I had the privilege of being accepted to give my talk Demonolithing the Monolith? Bullocks! at Devoxx Morocco this year. And the talk was given in front of a full house.
Travel planning took more effort than usually required, starting with Google Flights providing its best choice as a single-ticket, twice as expensive as multiple round-trips (US/Europe round-trip and Europe/Morocco round-trip).
Long-haul flights from the United States to Paris arrive at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport (CDG), while the cheaper and more convenient flights to Morocco leave from Paris Orly airport (ORY), requiring transferring between airports.
[The other options would have been London Heathrow, London Gatwick, or Amsterdam Schipol, all of which had worse problems that going through Paris.]
Numerous potential complications:
- Separate tickets means no coordination between airlines: if flight #1 from the US is delayed or canceled, the airline for flight #2 is not informed, aren’t responsible, don’t care;
- Transferring from CDG to ORY takes time, but not clear what constitutes enough time for travel between airports;
- Unknown road construction, rail closures, or strikes could unravel my careful planning?
The schedule as constructed had me arrive at CDG in the morning and fly out of ORY late afternoon. Fingers crossed.
Fortunately – and happily – no issues: total time from the plane arriving at the gate at CDG to bag checked at ORY was 2.5 hours. Granted, everything went really well: through passport control quickly, picked up bag from baggage claim within minutes, jumped on the waiting RER B train, and an empty train mean I got a seat
Downside: I had six hours to kill at ORY. Oh well….
