France, part 1

A couple of years ago I offered my daughters a trip of their choice, a chance to make some magical memories together. They choose Greece but because of wedding timing and other factors, my youngest daughter didn’t go and I wound up taking only my oldest daughter. But then Peachie, after a very hectic year of moving to Florida, starting a new job, and getting married, was finally able to take some time off and and asked if we could go to France.


I said yes and she went to work making plane reservations in a rather complicated plan of meeting up in Boston, then a short flight to New York City and then an afternoon flight to Paris. For my part, I had to make arrangements to get to Boston which is not particularly easy from my home, but I found someone willing to take the 31/2 hour drive and I thought we were set. But then she returned from her honeymoon to find that she had to attend a mandatory training for her job the week we had planned to go. She quickly rearranged flights for a week later (which ridiculously cost hundreds of dollars to make the change) but which would now require me to get to Boston by 6:30 am. Impossible.


I decided that it would be easier for me to skip the Boston leg and just meet Peachie in NY and take the plane from there. Fortunately I mentioned this to someone before the trip and they said that I should contact the airline to say I would not be on the first leg. So I texted to let them know and got this response:






What ??? I’m calling to let them know that they can sell that leg of my flight that I already paid for and they want to charge me an additional $645 !!!! That was more than I paid for my entire round trip flight to Paris!


Well, Peachie got on the phone with them and gave them an almost** true, sad sob story about me needing to visit my brother-in-law being at a NYC hospital, fighting pancreatic cancer and they waived the fee.

And so after much anxiety about all the connections, coordination and reservation changes, Peachie flew from Florida to Boston to NYC and I took a train and a taxi to JFK and we met up in time to have a quick lunch before boarding the 7 1/2 hour flight to Paris.




**True that my brother-in-law was in a NYC hospital with pancreatic cancer. But it had been a couple of months before and he was already home recuperating. Ya gotta do what you gotta do.