Fifteen hours in the air, safely through, and landed at Paris CDG!!! A long, long flight — but this was not the finish; a connection was still waiting.
Prices in France being as high as ever, I skipped restaurants and cafés, and dinner tonight was this. It came to €9 — about ¥1,300 in yen. A reasonable price, and taking everything into account, that salad here is genuinely worth eating.
Paris CDG is enormous, and even with two hours before the connecting flight, customs and baggage checks can eat almost all of it — worth being careful about!
So I carried the salad on board and — off we go!
Next, two and a half hours to Málaga, Spain! … And by this point we were already running about an hour late (ugh). Landing would be in the middle of the night, with no way to contact the taxi booked for after arrival — nothing for it but to just fly.
I was out cold the moment I sat down, so it felt like no time at all before we landed in Málaga, Spain! All I really remember is a child crying somewhere in that cramped cabin, but nobody seemed to be angry about it (laughs), so I decided this must be a place of gentle people (laughs).
Málaga airport in Spain turned out to be surprisingly large too! Even finding the baggage claim was hard work.
I finally found it, and waited, and waited — and my bag would not come out (ugh).
Watching everyone else collect their bags and head off, mine simply never appeared. I waited and waited, and nothing (ugh).
This is actually my third lost bag in three years, and the other two both happened on the way home, so at least then you can wait for the bag to catch up with you — but this time, how was the trip that was only just starting going to go????
Well — that mattered, but I also had a taxi booked from Japan to the hotel, and the arrival time I had given them was now over an hour past, plus another thirty minutes lost to the missing bag.
The booking confirmation said “we will wait 40 minutes.” I tried calling, but of course, in the middle of the night, nobody picked up — the money I had paid was not coming back, and now did I need to arrange a whole new taxi?
And more to the point — was I even going to reach the hotel today at all???? Anxiety and impatience swirling around my first time in Spain!
Maybe, just maybe, the taxi driver was still waiting for me.
Being bad at giving up has its uses — leaving someone else to keep looking for the bag, I headed for the exit to find the taxi driver.
And of course, right there, I got stopped at the exit checkpoint —————— (ugh).
“Um! Um! … my bag hasn’t come out, and I’ve got a taxi booked, so I want to step outside for a moment to find the driver … and if I’m told to wait, I want to come back inside …”
What actually came out of me, desperately, was pure Japanese, wrapped in gestures nobody could have followed (laughs).
Would this even have made sense in Japanese?
“?????” “What is this bob-haired woman even saying?” — probably not what they actually said, but still (laughs).
“Passport, please” — ah, right, I just needed my passport! Back to where the bag search was going on, passport in hand, smiling all the way!
“Um … I bag, lost, now … so, taxi people, speak, come back … OK?”
What on earth was that? But somehow my desperate gesturing got through!!!! Cleared, no trouble at all. I went looking for a taxi driver holding a placard, but there was no placard with my name on it — of course, by now we were well past the promised time, so there was no reason for anyone to still be waiting.
Sighing, I went back into the airport to keep looking for the bag.
And then!! There it was, somehow riding in on a completely different carousel ————— (airports abroad really do produce the strangest things).
Bag disaster avoided — now, sort the taxi. Trudging along, exhausted, when —
a driver appeared with an enormous grin on his face!
“You Japanese …” — pointing at this, this — my own booking confirmation screen!!!
“Yes! That’s me ————!”
And somehow the two of us got wildly excited, hugging and celebrating together (laughs), before I came back to my senses — not one word of English was actually getting through either of us (laughs).
“You’ve got — M·R·A·T, completely the wrong name here — ah, well, never mind.”
At this point — let’s just be grateful he waited over an hour and a half.
Let’s be grateful the bag turned up safely too!
A sudden wave of exhaustion hit — the clock had already gone past one in the morning — all that was left was whether we would actually reach the hotel!!
The town of Málaga in Spain is genuinely beautiful.
About twenty minutes in the taxi … oh my god, now the hotel itself can’t be found (ugh).
At this rate we’re looking for it on foot!! So —
(I really can survive anywhere, it turns out …) laughs.
And there — down a road just like this, we finally found it!
Twenty-two and a half hours since leaving Japan. One chaotic episode after another, but I made it safely to the hotel. I did not even have the energy left to buy water, so tonight I will gnaw on the cucumber I brought from Japan and call it a night (laughs).
Thank you for staying with me through today’s chaotic journey!
Tomorrow I want to explore a little of the town of Málaga, Spain.
Goodnight …