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I really meant to post from Paris and when I got back, but in the end I was too tired and jet lagged to bother until now…

Paris was great… Lots of walking, as we went from our hotel to the Louvre, then to Notre Dame, then down the Seine river to the Eiffel Tower and then up to the Arc de Triomphe… Seems that someone told me that it was a nice walk, which it was, but it must have been about 3 or 4 miles… We had a great dinner in a bistro down an alley, and everything I had been told about food in Paris was right… After we got to the Arc de Triomphe, I really didn’t feel like walking back to the hotel, so we caught a cab back… Even though the air conditioner in the room pretty much didn’t work, it was pretty nice outside, so I just opened the windows and went to sleep… I had multiple alarms set for the morning, since I really didn’t want to miss my flight out… Our arranged driver picked me up right on time at 7 am, and off to the airport…

Checking in at the airport was pretty easy, although I got hosed again by Air France and had to check my carry on bag (which I had been carrying on the whole time…) which cost me 100 euros… Pretty much the last time that I will be flying Air France if I can help it… But I got to the gate, and after a few hours waiting, I finally got on the plane to home… One nice thing was that a stewardess asked if I wanted to change seats so that a newly engaged couple could sit together, and I got one of the bulkhead seats that I could stretch out in… so at least I wasn’t cramped on the way over… We left late (of course…) and got to JFK late (of course…) but fortunately I got a pass to go to the front of the customs line since I had a connecting flight inside of two hours… But then I had to pick up all the checked through luggage, put it on a cart, walk it outside to another terminal, and then check it back in… Fortunately, the a girl at the Delta terminal helped me bypass the line and get my boarding pass… Then off to the gate to wait… in the worst airport I have ever flown out of in the US… One would think that JFK would be at least a decent airport… nope… Crowded, dirty, unorganized, and whatever else negative you can think of… I really have to remember not to fly out of JFK anymore… But I did get on the flight to BWI (which left late… of course… we spent forever changing runways and waiting… but then it was JFK…) and I ended up getting into BWI with enough time to make the flight to Lancaster… The girl at the Cape Air counter was very nice, and even offered to call my bags through so I didn’t have to go outside security to get them and do the whole check through thing again… Then a short wait, and a nice flight to Lancaster… Of course some of the bags didn’t make it, but by then I really didn’t expect them to… and I didn’t really care… They called the next day that they were at the Lancaster airport, so I just had to run up and pick them up…

All in all it was a great trip… Long, hot, and tiring, but the US got the team gold, and I got to see a bunch of new places… but no more traveling for a while…