With our trip to France over, it was time for our journey home. And it turned out to be almost like the trip to France. I’ll get to the similarities in a moment. But first we had to drive from Gilhoc-sur-Ormèze to Lyon and we decided to do that the day before our flight as the distance was a 2.5 hour drive and we didn’t want to rushed by having to drive that distance and return the car before our flight from Lyon to Paris. If we were thinking, we would have taken a detour to see stage one of the Tour de France Femmes which started and finished at Clermont-Ferrand which is a short “ish” drive from Lyon. But we were too focused on hitting the hotel that we were spending the night in Lyon which was right across from Lyon airport. That hotel was the NH Lyon Airport and it was a great hotel to stay in. A queen sized room cost us $167 Euros which was way less than the hotel that we stayed at when we saw the start of the Tour de France stage. Plus it had this handy feature:
If you look at the right side of this outlet, there’s a USB-C and USB-A port. Neither was a fast charging port, but they charged our Apple Watches and iPhones just fine. The food was great and priced well as well. My wife and I had a great meal at the hotel for 85 Euros plus tip. This is a hotel that I would highly recommend.
Returning the car was a bit interesting. The Lyon airport has a gas station on the property. But oddly it was out of fuel. To be fair, the rental car company warned us that this might happen, and that we’d have to drive to a nearby town to fill up the car before returning it. Which is what we ended up doing. Since the rental car company that we used was on the airport property, we decided to walk back to the hotel as that was a great way to close our rings on our respective Apple Watches. In the process of doing that we saw this:
The Lyon airport has a stop for the TGV which is the high speed rail line that runs throughout France. While we would have loved to have taken this mode of transport, it didn’t work for us on this trip. Perhaps on a future trip we will do so.
The next day we packed up and walked across the street to Lyon airport. After checking in and boarding our flight on Air France to Paris Charles De Gaulle airport. From there, we would catch another Air France flight to Toronto Pearson. Now the flight to Charles De Gaulle airport was late, but we tracked our luggage being loaded onto that flight, and unloaded off the flight using the AirTags that were inside them. And that’s when things went off the rails so to speak. The luggage never got loaded onto our flight to Toronto as evidenced by this picture:
The luggage just sat there right up to the time we took off. Now there was the slim possibility that when we landed, the luggage would be there. But when we made our way through customs and got to the luggage carousels at Toronto Pearson airport, our luggage wasn’t there. And checking the FindMy app confirmed that they were still in France. And that was further bolstered by my wife and I being paged by Air France to head to the lost luggage desk. There we filled out paperwork to get our luggage back. That’s when they said it would take three days to get our luggage back as they had to find it first. That’s when I took out my iPhone 14 Pro and showed them the location it was in. That’s when their tune changed and said that they would have it on the next flight out. Which to their credit they did as it arrived in Toronto later that night and was delivered to our home the next day. And for the record, unlike the flight to France where there was 20 Euros of compensation, there was no compensation for this incident.
What I took from this interaction is the same thing that I took from the first time that this happened to us on this trip. Air France and sister airline KLM won’t do anything to get your lost luggage back to you in a rapid manner until you shove a phone in their face showing them that you can live track your luggage using an AirTag. The second that you do that, their tune changes and they will make sure that you get your luggage back quickly. And because of that, I’d strongly recommend that anyone in the Apple ecosystem who travels should use AirTags in all their luggage to hold airlines accountable for their luggage. Not only that, my wife suggests that if your luggage is lost, you need to push them to act quickly and force them to deliver on what they promise. Otherwise she believes (and she’s not wrong in my opinion) that airlines will do whatever they want whenever they want.
Another thing that I’d like to say is the fact that this happened twice on the same trip when flying with KLM/Air France doesn’t put KLM/Air France in the best light. Now it is possible that because we took a route that had connecting flights, maybe there wasn’t enough time to move the bags between flights. Or that perhaps the grounds crews at the airports in question have some issues that played into this such as not enough staff, or the staff simply don’t care. But at the end of the day it’s KLM/Air France that is responsible for making sure that the checked luggage of their passengers makes it from point a to b on time as close to 100% of the time as possible. This experience makes me wonder if the next time we fly to France, if avoiding KLM/Air France and flying on another airline is a good idea. I’m not sure about that at present. But if KLM/Air France happens to read this, they are free to reach out to me and tell me why I should consider them for a future flight to France (or Holland for that matter seeing as KLM is the national airline for Holland).
In closing, I’d like to say that other than our luggage issues, our trip to France was spectacular. It’s left us with a lot of good memories and we’d love to do it again. I would also suggest that you take your own trip to France as we only scratched the surface of what this country has to offer, and create your own memories in the process of doing so.
This entry was posted on July 30, 2023 at 9:00 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Our Trip To France – Part 6: Heading Home
With our trip to France over, it was time for our journey home. And it turned out to be almost like the trip to France. I’ll get to the similarities in a moment. But first we had to drive from Gilhoc-sur-Ormèze to Lyon and we decided to do that the day before our flight as the distance was a 2.5 hour drive and we didn’t want to rushed by having to drive that distance and return the car before our flight from Lyon to Paris. If we were thinking, we would have taken a detour to see stage one of the Tour de France Femmes which started and finished at Clermont-Ferrand which is a short “ish” drive from Lyon. But we were too focused on hitting the hotel that we were spending the night in Lyon which was right across from Lyon airport. That hotel was the NH Lyon Airport and it was a great hotel to stay in. A queen sized room cost us $167 Euros which was way less than the hotel that we stayed at when we saw the start of the Tour de France stage. Plus it had this handy feature:
If you look at the right side of this outlet, there’s a USB-C and USB-A port. Neither was a fast charging port, but they charged our Apple Watches and iPhones just fine. The food was great and priced well as well. My wife and I had a great meal at the hotel for 85 Euros plus tip. This is a hotel that I would highly recommend.
Returning the car was a bit interesting. The Lyon airport has a gas station on the property. But oddly it was out of fuel. To be fair, the rental car company warned us that this might happen, and that we’d have to drive to a nearby town to fill up the car before returning it. Which is what we ended up doing. Since the rental car company that we used was on the airport property, we decided to walk back to the hotel as that was a great way to close our rings on our respective Apple Watches. In the process of doing that we saw this:
The Lyon airport has a stop for the TGV which is the high speed rail line that runs throughout France. While we would have loved to have taken this mode of transport, it didn’t work for us on this trip. Perhaps on a future trip we will do so.
The next day we packed up and walked across the street to Lyon airport. After checking in and boarding our flight on Air France to Paris Charles De Gaulle airport. From there, we would catch another Air France flight to Toronto Pearson. Now the flight to Charles De Gaulle airport was late, but we tracked our luggage being loaded onto that flight, and unloaded off the flight using the AirTags that were inside them. And that’s when things went off the rails so to speak. The luggage never got loaded onto our flight to Toronto as evidenced by this picture:
The luggage just sat there right up to the time we took off. Now there was the slim possibility that when we landed, the luggage would be there. But when we made our way through customs and got to the luggage carousels at Toronto Pearson airport, our luggage wasn’t there. And checking the FindMy app confirmed that they were still in France. And that was further bolstered by my wife and I being paged by Air France to head to the lost luggage desk. There we filled out paperwork to get our luggage back. That’s when they said it would take three days to get our luggage back as they had to find it first. That’s when I took out my iPhone 14 Pro and showed them the location it was in. That’s when their tune changed and said that they would have it on the next flight out. Which to their credit they did as it arrived in Toronto later that night and was delivered to our home the next day. And for the record, unlike the flight to France where there was 20 Euros of compensation, there was no compensation for this incident.
What I took from this interaction is the same thing that I took from the first time that this happened to us on this trip. Air France and sister airline KLM won’t do anything to get your lost luggage back to you in a rapid manner until you shove a phone in their face showing them that you can live track your luggage using an AirTag. The second that you do that, their tune changes and they will make sure that you get your luggage back quickly. And because of that, I’d strongly recommend that anyone in the Apple ecosystem who travels should use AirTags in all their luggage to hold airlines accountable for their luggage. Not only that, my wife suggests that if your luggage is lost, you need to push them to act quickly and force them to deliver on what they promise. Otherwise she believes (and she’s not wrong in my opinion) that airlines will do whatever they want whenever they want.
Another thing that I’d like to say is the fact that this happened twice on the same trip when flying with KLM/Air France doesn’t put KLM/Air France in the best light. Now it is possible that because we took a route that had connecting flights, maybe there wasn’t enough time to move the bags between flights. Or that perhaps the grounds crews at the airports in question have some issues that played into this such as not enough staff, or the staff simply don’t care. But at the end of the day it’s KLM/Air France that is responsible for making sure that the checked luggage of their passengers makes it from point a to b on time as close to 100% of the time as possible. This experience makes me wonder if the next time we fly to France, if avoiding KLM/Air France and flying on another airline is a good idea. I’m not sure about that at present. But if KLM/Air France happens to read this, they are free to reach out to me and tell me why I should consider them for a future flight to France (or Holland for that matter seeing as KLM is the national airline for Holland).
In closing, I’d like to say that other than our luggage issues, our trip to France was spectacular. It’s left us with a lot of good memories and we’d love to do it again. I would also suggest that you take your own trip to France as we only scratched the surface of what this country has to offer, and create your own memories in the process of doing so.
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This entry was posted on July 30, 2023 at 9:00 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.