Getting Home

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From Barcelona, we drove through snow, staying halfway between Barcelona and Bordeaux at the cheapest place we could find for which we could pay online, which was a high school/hostel, and finally fell into the embrace of our wonderful friends in Bordeaux, who had a business phone that could call anywhere in the world. I spent nearly an hour on hold with Delta (not Air France through whom we had purchased the tickets). The US/Delta ticket agent was GREAT...his brother had recently been robbed in Rome, apparently with physical issues, so he was sympathetic and he found us fares that did NOT include the $300 per ticket change fees.

The cheapest hotel (80 euros for one bed, toilets and showers down the hall) we could find was near DeGaulle airport, so far, so good, as long as we could find a gas station that took Apple Pay, which we did...BUT, we were NOT out of the woods yet.

Turns out that the hotel was the ONLY one that didn’t accept payment through Booking.com, and didn’t accept touchless pay, so we had to give up 80 of our remaining 90 euros!!! Thank goodness, the restaurant accepted touchless, and the hotel provided breakfast, and we had a free shuttle to the airport the next morning.

We arrived JFK with no money but we could use Uber to get to daughter...even that ride was eventful, since Uber uses an OLD OLD map of Queens, but fortunately, Bill caught the error in time to redirect the driver.

Our dogs were happy to see us...but they were not frantic! Larry, from trustedhousesitters.com stayed until yesterday and he is now off to new adventures and we are returning to our lives. I will probably post one more time with what we have learned from this experience.

I really do miss being on the road, and now I am settling in and getting caught up with a work project...Hope that I haven‘t been too boring...all the best, Marie

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