Well, this was some day, that's for sure.
We all got up around 7 this morning, and apparently none of us slept much at all during the night. And it rained all night, too. We told Andrew, well, at least you don't have to take 3 flights today. And he said, Well, at least you all can veg in your airplane seats. Who knows who had it worse!!
So, Andrew dropped us off at the airport at 8 (it was drizzling). We checked in our bags (they could only check them to New York unfortunately) and then we went to get a little croissant and juice for breakfast. We figured there'd be other places to get more to eat once we went past security. After going through security, we discovered that there was NOTHING available to us except the same little type of cafe like where we had gotten our croissant and juice. It was frustrating because we could see all kinds of shops on the other side of the glass wall. I tried to figure out how to get to them, and eventually found a way to get over there, but when I tried to buy something, they wanted a boarding pass and when they saw it said Air France, they said they couldn't sell me anything. So, the good stuff was on the Swiss side of the airport, and a little section was allotted to the French side of the airport. Oh well, finally our plane came and we were off.
At every airport, it seemed we were always dropped off at a gate that was on the opposite side of where we needed to be for our next flight. We finally found our gate (62) at Paris's airport and were going to look for a place to relax and use the computer and get something to eat, when we realized that all the people at gate 61 were actually from gate 62 and that our plane was already boarding!!! An hour before the plane was due to take off! So we quickly joined ALL the people in line (and there were a LOT of people). I asked the person in line in front of us about the reason why we were boarding already, and she said it was because the plane was a double-decker. Wow, turns out we were going to be flying one of the new Airbus 380 planes! It took about an hour to board all those people - the plane holds about 534 passengers. We were on the lower level, but we had good seats behind a wall, which meant we had lots of leg room.
When the plane took off, we could watch the take off on a video screen as if we were sitting on top of the plane. It was very interesting! For dinner we were served an excellent meal with any beverage you wanted and we opted for champagne and beer.
There were lots of movies to choose from to watch, and the good part was that each seat had their OWN movie - which meant that you could pause the movie or even shut the video off and the movie you were on would start right up again where you left off. There was lots of music and games to choose from also. There was definitely plenty to keep you occupied on this plane.
But once we landed in New York, things took a downhill turn. Not at first because at least they had one thing set up well. They had people handing out "quick connect" cards to those people who had connecting flights. So, that put us in a good line that wasn't snaking around 8 or 9 times. We were able to get through customs quickly enough and then we had to get our luggage and recheck it. That went fine, too, but at the counter where we checked our bags on to San Antonio, they said they couldn't issue us the boarding passes we needed for our next flight. That we needed to go to Terminal 3 (we were in Terminal 2). So,we walk out the door, thinking Terminal 3 is fairly close but it turned out being a long walk out in the cold weather. We get to the new terminal and inside it was total chaos. Unbelievably long lines to the check-in counters, and the line to go through security wasn't a line, but just a mass of people. We tried checking in at a kiosk but that didn't work because it said we needed to see an agent due to a flight change. We were just incredulous that we were going to have to stand in those incredibly long lines just to get a boarding pass. While Guillermo held a place in line, I went searching for someone who could help us. And I finally found a sympathetic Delta employee who was walking around - he took our passports and told us to stay right where we were and he went and got us our boarding passes. Then we prepared to get among the mass of people trying to go through security.
But the same employee who helped us all of a sudden announced out loud that there was another place where people can go through security and whoever wanted to could follow him. So we decided to follow him, which turned out to be a lot of work also, because he took us OUTSIDE and made us walk a LONG way in the cold to a different place for security. And here we were, so tired and hungry - it was unbelievable what we were having to go through. We finally get to security and that went quickly enough so at least that was good. Then once past security, we were told that our flight would be going out of gate 12 in Terminal 3, so that was good. We get to gate 12 and they tell us that no, the flight to San Antonio is going to leave out of gate 23 - BACK IN TERMINAL 2!!!!
We told the people what we had been through already and asked them to get us a cart to take us back to Terminal 2, which they were glad to do. We waited a little while for that cart, but once on it, we just couldn't believe how far it was back to Terminal 2. We were glad we were on that cart! All the gates around gate 23 were just packed with people - the whole area looked like it was Christmas Eve or something. We got a little something to eat, then parked ourselves at one of the tables that had ipads and used the internet there for a little while.
Our plane was scheduled to leave an hour or so later than its original take off time so we just waited and waited. The last horrible thing was the boarding process. They were boarding 4 different flights through gate 23 at the same time. It was a mess. Then, once we get through, we had to walk a long gang-walk type thing (outside, but at least it was covered all around, but still, it was COLD!) It was a long walk to our plane but we finally get on, the plane ride is quite bumpy, but we get to San Antonio at the time we had been scheduled to arrive anyway. We call our hotel for a pick-up, we get our luggage and then we're finally, blissfully, in a nice comfortable bed and settled in for the evening!
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