Today started out in Zagreb, Croatia and ended in New York. During the course of this travel, we managed to score €600 in airline vouchers. How did we do this? Read on!
After going to bed at 2am, waking up at 4am sure was terrible. Dave and I were still in our clothes after falling asleep next to each other on an unmade bed. Fantastic. The air outside was cold and people were still up from their Saturday night, partying it up in Zagreb. We asked where the cab stand was and found someone to drive us to the airport. We were ridiculously early for this flight and the Zagreb Airport seems less complex than a small town’s commuter rail stop. We had a while to wait for the counter to open, then for security to open, and then for the gate, etc. At 6:50am we took off for the 2 hour flight to Paris. Dave was able to sleep but once I’m up I’m up and plus these Croatians would not SHUT UP!! I mean really, its fricken early! We landed and got prepared to negotiate getting bumped in hopes for a “bonus day” in Paris. 🙂
Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport: Home of voucher giveaways from Air France
Things started off ok in Paris, just went through customs and security since we were flying from Croatia and they are not in the EU. Once at the gate, we volunteered to get put on a later flight…strongly preferring the next day. I was eager to have them tell us we could stay and I was already thinking of the nice time that Dave and I could have in Paris. And so it began – the waiting. We waited and did not board our flight…then waited some more. Our flight left without us, and we figured our plan was all falling into place. An agent came to us and told us we had obviously been bumped, probably to a flight 2 hours from then, and for our troubles she handed each of us €300 vouchers on Air France. Our names already printed right on them. “Oh”, we said, as she was explaining, as if receiving these vouchers was the most obvious thing in the world.
She walked away and we stared at each other. €300 towards a flight back to europe for staying in CDG for 2 more hours. Were they kidding?? No wonder the airlines are broke! So we took these vouchers, along with our vouchers that they gave us for food, and we had a celebratory lunch! It wasn’t Paris for a day as we had planned, but I was so excited that we had totally just scored a free vacation courtesy of Air France!
