Paris –

I got some wary groans and sincere winces when I reported having a stopover here. Now I can attest to the silliness of this very new and modern air travel hub.

I arrived by plane at terminal 2F and had to get to 2E. It must have been close to a mile going up the stairs then down with an elevator, I made a full 180’ and ended up having my passport checked, but not my hand luggage. A French-pretty lady crammed me on a bus “vite vite,” crowded like they are in Peru, which took about seventy of us to gate M.

You follow? That’s gate M31 in Terminal 2E.

Two men verbally agreed with my utter disbelief when I mumbled “this airport makes absolutely no sense.”

I needed to eat something of green hue, so I thought I’d grab a salad and water. It had to be to go, because little time of my 1:40 hour stopover was left. At a fantastically fancy looking bistro (they only come this way in France), everything took three times as long, but cost twice as much. Same story for the chocolate bar I’d bought just before that, for which I was required to stand in line for fifteen minutes.

When I finally arrived at my herd to be for the next eleven hours of five hundred brain-dead people, it was an hour later, I hadn’t eaten yet, and was the last in line. Studying the airport map, I grudgingly found that all that effort had only delivered me about a stone’s throw away from where I’d disembarked.

Clearly I’m not the only one who feels this way about Charles De Gaule, because complaint were easy to eavesdrop upon. ­When you get to know many airports through travel, you learn which ones are better avoided.

Charles De Gaule Intl.