A Crazy 48 Hours

Wednesday was my last day in Paris and started off with a bang that didn't end until I arrived home 48 hours later. Bear with me, this will take a while.

Woke up Wednesday morning, took a shower, got dressed, went shopping with my brother. He bought this really nice shirt that we dropped off back at the apartment before heading out to complete our souvenir shopping. As we were walking to the Metro stop my brother looks at me and says, "no joke, our car is gone." The night before, my parents, our friend Caroline and my brother parked the car in a no parking spot and it got towed. I didn't know this at the time, I thought Brian had just forgotten where the car was parked. So, parents and Caroline come out to verify the car is gone, then Brian and I say we got to finish our shopping we'll see you later. Four police stations later they finally track down the car in time for Caroline to give us a ride to CDG. On our two hour drive to CDG from Paris in the worst traffic of my life i hear a little beep coming from my mom's phone. She had received a text message from Aer-Lingus, the Irish airline we were flying into Dublin from Paris and flying from Dublin to SFO in the morning saying "We're sorry your flight tonight has been cancelled." Which meant that we couldn't make it to Dublin in time to catch our flight home and meant we would be stuck in Europe for at least an extra day but probably two more because we didn't find out about the whole Dublin airport radar failure until very late in the game causing any open flights to fill right up. Well I wasn't having any of that, I wanted to go home and was determined to catch our flight out of Dublin the next morning, so I started looking at Travelocity and other sites trying to get into Dublin before our 9:40 flight the next morning. British Airways had a 10:00 PM flight out of CDG to London Heathrow and a flight arriving into Dublin from London at 8:10 AM the following morning. Unfortunately after booking the flight I realized that the early morning flight was out of London City airport not Heathrow. Which meant we had to get a 100 Pound (app. $200) cab ride at 4 in the morning to the complete opposite side of London after staying up for the four hours after arriving in Heathrow. Cool part was driving by Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, the London Eye, the Tower of London, and Tower Bridge all lit up and beautiful at 4:30 in the morning. So we had the first flight out of London City airport in the morning, the plane was already there, no way for it to be delayed or late right. Of course not. There was a "catering Mixup" causing the flight to leave over half an hour late and causing our window in Dublin to shrink to 45 minutes from an hour and a half. We landed in Dublin, I literally sprinted through the airport, was able to talk a customs official into letting my family skip the line for passport control and customs, and then sprinted past baggage claim leaving my bags to try to check us in before check in closed. Check in was closed. I ran over to a desk, got her to refer me to her supervisor, and explained the whole situation of our last 30 hours sleeping in Heathrow, buying new flight, etc. By this point my family had arrived with our bags and we were able to check in and get on the plane! We got in the plane with 20 minutes to spare and arrived at SFO 10 hours later. Unfortunately no one wanted to pick us up so we had to catch BART back to Castro Valley and then get a ride from Alyssa to home.

The whole experience so exhausted me that I've had an 102 degree fever since we got home. And a nonstop case of explosive diarrhea. Through Saturday. But I did make it home in time.

If anybody is in contact with the Amazing Race producers please forward this story their way.