Autumn Rose Abroad: Let's go to Paris: Attempt #1

Today I got on a plane and flew to Paris. Sort of. Not really.

I'm still in Pittsburgh.

Right now, I'm writing this post from a hotel room about 15 minutes away from the airport. It's pretty nice. Spacious. Comfortable. American.

So fancy. Notice that I once again am lacking a room mate. Forever alone.

It finally hit me last night some time around midnight that I was actually going to be leaving the country. None of the frantic messages from the other kids about packing phased me (Hey, I packed like 5 weeks ago. I'm like, over it). I gave all my leftover food to my friends staying in Pittsburgh. Empty fridge? No big deal.

And then around midnight as I began my final load of laundry I got jittery. I couldn't focus on what to pack, which was absurd since I literally packed everything at the beginning of the month. Someone said they only packed 30lbs of stuff. Wait I'm at 40lbs I need to get rid of clothes why did I bring so many sweaters I am not going to Antarctica. Eventually I got too tired to worry, and I went to bed.

The next morning was full of more packing and running around to find places to keep some of my excessive sweaters. Then Carolyn and I were driven to the airport by her mom.

Back seat for life

We checked in outside of the terminal. I realized I didn't have to worry about my bag so much.

The Pittsburgh Airport is gigantic. I was told it used to be really important once upon a time, but now it's got a lot less traffic, and seems pretty empty.

I forgot to empty my water bottle during the security checkpoint, and I thought my whole bottle was going to be confiscated. Luckily, the TSA agent was really nice and emptied it out for me and handed it back ("You should be ashamed of yourself!!... Just kidding, but be careful next time").

Here's our gate

We hung out in the terminal. We got on the plane. We're all a little nervous, a little excited. The plane took off. There's some weird noise under the seats, but then again when does any noise a plane make not seem weird? After about ten minutes, the captain announces that one of the plane's wheel's has failed to retract, and we will be forced to return to Pittsburgh. Everyone looks around nervously, but no one makes any noises.

Luckily for me the turn-around gave me a chance to get nice-ish pictures of the city

This one's my favorite.

We landed without a hitch (it did seem like we bounced slightly more than average during landing, but what do I know).

And apparently it was a bigger deal than they let on that the wheel wouldn't retract, we had these guys waiting for us on the ground

hey dere waddup

We all filed off the plane. At least for me, I felt more shaken at the sight of all the firetrucks outside rather than the actual landing itself. Whether it was just protocol, or for a more serious reason, seeing all those heavy duty trucks and flashing lights was unsettling.

Our group reconvened, we tried to figure out plans and talk about what had just happened. Something interesting that happened: Everyone more or less agreed that they had a mini-panic attack after the captain made the announcement. But then after looking around at the other passengers not reacting, we all decided our fears were unfounded and sat as calmly as we could in our seats.

So what's the plan now? Because we couldn't make it to Atlanta, Georgia in time for our layover, we've rescheduled our flights to a non-stop tomorrow around 7pm. Which is better, in some sense.

We headed to our hotel.

Never been so happy to get a free cookie

I was pretty beat after all the excitement of the past 24 hours. Tired selfie!

BONUS TRIP

Because none of us had eaten dinner, Katy, Carolyn and I headed to Primanti Brothers for dinner. I've been meaning to eat at one of these places since I've gotten here. So here's a good thing that came out of this nonsense.

Basically, giant sandwiches with french fries and cole slaw in them are the thing to do here. I was famished and ate every last bite

The plane drama really might have been worth it just for this sandwich. I take that back but it was pretty good.