Remember when I said that we missed our luggage in fiumicino airport back in rome? After several depressing calls and quarels from both side (alitalia and us), the bags were found at florence airport after being transitted in venice with a rush tag. We smiled... Phewww... Alhamdulillah now that we got the luggage, everything would turn back on track, we hoped. We headed to pisa with a great hope. We needed to do some rushing walk to pisa tower and took a cab to the airport for paris flight.
We thought of getting a good flight which however turned me down due to strike in France. The air traffic controller and also SCNF train were on strike, so all flights inbound and outbound paris were cancelled and airport would only re-run services on 14th june. We were completely screwed for this journey. Trips began with excitement, now the mode was getting more adventerous and we were totally off-budget.
Pisa airport was totally ridiculuous as the wi-fi could only be accessed at a specific point. You have to pay 4 euro per half and hour use with additional 1 euro for registration fee. Obviously, with msi monitor and slower internet connection, those 30 minutes would not be enough for us to re-plan our trip. So we added another 4 euros in a hope that we could find an alternative mode of transport to getting to paris. The clear option we had was to board a train. However, due to technical difficulties, the train was not bookable and we were left with driving option instead. As Ammar was the only experienced driver among us, he ought to agree to the new plan B. We asked all car rental companies at the airport about a car going to paris but none gave a good response since they dont have a french car and such option would cost us a huge amount of money which we could not afford to. Out of them, only Avis gave a good treatment to us. Thanks to Ms Lora, we got a black Fiat Punto with a fee of 192.38euros. Though we could find a cheaper option with other companies, at least Avis had offered us a cheaper option, i.e to return the car back at the border. She said we could board a train at 1130pm in Turin which was almost 3 to 4 hours driveway from Pisa. She gave us a webpocket for use in car to book the train in advance. With a big hope, we drove all the way up to north region of Italy. The green scenery captured our eyes, we drove through 87 tunnels only to get there hopelessly. The only direct train that we could board could only depart at 730am on the next day. We tried to bought the ticket at porto susa, but there was no self kiosk for international route and the customer service desk was already closed at 9pm. Even when we tried to purchase the ticket online, the ticket could only be bought after 8am. Referring to the news in on eurolines website, there would be a possibility that the train would delay or be cancelled too due to the strike. Even when I checked the train to get to Gare de Lyon for the second time, the train was not available anymore and we were left with another option i.e to getting to disneyland which would cost us an additional of 40 euros. It was not about the money that we cared so much, but it was the time that we concerned. We didnt even know what would happen next in Paris. The strike might affect the flight we had, scheduled on 14th June to Geneva. We had a lot of guessing in disguise situations for the trip and could not afford to loose that much time to something uncertain. So, with heavy hearts, we had to forget all disneyland fantasy and eiffel tower and proceeded with a new route. Now we had to bear the lost and additional coat for the trip, but... What to do, things happened for a reason and we thought it positively and took it as a new opportunity to appreciate natural places such as Lake Como, Lugano and St Moritz.
No one could ever feel happy for a cancelled trip to disneyland. I was so excited for the fun rides as it was my first to go to disney parks and studios, now that this happened, I should be keeping the ticket and come within 6 months to redeem the entrance.
However, the good side of this re-scheduled journey was we got to stay in a caravan with a front awesome lake view. Furthermore, we went to swiss miniature which covered replicas of local switzerland historical and cultural building.
True, every cloud has a silver lining and we got to different 3 places within 2 days with 3 car rental changes; Avis, Europecar and Hertz.
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