June 28 Paris to Indianapolis

Last updated on July 1st, 2023 at 06:28 pm

No pictures from today!

We had a long day!

We got up at 4:15 in order to have our luggage in the hallway for the Viking folks to collect it for us and get it downstairs to be loaded. We then got ready for the day, checked everywhere to be sure that we hadn’t left anything and then met Jovan and a couple from Westfield who were going to be on all our flights back to Indianapolis. We had seen them throughout our time in Europe, going back to the Glacier Express, but never officially met them or knew they were from Indiana.

They had juices and madeleines for us instead of the box breakfasts we were told, but it wasn’t yet 5:30 (11:30 pm Indiana time!), so it worked.

We took the 20-30 minute ride to Charles De Gaulle Airport and got through the boarding pass/luggage drop/security scan/customs check fairly quickly, even with Alan being pulled out for extra scanning, probably because of his artificial knee. Needless to say, we were at the gate for departure a couple of hours before boarding began.

The first leg to Atlanta was the longest one and we both slept some and Alan got to watch a couple of movies. We had some turbulence coming into Atlanta, and in past trips, it might have been more concerning, but we were tired and a lot more experienced.

We went through customs in Atlanta, which involved standing in a relatively lengthy line, but we had no issues and were officially back on US soil. We had to collect our luggage and drag it through quite a bit of airport before we could drop it off again for it’s last leg to Indianapolis.

Again, we were at our gate for quite a while before boarding…long enough to get a gate change. No problem. This time we were in the final boarding group on the plane, and there was no room for our carry-ons in the overhead compartments, so we had to check them through to Indianapolis. We were anticipating that, so we moved our items with lithium batteries to back packs and took Alan’s camera out of one of the bags to be carried on. That bag was left with practically nothing in it, but it got to ride down below nonetheless.

It was only about an hour and a half air time to Indianapolis. We didn’t have window seats on either leg, and the people at the windows kept the shades closed on both of them. We were pretty shocked when the shades did go up as we landed to see how much smoke from the Canadian wild fires there was everywhere. We could barely see across the runway!

Alan’s brother, Brian, picked us up after we claimed our luggage. We had a nice dinner with he and Beth, as well as our niece, Emily, and her four children, who were visiting for the night to pick up Emily’s husband from the airport the next day. We don’t get to see Emily’s family much, so it was a treat so spend a little time with them.

The trip home was pretty uneventful, which is good, since both of us were pretty tired. We reached Lafayette about 10:30 pm, dragged in our suitcases, and comforted our two cats who made it very clear with loud cries that they had been worried sick about us for the last 3 weeks! Both Gus and Trey have been constant companions since then, and seem to get a little anxious and vocal whenever we leave the house since then. I don’t think they even noticed that we didn’t bring them back any souvenirs. We’ll have a little time to unpack and rest on Thursday morning before a wedding in Noblesville in the afternoon and evening..

It was a good trip. We were gone a long time and walked a lot of steps. (Alan logged more than 235,000 steps from June 9th through the 28th.) We saw amazing mountains, beautiful rivers, majestic churches, ancient castles, and had many tasty dishes. We rode planes, trains, trams, cogwheel trains, gondolas (cable cars), buses, lake catamarans, subways, river boats, and a car or two. We learned what the world was like when our many grandparents lived in that part of the world in the 12th to early 18th centuries. We visited museums and palaces. We did a lot. Now, to review the thousands of pictures we took and try to sum it up in a way that won’t bore our friends and family who might be interested.

And to think about where our next adventure might take us!