Getting on a flight to Paris that ends up landing in Belgium isn’t exactly what I’d call a promising start to a trip.

Getting on a flight to Paris that ends up landing in Belgium isn’t exactly what I’d call a promising start to a trip.

Little did Lauren and I know that the 17 hours of traveling it took to get to Paris was nothing in comparison to the adventure that awaited us when we tried to get home. 

We were supposed to fly out of Beauvais on Tuesday night, but started to worry when Kolin’s afternoon flight was cancelled due to snow in Dublin. We hoped for the best (and that Dublin might have purchased another snow plow in the few days we’d been in France) and headed to the metro stop where the Ryanair shuttle left for Beauvais airport. 

Our flight was in fact cancelled, which is shocking because of the dependability and quality of service Ryanair is renowned for. We headed back to our hostel to stay there another night, although unfortunately the only room that still had openings seemed to lack any kind of heating unit.

The next morning, we were up at 6:00am to catch our 8:30am bus to London, the best option that over three hours of frantic searching on the Internet and strategizing with Joe and our parents had produced. We ordered croissants at a bakery on our way to the Metro station and the woman behind the counter glared at us, presumably for ordering in English, and then literally threw the croissants at us over the counter. I just can’t understand why the French are stereotyped as snobby…

We arrived at the bus station just after 8:00am but unfortunately the line to check in didn’t seem to be moving, and as 8:30 got closer and closer, we begged the two remaining people in front of us to let us go ahead of them. The English girl agreed, and the French man in front of her nodded his consent, and then proceeded to step in front of his when the window opened up. If I’d still had my croissant I would have thrown it at him.

We finally checked in and got our boarding pass for the bus, then sprinted to the bus with only a few minutes to spare. The eight-hour bus ride went fairly quickly, despite my battery-dead Ipod and inability to fall asleep on any kind of transportation. 

Once our bus arrived in London, we made our way to the Notre Dame Center, stopping to take pictures of Buckingham Palace along the way (not exactly something I expected to see on my trip to France). The directors of the Notre Dame Center were expecting us, thanks to Joe, and gave us pound sterling to get dinner. 

While we were there, we also crashed a reception for the ND kids stuck in London. The people we knew from the London program were a little confused to see us there, but they’d had enough of their own crazy travel experiences that nothing would have fazed them at that point. I debated trying to convince someone that I’d actually been in London all semester. 

Lauren and I took a taxi to the train station, where we waited for our 7:10 train to Holyhead, which, I’d found out only moments before we left the Notre Dame Center, is actually in Wales. We arrived at the train station only to find out that the earlier train to Holyhead was delayed. We immediately sent a panicked text to Joe, probably around the 43^rd panicked text we’d sent to him that day. Luckily, however, we boarded our train and it left right on time. 

“Train left!” I texted Joe.

Seconds later, Joe was on the phone. “Please tell me you’re on the train that left…” In my three months in Dublin I still hadn’t quite adjusted to my Irish phone and tried to use words sparingly. 

Our train landed in Holyhead just before midnight, so we sat around the ferry station before boarding the boat around 1:00am. I was expected a smallish vessel similar to the one we took to Inis Oirr, but the Ulysses was more like a cruise ship, complete with its own movie theatre, restaurant and bar (the Leopold Bloom).

Our ferry left Holyhead at 2:40am, and Lauren and I mostly slept during the three-hour tour. Joe was there to meet us when we arrived at the Dublin port just after 6:00, and we were so glad to see him and to be back in Dublin that even our abrasive cab driver who took us to the O’Connell House (who called us brats and told me I was a bum for being an English major) didn’t get to us.

We met the rest of the ND students on the bus heading to the airport. I wish I could say our adventure ended there, but our flight to O’Hare was delayed by three hours and for awhile seemed like it might not leave at all. I’d joked to Lauren that her seat would definitely be late (39A), to which she responded that meant the whole plane would be late. Touché. 

So we sat on the plane as snow swirled outside the window, praying for it to take off as workers repeatedly de-iced the wings, and finally it did. I think the worst moment of the whole long journey came during our descent into Chicago, when the pilot actually reversed direction and went back up into the clouds. We finally landed, thank goodness, but he never did explain what had happened (“O’Hare?! Funny, someone told me Midway. Whoops.”)

I’d complained before about the long layover that I had in Chicago, but that layover was my saving grace since our plane arrived so late into Chicago. I waited anxiously for my luggage before taking off running, shouting goodbyes as I sprinted. I threw my bags at the American Airlines worker and stood in the slowest-moving security line I’d ever seen before making it to the gate for my flight home to San Diego. Which, of course, was delayed. 

It took forty-nine hours, five countries, and five modes of transportation, but I finally made it home. Thanks to the hard work of everyone at the O’Connell house, the new Jodi Picoult book and a whole lot of caffeine, I had survived this crazy adventure and lived to tell the tale. If anyone asks me to go to Paris anytime soon, and by soon I mean as in the next fifty years, I think I’m going to have to pass…