Just too late

Rue d'Amsterdam to Charles de Gaulle Airport.

We thought an hour would be plenty to get from point A to point B. After all, the RER train from Saint-Michel-Notre-Dame to Aéroport Charles de Gaulle 1 is supposed to take less than 30 minutes. The Metro connections from our hotel to the RER line should have only taken about 10-15 minutes. Leaving a couple of hours before the flight should have given us about an hour and a quarter to check in.

What we didn't count on:
- the first Metro train was bulging at the seams with no room for extra bodies with suitcases, so we waited a couple of minutes for the next
- the Metro to RER connection is a long, long, long walk, and the moving walkway was broken
- the next two RER trains to come along were not heading for Charles de Gaulle--right direction but wrong destinations
- once we got to CDG, we had to wait for a little shuttle train that stops at the car parks on its way - a time factor that the airport website doesn't seem to have factored in
- once we got into the terminal, the flight board told us that our flight check in was at "satellite" number 18 when it should have said "hall" 18, so we innocent travellers had to go back to find the information desk and ask where to go
- when getting to the baggage & boarding check in desk with 30 minutes to spare, they'd already closed the baggage check, so we couldn't fly.

We had to buy tickets for a later flight. Ouch. How to waste half a day.

On the bright side, the apartment here in Edinburgh is lovely--three rooms, fully furnished, equipped and serviced. It's sheer luxury after the Paris room where maneuvering two people was like solving a sliding block puzzle, and using the toilet meant having your knees pressed up against the wall.