Stuck in Paris

January 13th What to do, what to do, with only 13 hours to kill? Well the logical solution would be to go into the city and spend the day, BUT when you have 70 kilos of luggage to haul around, it is not the option that most people opt for. There is no where to store luggage at airports like there is at train stations. No one leaves bombs in their luggage at a train station. We spent 4 1/2 hours at De Gaulle reading, writing, and now we are official tour guides for every bathroom, restaurant, and place to smoke in this airport. We took the Air France bus to Orly for 16 Euro each. Very convenient. Orly is much larger than we expected and you can smoke inside, an added plus when you are ready to unravel your sweater for entertainment. 7:20 PM time to go through Passport Control and Security. Passport Control is speedy, no line. Why is there a man blocking our way to security? Unusually friendly Frenchman -Are you going to Budapest? Distraught wannabe travelers - Yes, we are. Frenchman turning ugly before us - You have to wait then. Beleaguered really wannabe travelers - Feeling like little children sent to the principal's office we drag ourselves for another sit down of waiting. This is someone else's nightmare that we have traveled into. We will now live permanently at the airport and never see home again.

Forty minutes later, we are allowed to go through security. Technically, our plane left empty 30 minutes ago. Fortunately, the crew was astute enough to realize that no one had boarded yet and waited for all of us.

Two hours later, we arrived in Budapest. Hooray! We are home.

11:00 pm, we finally walk into the door of home. We have no water. The house sitter had to turn it off since it was leaking into the downstairs neighbor's bathroom and his ceiling was going to cave in. For the next three days, we had a plumber here.

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