Travel to Florence

We arrived in Charles De Gaule (CDG), Paris, Sunday morning. Flew in on an A330, with the 2×3×2 seat layout that I like; Corey and I sit by ourselves on port or starboard, I usually take the aisle. Personal DVD players, dinner, snooze, breakfast, and you're there. I wanted to try a new airport instead of flying through Schiphol all the time. Paris sounded glamorous, romantic, exciting. The city might be, but the airport ain't. What a zoo! Tons of people, construction, and just seemed like poor organization. We had to walk clear across I think two very long terminals.

CDG still used the old "big-butt" monitors; they look really ancient these days in comparison to the elongated (vertically mounted) flat screens you see just about everywhere else (yes, even at our dippy little GSP). Out of a bank of about 10 monitors listing flights the one on which our flight to FLR should have appeared was burnt out. So either wait for the flights to scroll off to the monitor above, or keep walking. We walked just a bit further to find out we had to walk back to find our gate. Usually once you go through security you should then enter a concourse with flight gates, with coffee shops, restrooms, etc. interspersed throughout. Except here at CDG. We were routed to this cowpen called a gate. Standing room only, sweating buckets. Slight delay, then on to a bus which took us clear across the airport, back from whence we came. Turns out they had to change planes, so the plane we ended up wasn't at the gate we had walked to. Needless to say we both passed out and slept through the snack they handed out on this last leg of the flight.

Then it was on to a city bus from the airport to the train station (Stazione di Santa Maria Novella), from where we walked to our hotel. I picked a conference hotel with a price in the middle of the range of hotels available. It ain't cheap, but it's not worth the price we're paying for the room. Really thin walls (loud plumbing), hot (no A/C), no view out the window, and the air outside smells like sewer. They've dug up the street two streets down so maybe that's what we're smelling. On the one hand you can't sleep with the window closed, but on the other if you open it, you have to put up with the stench. Oh well, I guess by now we're getting used to offensive smells on this journey: stinky rental car and stinky hotel room. It's Thursday now (catching up to the blog using Corey's machine; I brought my PC laptop here which isn't as pleasant to use for blog writing), so we've only got two more nights of the stink and then we're off back to GSP.