So I get on the bus to the airport in Marignane, France, relieved I now have my passport lol😅 30 minutes later we pull in and the guy leaves everyone off at terminal 1 arrivals. I'm thinking, what the hay. People going to the airport are sometimes doing it to actually get on a plane...which is terminal 2 🤔 Vive la France and especially vive le sud (the South is really known for lazyness...the sun, the drinks...rosé and Pastis😂😂). Well I got out and killed my back with my killer heavy luggage. Then found a cart to put it on (yeah, I'm not that stupid lmao🤣🤣). I had to push the damn thing all the way down the airport😏 Finally getting to the inside of the airport and pushing on down to Air France, I get through all the Nazi bs (papers please!). Yes, that Nazi bs!! I get in line to check my luggage with just a half an hour left (the other half was the Nazi check). I finally get to the front of the line and lift, (if you can call it that, more like tug and pull almost tearing up they're so heavy😂), my extremely bulging suitcases up onto the weigher belt. And the Air France lady yells, "27 kilos! They're not supposed to be over 23! Next one!" I heft up the second more copious delight smh🤣🤦♀️ She further screeches twice as loud, "30 kilos!!! That'll be 200€ more!" "I'm really sorry Madame, but I don't have 200€", I sqeek out with my pleading voice. "Then I can't let you get on the plane", she retorts. "Can't I dump some stuff...please!", I start begging. "We don't have time for that. The plane's about to leave", she gruffly spits out. "Pretty please. I'll be quick, I promise", now I'm really starting to beg lol. She finally hands me two huge plastic bags and says, "Five minutes! And double the bags!" I start shoving stuff out, trying not to loose precious pictures, prefering throwing out clothes and she screeches again to throw out my Senior Yearbook, my personal care products that are worth gold to me as I don't use conventional beauty products but simple, locally made artisanal products like essential oils, aloe vera gel, vegetable oils, flower waters, solid shampoos, toothpaste, and déodorant. So this was going to make my eyes misty again sniff sniff😥 But I grudgingly threw them in the bag as quickly as I could. Then she took the sack and pulled it into the machine. Then checked in my 23 kilos plus 25 kilos bags and said that she's not normally so nice lol😂 Remember, this is France and we're speaking French as if we were both French so you need to not only speak French but feel French and understand the French, their mentality, customs, etc. Having lived 26 years in France meant that I did. I thanked her, (for only biting my head off and not chopping it off haha), and flew through to security as the plane was leaving in three minutes😳
Well well, wouldn't you know. I kept setting off the security alarm. So they had me frisked by a lady (not ready to go there yet lol😂). In the end it was my bra that had set off the alarm. No comment there🙄😝
Now I'm running down the gate path and I hear them calling my name. They were already supposed to have left oops! They'd waited for me😍 I dashed onto the plane and it flew off only 20 minutes late. Can't imagine why wink wink😜
Short flight of only 1.5 hours and we land in Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport with no other worries. No need to pick up suitcase as they were sent on to Mexico, so I just spent my time moving toward the Air France international flights gate. With three hours between flights I felt the pressure go down. This was just going to be a two bad sequence. In French we say une mauvaise suite or a bad sequence meaning sequence of events. And in France very often they comme in threes so une mauvaise séquence de trois. When this starts happening to me, I can feel it when it's finished and I can stick my head out again😝 Sometimes this also used to happen to me in Marseille when I'd leave to go get groceries on the other side of the city (and it's a biggun😉), and all hell would break loose. But I'll blog about that in my Marseille blogs later on.
So I finally found the gate to my flight to Mexico City and I got in line to show other non-Nazi papers (yeah, can't travel in Europe without the Nazi papers), but Mexico is a little more freedom minded for the moment. Could change later, who knows🤷♀️ I show the lady my forwarding ticket (you can rent that by the way). As I'm American by nationality but have a French permanent residency instead of showing them a return flight ticket which I couldn't afford, I just showed her my onward ticket to the U.S. (because although Mexico classes itself as green, France classes most of the world as orange). Basically just to piss off the French and prevent them from going to certain countries from which they might not wish to return. Most of them just left from other European countries as they were prohibited by daddy government to go to Mexico😏 Then after this lady I had to tackle French security. Well I got a really cute guy, so I knew what to do lol. He asked to see my passport which I showed him. Then looking at me amazed like. He asked me however did I get into France without having my passport stamped. I gave him a flirtatious laugh (yeah, even at my old age I can still bat my turquoise blues🤣), and asked him how did he think I did it. How in the world could I possibly have got into France without that stamp? Well, he was stumped and scratching his head, when I pulled out my Permanent Residency card. He laughed then winked me on through😉
Finally got on that plane and although a 14 hour flight, I was isle seat with nobody in the middle and a nice girl from India in the window seat. The food was ok for airplane grub, the flight attendants were almost all males...so very nice as French female attendants aren't always so nice and helpful désolée les filles😝 I watched three movies of which Casablanca, Singing in the Rain, and Bringing Up Baby so some great oldies🤩 My seating partner slept almost all the way with a clever ruse of pulling the blqnket up over her head and face so that she could...I'm going to spell the word slowly so as not to shock anyone...
B-R-E-A-T-H-E! People don't seem to remember the importance of this word. Your organs and life depend on this being adequate😏 So I ended up doing the same. And as I looked around the plane, we were far from being alone.
One great flight later, we flew into Mexico City with a smooth landing. Had to grab my luggage and hit security...not literally lol. The security lady was super nice and gave me my 180 day tourist visa. Then I went to find my luggage. So looking around to find my two monsters and what do I see, but my clear big baggy with my believed to be thrown away stuff!😍 I couldn't believe my eyes! She must've checked it on as crew member baggage! All of a sudden, I saw the rainbow at the end of a storm. Now to get ahold of that Brit guy I thought I'd be travelling with...
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