving to Toulon to pick up our car, and rescuing Fifty from camp, we drove into Le Petit Village at 9PM. Bedtime.

So here’s the funny thing about all of this… tomorrow morning, The Husband and I are driving back up to Lyon to spend the weekend with our London emergency crash pad hosts, Sarah and her husband, for a mini-break that was planned weeks ago. How’s that for a nutty coincidence.

Please bear with me as I go radio silent for awhile. This is not a test.