Eurotrip 3.0 : Paris, Côte d’Azur & the story of the missing baggage

How often have you heard people’s baggage not coming in with their flight? Maybe a couple of times… And how often has it happened to you?  Most likely never! It was the same for me… until…

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A couple of months back, when I was booking tickets for my upcoming Eurotrip, my regular ticket ‘agent’, cleartrip.com gave me Turkish Airlines as the cheapest option. 42,000 rupees for a Mumbai-Paris, Milan-Mumbai circuit seemed like a decent price versus competition. The usual suspects, Emirates, were conspicuous by their absence at the top 3 in the list. Last time I flew Emirates for 32,000 in an almost similar route. Sadly, it wasn’t to be this time, and I had to contend with 42,000 with Turkish Airlines. A quick call to my friend (who’d recently been to Turkey on Turkish) gave me confidence that it was a fairly decent airline. (Later I would find out that Turkish Airlines are the ‘European Airline of the year’ winners two years running! More on that soon).

The good thing about the connection was that it had only a 1 hour stopover in Istanbul – so was almost as good as the direct flight, but half the fare! Leaving Bombay at 6 in the morning, I would be at Paris by 2 in the afternoon (Paris time). I thought that was pretty cool. Suddenly Europe didn’t seem that far.

On the day of the flight, I reached the airport uneasily early at 3am and groggily dragged myself to the Turkish counter. A rather irritable guy was behind it, and I confidently told him that I had no luggage to check-in. I wanted to take my suitacase/trolley with me so that I could just step out of Paris airport & head to the city to catch my train (which was 2 hours later) to Hyères, in the South of France.

Since the guy obviously had no better business, he asked me to weigh my bag. Grudgingly, I agreed. It was 14 kilos, 6 kilos over the ‘limit’. If you fly frequently enough, you will notice that the ‘limit’ applies most often when the dude at the counter has nothing else to do. I had no choice but to hand in the suitcase.

The plane was choc-a-block full and I wondered where on earth were so many Indians going, on a Friday morning that too! The plane was quite normal looking, quite different from the classy Singapore Airlines or the (once) shining Emirates. The staff didn’t seem very friendly, and I couldn’t blame them – the hoards of Indians there were loud, and completely unaware of rules. One dude kept pushing back his seat while the plane hadn’t even taken off. Another old aunty got up to go to the loo as the flight was taxiing. It was chaotic to say the least. Not something anyone needed at 6am!

The food that came once the flight took off was run-of-the-mill. Istanbul arrived rather soon as I dozed off desperate to catch up on the night’s lost sleep.

Istanbul airport looks a lot like Dubai - A bustling transit airport with people running from one gate to the other. All I got, though, was a brief 30-minute glimpse of it as I hurried to catch my connecting flight to Paris.

The plane to Paris was trash and 50% of the screens weren’t working. The ones that were, only had the flight path being displayed. Yes, it’s only a 3 hour flight, but that doesn’t make it a non-international flight. Hell I paid 40,000 bucks, at least show me a movie no! And if this was the European Airline of the year, I shudder to imagine what the others would be like!

I landed at reached the baggage belt at exactly 2.00 pm. The bags started coming in 4 minutes. Pretty soon though, I was checking my watch time and again. My suitcase was nowhere in sight and I was having less & less time to get out of the airport, to the city and to my train! During the long wait, I had intuitively checked where the ‘missing baggage’ counter was, and how people were exiting once they took their baggage. All scenarios had been worked out. And contingency plans prepared. At 2.55 pm, after multiple delays, staff coming and checking the belt as it had stopped working, the ‘baggage delivery completed’ sign flashed. Contingency plan 1 was to be put into action! I headed straight for the missing baggage counter. They told me that the bags will arrive only at 6pm. That meant I had to miss my train. But that also meant I had to go to the city, get my ticket reworked and come back to take my bags.

But, surprisingly, they offered to deliver my bag wherever I would be! I hadn’t planned for this ‘contingency’. So I filled out the form and asked them to deliver it to my hotel in the South of France. But I would be there only 2 days and that would also mean I would attend my friend’s wedding having bought clothes off the shelf in one of the most expensive places on the planet!

Clearly, that wasn’t going to happen. So I went into the city, took the tickets from Alice and reworked ‘em to get a later train from the airport itself. My cousin sister, who lives in Paris, also joined me for the trip back to the airport. I picked up my bag, which arrived on the same belt as soon as I reached there, as if on cue, and we had some nice pasta & sandwiches before I was off on my train to Marseille.

Cavalaire-sur-mer (sur mer literally translating to ‘on the sea’) was the final destination and it’s a 2 hour drive from Marseille. Usually people rent cars and go there, but I had a pickup waiting in the form of one of the wedding party – Mathieu. We had a nice chat (about Marseille, Cavalaire, Syria,traveling in general & Manchester United) along the way and picked up Alice in Hyeres (another town between Marseille and Cavalaire) who was stuck there as there were no buses to Cavalaire!

Cavalaire-sur-mer

Clearly public transport isn’t something that the Côte d’Azur (Blue Coast) is famous for. Usually the rich and famous come in their Mercedes’, BMWs et al, or their private jets, which land in Hyeres-Toulon airport!

Brilliant blue waters all along the way, clear blue skies and awesome roads. It’s driving paradise! I remember the game NFS where one of the tracks was ‘Côte d’Azur’ and I dreamed of going there sometime. That dream is now fulfilled. 

Côte d’Azur - unparalleled driving pleasure