Our 4 am wake-up felt mighty early, but getting out of the hotel was easy as everything was basically packed the night before. The train station was right outside the the hotel, so not too far to drag the luggage. But once at the airport (Charles De Gaulle) we had to walk the length of terminal 2 to find our check in for British Air's flight to London. We were there at 5 am and the line was out the door. grrr...
Once we got to the front of the line, they didn't know how to handle my scooter. Decision was finally made to check the scooter through to Chicago and use a wheelchair. Oh and we still had to pay for our bags, but they checked our carry on luggage for free. Go figure, but it was nice to not have to humph the backpacks.
Plane was on time taking off and landing and we immediately learned how huge Heathrow Airport is. We arrived at terminal 5 and our next flight was out of terminal 3. Not abnormal for a large airport. However, this required taking a bus for what seemed like a 10 mile trip, mostly in circles, and much of it underground. We were glad that the scooter was checked through as it would have been really difficult to get the scooter on the bus.
But the next problem got us a little worried about handicapped help. Someone had gotten us to the bus in terminal 5, but in terminal 3, there was a little assistance booth and a couple of chairs. Everyone else disappeared up an escalator. There was a non-speaking person manning this booth who, through gestures, got us to show him our next boarding pass. He could clearly hear and understand us, just couldn't speak. I thought that was very cool and he was clearly competent as he pulled up screens on his computer and requested a wheelchair. The next part was pretty humorous though. After about 10 minutes, a young lady wheeling an empty chair wandered slowly into our hallway and asked for a Susan somebody. She was clearly not in a hurry. As there was no one else sitting with us, she eventually slowly ambled back the way she came. A couple of minutes later, the handicapped assistant wrote a note on a scrap paper and showed it to me. It said: "I changed her assignment." Sure enough, a few minutes later, the young lady re-appeared, this time with my name on her mini-ipad. So off we went.
After 5 or 10 minutes of negotiating long empty hall ways and duty-free shops, we were finally ushered into a "wheel-chair assistance waiting room. This room was bustling with about 50 seats and a booth up front which had several people buzzing about it. This was a special waiting room for handicapped travelers whose plane had not yet been assigned a gate. Since our flight didn't leave until 12:15 and it was now about 8:30, we had hours to spend here, which would have been ok, except for the constant state of chaos.
The idea was a very clever one. Bringing all people needing assistance into one common space where a manager could assign assistants to move people at the appropriate times. They even had special carts that carried 3 wheelchair people in a single file row at one time. But the place was noisy, with the manager calling out flights that had just posted their gates and names of people for whom they were responsible for transporting to those gates. And people were constantly at the manager's desk asking if their flight had been called. And of course, the comings and goings of people with limited mobility. I think I have a solution to all of this chaos. (I had 3 hours to think about it.) If they used a system of those handheld monitors that restaurants hand you - you know, the ones that buzz when it's your turn - people would feel comfortable that someone knew they were waiting. The manager wouldn't have to shout across a full room to try to get people to come back to the main desk when their flight had been assigned a gate. Anyway, it was not a restful waiting space, especially for 2 cranky old people who had been up since 4 am.
Finally, we took the 3-passenger wheelchair to our gate - having to pass once more through passport and security. Luckily, the assistant has permission to go to the head of the line in both cases, saving a lot of time. The rest went smoothly as we arrived just as they were starting to load our plane.
Dave bought bulkhead seats for us with miles, but the cost is in narrower seats due to having the tray tables built into the seats. I was pretty squished for the whole trip. But the extra leg room was great to have. We also lucked out as the 3rd person in our row found another seat leaving us a free seat.
My favorite part of the 9 hour uneventful flight was watching En Canto. Now I know what my grandchildren are always singing about. A little sleep, a little TV watching, and very little needlework along with 2 meals and a snack got us to Chicago on time, arriving around 3.
My wheelchair assistant met us at the plane and got us through passport control and to luggage. That was again a wonderful help as the lines for passport control were doubled in two long hallways and then snaked through the very large hall with a dozen passport control booths. We were able to skip all the lines and be first to a just-opening booth.
But then it took an hour to recover the scooter. It never appeared at the oversized luggage, so we went to the luggage assistance area where they tracked it down. Bathrooms tracked down, car picked up we left the airport at 6 pm and were home without incidence by 7:30.
Christie was already at our house with Sasha and Sonna and had pasta and salad ready for us when we got home. We were in bed by 9 after lots of grandchildren hugs.
