El Viaje - The Trip

St. Pancras, originally uploaded by ¡Carlitos.

A Paris !
Oportunidad de trabajo, oportunidad de cambio de vida por 12-18 meses. Dificil decir que no.
Asi que dejamos Vancouver por un tiempo. Dejamos alla la mayoria de nuestras cosas y el departamento. Todo esta diseñado para que sea temporal.

El mismo dia que obtuvimos nuestra visa, volamos desde Vancouver. El vuelo a Londres, excelente. Tuvimos suerte y logramos hacer el upgrade a clase ejecutiva en uno de los aviones nuevos de Air Canada.

Pero, llegando a Londres empezaron las complicaciones. Para maximizar nuestra mudanza, decidimos llevar tantas maletas como se nos permitió. En este caso, 3 por persona. Mas los articulos de mano. 11 maletas

Debido a un plan anterior, en lugar de volar a Paris en otro avion, teniamos reservado el Eurostar. Asi que habia que lograr llevar esos 11 bultos hasta la estacion de St. Pancras. Rente una camioneta pequeña, la cual afortunadamente fue suficiente para llevar todas las maletas y dejarlas en la estación.

En Paris, sin embargo, no fue tan sencillo. Rentar un auto ahi costaba mas de 150 euros !. Asi que optamos por taxis. Pero el primer problema fue que las maletas, por haberse ido como equipaje extra, se fueron en otro vagon, por lo que hubo que ir a recogerlas al final de la terminal. Llegando ahi, los operadores se apiadaron de mi (en Francés) y me ayudaron a regresar en un carrito a la parte principal de la terminal, donde me esperaban Martha y Sarah.

Antes de poder continuar, tuve que ir por las llaves del departamento a la oficina de renta, en otro lugar distinto. La oficina ya estaba cerrada, pero me habian dejado un codigo e instrucciones para obtener las llaves. Sin embargo esto me llevo como 1 hora.

Finalmente, regrese, e ibamos a tomar un taxi y nos ofrecen convenientemente el servicio. Ya ibamos a subirnos, cuando nos dicen que nos cobrarian 40 Euros por taxi, por un tramo de 3 Km !

Por supuesto, yo sabia que la tarifa deberia de ser por ahi de 10 euros. Asi que les dijimos no gracias, pero eso significo tratar de encontrar un taxi que pasara nosotros, los cuales, al ver el numero de maletas salian despavoridos.

Despues de un rato logramos convencer a un taxi que se llevara la mitad de las maletas, a Sarah y a Martha. Y a los pocos minutos, logre para otro mas para que me llevara a mi y al resto de las maletas. Finalmente eran mas de medianoche.

Desde el momento cuando fuimos por nuestra visa a llegar al nuevo departamento, fueron aproximadamente 30 horas de movimiento...

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To Paris !
Great job opportunity, chance for a life change for 12-18 months. Hard to say no to it.

So we are leaving Vancouver for a while. We left most of our things there, including the apartment. Everything is designed to be temporary.

The very same day we got our visa, we flew out from Vancouver. The flight to London was great. We were lucky and were able to make the upgrade to Air Canada's new Executive Suites in one of the newly renovated 767s.

Once we got to London, complications started. To maximize how much we could bring here, we decided to bring as much luggage as we could. In our case, 3 pieces per person. And the hand luggage. In total, 11 pieces.

Because of a previous plan we had made (which had to change), instead of also flying to Paris, we had seats reserved aboard the Eurostar train. That meant we had to take those 11 bulky items to the St. Pancras station. I rented a small station wagon, which fortunately was enough to take all the bags and drop them at the station.

Once in Paris, though, it wasn't that easy. Renting a wagon there (even a car) was prohibitely expensive.... around 150 Euros ! So we decided to take cabs. The first problem was that the baggage had to go in the train as extra baggage, so I had to pick them up at another place inside the Paris station. Once I got to the baggage office, the operators were nice to me (in French) and helped me take all the bags back in a big cart to where Martha and Sarah were waiting for me.

Before we could continue, I had to get the keys for our apartment at the rental office, at a different place. The office was already closed, but I was given instructions and a code to retrieve the key. This took about 1 more hour.

Finally, I came back, and were just about to look for a taxi when were conveniently offered the service as we were coming out of the station. Too convenient. We were about to get into the cabs (2 of them, to fit everything), when they told us it was going to be 40 euros per taxi, for a distance no longer than 2 or 3 km !

Of course, I knew the fare should have been around 10 euros. So we said, thanks but no thanks. But that meant we had to hunt the cab ourselves, some passed by, but seeing our thousands of bags, just ran away.

After a while, we managed to stop a cab that would take half of the bags, Sarah and Martha. After a few minutes, I managed to get another one to get me and the rest of the bags. After all of this, it was way past midnight.

From the moment we got our visa, until the time we got into the new temporary apartment, it was about 30 hours of travel....