Travels with Spot: Paris to Zürich

By Parker G Emerson

Join the author in the first in a series of "Travels with Spot" adventures. Part travelogue and part personal reflections, "Paris to Zurich" takes the reader along as a traveling companion on a Viking River Cruise "Paris to the Swiss Alps" in Spring 2019. Sit back. Relax. Enjoy the sights, cities, and serenity of the trip. There will be more adventures to come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 4, 2024
• ISBN: 9798889608387

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Travels with Spot

Paris to ZA 1/4 rich

Parker G. Emerson

Copyright © 2023 Parker G. Emerson

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2023

ISBN 979-8-88960-815-8 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-88960-838-7 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

April 2–3

Thursday, April 4

Friday, April 5

Saturday, April 6

Sunday, April 7

Monday, April 8

Tuesday, April 9

Wednesday, April 10

Thursday, April 11

Friday, April 12

Saturday, April 13

Sunday, April 14

About the Author

April 2–3

Our Xpress Shuttle driver, Jeff, was at our door at 05:45 to take us to LAX for our 11:41 flight to Paris (Delta flight 118). I will be using twenty-four-hour time notation to simplify notation (not having to add a.m. and p.m.) and to be in sync with European time references; all times will be local time. It started as a timely trip to the airport, but as we were traveling south on the I-605, a CHP vehicle started weaving across the lanes to slow and eventually stop traffic where there had been an accident in the carpool lane. Three cars were involved, and one of them apparently could no longer be driven. As we arrived (and had a front-row seat to watch the show), the occupants of the immobilized van started getting out, getting their suitcases and bags and wanting to wander about the freeway.

Three other CHP vehicles arrived and helped block traffic and tried for some time to get the people back into the van and off the freeway. They finally were all corralled, with bags, back into the van, and one of the heavy CHP cruisers pushed the van to the right emergency lane where the other vehicles had gone. The victims in the van appeared to be Asian, and the CHP officers had to use a lot of hand gesturing to communicate. I suspect they were also on their way to an airport (LAX or Long Beach) since they had luggage bags, so although it was a bit inconvenient for us to be delayed by fifteen minutes or so, their day was really being disrupted.

Once we passed the accident, the traffic was quite light for the three or four miles until we got onto the I-105 to go west toward the airport. Then it returned to normal, even in the carpool lane: stop and go. The rest of the way was uneventful, but these are freeways, not expressways. We got to the airport in plenty of time, arriving about 08:45. We checked our two regular bags; we could have brought them on as carry-on, but since I had gotten the Comfort+ seats, one bag was checked for free, and this eliminated our having to schlep them through TSA and the airports.

Since we're older folks, we also were given Pre-Check checking through TSA. This put us in a much shorter line, and we didn't have to take the computers out of the bags or remove our shoes, belts, etc. to get through screening. Once through TSA, we found the gate to be rather nearby, rather than our usual experience of walking down long terminal aisles to find our flight. Our gate, number 25, was at the end of a short terminal, perhaps two hundred feet from where we left TSA. We had plenty of time to get breakfast, find a newspaper, and settle in to wait for our flight departure.

Flight time finally arrived, and we boarded and found our seats, 11F and 11G, inside and aisle seats with plenty of legroom and an outlet for Sandra to plug in her computer for the flight. There were a surprising number of empty seats on the flight—at least six in the Comfort+ section and another twenty or so in the regular economy section. The two seats to Sandra's left were empty, and as the flight progressed, a couple of guys moved into those seats until we were arriving at the Charles de Gaulle airport (CDG) outside Paris. The flight took about eleven and a quarter hours and was mostly smooth, except for some turbulence between Greenland and Iceland. We landed and then taxied for nearly twenty minutes, leading me to think we were driving the plane all the way to the Champs-Élysées.

We finally arrived at our parking place (the terminal building was barely visible on the horizon) and deplaned without a Jetway, an experience we haven't had this century. Walking down the enclosed stairs from the plane was a bit of a challenge after the many hours aloft. Touching French soil (asphalt), we then walked another hundred feet or so to a waiting bus, which took another ten minutes of driving to arrive at the terminal building. Customs was largely uneventful; the usual serpentine lines that make you think you are getting somewhere when you are not; the customs agents trying to get the families with ten kids to bring them to the booth one at a time; and the travelers so busy checking their social media that they forget to move along, holding up the entire line and getting upset when reminded to move on.

While in the line, we met a couple who were coming on the same cruise. I assured them, since this was their first Viking River Cruise (VRC), that once they got their bags and through customs, they would meet the VRC folks who would then take care of everything. As usual, customs had trouble reading my passport in the automatic system, but they finally stamped it, and we were on our way to pick up our bags which were just arriving on the carousel as we approached. I took this as a good omen: bags arriving just as we did.

We picked up our bags and headed to the Viking folks—who did not have us on their check-in sheet. I guess that since we had booked this cruise only ten days earlier after our previously planned ocean cruise from Amsterdam to Copenhagen had been canceled due to problems with the ship, they did not have enough time to get all of the information to all of the necessary people—an unusual situation from our experiences with VRC. Happily, my wife, Sandra, had a printout of our trip summary, including the booking number and stateroom number. The tour director (Sabine Van Leuken) added us to her list, and we were put onto a bus to the hotel in Paris.

The drive from the airport to the hotel