Have you ever had that feeling that maybe you should have reconsidered a decision? That is how I felt as I sat in the fuselage of the small airplane that we took from Flint Bishop to Chicago. The plane was delayed by 2 hours and I was stressed that we would not make our flight to Paris. The delay was caused by high winds in Chicago. There were high winds everywhere, especially the tail section of the plane we were on. I have never moved in so many directions simultaneously except as a child on the tilt-a-whirl. Wow, what a start to a vacation. When we got to Chicago finding the correct plan was a chore, no one seemed to know where our plane was. We ran (backpacks and all) to two different concourses (of course to the very freaking end of them) before they put us on a shuttle and we drove across all the runways to get to the international terminal where we were the last people on the plane and there was a man in our seats (he thought we weren’t coming) and we barely got my son’s backpack in the overhead bin. It really should have been checked, but the guy in Flint said go ahead and good luck. The flight across the Atlantic was very bumpy and sleeping was not going to happen. We got into London and to be honest I have no idea how we made our connecting flight to Paris, that part is a blur. In Paris we figured out how to get from the airport to our proper stop on the metro and we walked up out of the subway to a foreign land. We were at a corner where several streets, it always seemed like more than 5 have to cross in order for there to be an intersection, nothing is at right angles. We guessed which direction we should walk in (our directions said to walk toward the hospital, really?) As we were trying to figure out where to find the street signs (they are carved into the sides of the buildings next to the intersections) a man standing next to me said, “Are you Kelly.” It was Hakim our first Airbnb host. I said yes, how did you happen to know we would be here at this time? He smiled and said, I always come out to the street at this time looking for Americans. A friendship was born. I must say it was easy to spot Dave and I in this neighborhood, even minus the large backpacks and exhausted expressions. We were in a very ethnic part of Paris, very Arab/African/South American. It was wonderful!