No Way Beauvais!

Tonight it was time to finally depart Paris. Come to find out, Paris-Beauvais is nowhere near Paris at all. After a long metro ride and an even longer bus ride, we finally arrived at the zoo that is Beauvais airport. Their slogan proclaims that they only work with the cheapest airlines, which should have been a sign.

RyanAir has a strict luggage policy with 15 kg (33 lbs) for the checked bag and 10 kg (22 lbs) for the very small carry on. Should you happen to go over this, you will be charged 20 euro per additional kilo. Needless to say, we were not about to have any part of that. So we spent the hour before check-in time transferring things back and forth between carry-ons, luggage, and our bodies in the middle of the very crowded airport. Chris decided to walk around carrying a pair of shorts stuffed into a sweatshirt and Galen resorted to wearing a dress as a scarf and 3 cardigans.

We publicly cheered when each of our bags were cleared for the weight. All of our hard work trying to portray the behavior of chic French teens was negated by our overwhelming American-ness at Beauvais.

After going through security, we arrived at the “gate.” One could accurately describe it as a corral. Hundreds of people sat on the floor and stood in a huge mob staring at the planes outside.

Once we were on the plane, we realized how RyanAir makes all their money. They. Sell. Everything. In the one hour flight we were prompted to purchase a full restaurant’s worth of food, scratch-off lottery tickets, duty free items, smokeless cigarettes and calling cards.

We were elated to land and make the last bus to Barcelona at 11:30 pm. The best surprise was definitely when 2 fellow Dartmouth sophomores studying in Barcelona sprinted to the bus only moments before it left.

We never would have found our hostel without them.