Travel Blog – Special Edition

This is a special edition travel blog dedicated to Ian and Carmel’s recent bus trip in France.

Those who have read my previous two posts will know about Ian and Carmel’s ill-fated side trip to Limoges. They left the safety of our little group and ventured off on their own.

To re-cap, Carmel had been very organised, and booked a car to be picked up at 9:00am from Quimper. They were to drive 7 hours to Limoges, spend 3 days with Ian’s cousin and then drive to Nantes, drop the car off at the airport and hop a flight to Rome with a 2 hour stopover in Paris. Simple.

Trouble began brewing, when the car company contacted Carmel the night before they were due to pick up the car and advised her that they couldn’t provide the car as booked. There ensued a frantic reorganisation of logistics. The other car hire companies were closed and options from Limoges to Nantes in 3 days time non-existent. All trains were booked out and there were no available flights.

Eventually, she managed to book a train from Quimper to Limoges and a bus from Limoges to Paris where they could pick up the second leg of the flight to Rome.

The train ride to Limoges went off without a hitch.

Unfortunately, Carmel contracted food poisoning the first day and spent the entire visit in bed. Ian had a great time catching up with two of his cousins, which was a silver lining, and Carmel being Carmel, she didn’t complain.

The day of the bus trip to Paris, Ian and Carmel turned up at the bus station in Limoges on time and relaxed, despite Carmel’s still sensitive belly. The bus trip would have them in Paris at 5:30pm. Plenty of time to catch a taxi from the Paris bus station to the airport to catch their flight to Rome at 9:15pm.

12:10 – 9 hours to flight: The bus company announces that the driver has not turned up for the trip. They have to find a replacement driver.

1:20 – 8 hours to flight: The bus finally leaves the station, one hour late. Revised ETA is 6:30pm. Still plenty of time to get to the airport after arrival in Paris. The air conditioning on the bus is broken and Ian and Carmel begin the process of slowly melting. There is also no toilet on the bus and Carmel secretly hopes that her wrung out bowels behave themselves on the long journey.

4:10 – 5 hours to flight: Driver stops for a break. He is gone for half an hour.

4:40 – 4.5 hours to flight: The bus hits peak hour traffic. Going is very slow. Carmel and Ian befriend a French passenger who is very helpful. He starts to plan the quickest way to get to the airport once they arrive.

6:00 – 3.25 hours to flight: Carmel checks Google Maps to see how bad the traffic is. Google maps shows that they are still 2 hours from Paris. She sends a message to us that she doesn’t think they’re going to make it. I check Google Maps from Bercy Seine bus station to airport, which shows travel time of 35 minutes. They’ll be pushing it, but I think they can still make it. It all depends on how long it takes to get the bags off the bus and get to a taxi.

6:30 – 2.75 hours to flight: Driver stops for another half hour break. Everyone is back on the bus and one passenger is still wandering around outside on a phone call. I am surprised Carmel and Ian didn’t drag her onto the bus.

8:00 – 1.25 hours to flight: The bus finally arrives at Bercy Seine. Ian flys off the bus and hovers at the luggage storage door under the bus. After discovering that he is standing on the wrong side of the bus, Ian runs around to the other side where the luggage is actually stored. The driver opens the luggage door and Ian grabs their bags, then turns to find a fortuitous taxi driver standing right in front of him. Their new French friend comes over to help. Ian starts negotiations, beginning with the all important words “Lump sum!” It turns out that the taxi driver isn’t a taxi driver at all, but a scammer trying to screw naïve foreigners into paying huge amounts for transfers to the airport. The French ally has an argument with him. He storms off.

Ian approaches another illegal taxi driver, this time a woman. She looks like a crack addict. The French Ally negotiates a fee of 50 euro. She agrees. He knows she is not a registered taxi driver, but she is their only hope of making their flight at this point. After photographing her licence plate, the French ally says his goodbyes and leaves. The crack addict takes Ian and Carmel to her car, a clapped out bomb with a smashed windscreen that Ian suspects may have been caused by a bullet hole. They load the luggage into the car and jump in. She takes off, drives a few kilometres and stops in the middle of the road. She demands a higher fee and wants payment upfront. Carmel hands over 65 euro. She seems satisfied and takes off like a bat out of hell. Using skills that would be envied by Michael Schumaker, she negotiates the French peak hour traffic and makes it to the airport in record time.

8:39 – 21 minutes to flight: Ian and Carmel arrive at the airport. They run to the check in counter. The staff are very helpful and check their bags in quickly. They then advise them to run. Charles de Gaulle airport is massive and it’s a very long way to the gate. Ian and Carmel start running. They fly 400 metres to the security checkpoint. The security guy points at Ian’s drink bottle and says “Drink it or leave it”. Ian skulls half a litre of water in 3 seconds and rushes through security.

They run like Usain Bolt towards the gate. Ian’s drink bottle falls out of his backpack and bounces on the floor, along with a packet of biscuits. He screams to a halt, tears back and picks up the bottle and the bikkies like Gary Ablett scooping up a Sherrin and keeps running, piffing the biscuits into a bin on the way. He briefly worries that security will see him running past a bin and throwing something in it, assume it’s a bomb and come running from all directions to rugby tackle him to the ground. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen, and they make it to the gate just as the final passengers are walking down the corridor to the plane.

They are exhausted, sweat cascading off them, and they collapse into their seats in the back row. Mission accomplished with only minutes to spare. Next stop: Rome and no more buses….ever!!!