A Bad Idea???

It was with some fear and trepidation that we even started this trip.  I had gotten a mysterious text message on my phone at about 0130 saying our Air France flight to Bologna from Paris had been canceled.  After several hours of futile contact with the Booking agency (an online one), I finally gave up and felt led by G^d to launch off on our trip anyway.

So just under 12 hours later, we headed for the airport.  Our airport is small enough that parking is free, so it was no trouble getting parked, getting in, getting ticketed, and boarding our flight for Johannesburg, the hub airport for our area.  The flight between Gabs and Jo’burg has been described as “the most expensive airspace in the world.”  The flight was event less and our connection to Air France in Jo’Burg was flawless.  Our Airbus had a camera mounted high on the vertical stabilizer, and we were treated to a bird’s eye view of the takeoff, to head right back the way we had come over a piece of RSA, and then Botswana.  We were fully committed now.

We sat by a delightful Italian couple from Verona, who were now South Africans married for 56 years.  I was advised that I must drink wine with my meals, and that we would enjoy Italy.

“I just hope we can get there.” I thought.  You see I mentioned earlier that a  French Ari Traffic Controllers strike had shut down most of the traffic in France.  I marveled a bit that we were speedily heading towards that very airspace.  A 1915 takeoff got us in to Charles De Gaulle Airport  at a bit before 0600 in the same time zone.

We quickly found an Air France ticket counter, and after a30 minutes in line, we talked to a delightful agent who booked us to fly to Amsterdam and then on to Bologna that very day!  Was I amazed!

I had requested all sorts of prayer support  for this foolhardy adventure.  We were thrilled to that we would make it only about 10 hours later than planned.

We thought about trying to tour Paris quickly, but ruled it out. We were a bit tired from the night of air travel.  We ate a leisurely lunch and we slowly headed to our gate when we looked up on the status board and saw the word “annule” which didn’t sound so good to us.  Looks like we had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory after all.  The word we got from an AF agent was that all flights after 1500 had been cancelled!

After standing in line for 3 hours, we were given the good news.  A direct flight to Bologna was scheduled to depart at 2000.  That put us in 10 min earlier than the previous flight through Amsterdam would have gotten us there.  I think Brenda was disappointed that we weren’t going to get a look at the Eiffel Tower.

So now we sit hoping to board the flight.

To be continued…