Let’s call it the night of falling shoes.

Just as I was finishing my last post, we got a call from our home alarm company. Apparently, the alarm was triggered and they wanted to know if they should notify the police. With the help of our neighbor, we were able, thankfully, to determine it was a false alarm.

Then another shoe dropped. (There will be more shoes…or maybe it’s dominos.)

British Airways emailed us that our Saturday night flight from Nice to London was cancelled. And they went ahead and booked us on a Sunday night flight. However, our return flight to California left Sunday morning!

Our mellow got harsh really quickly. We split up tasks to see if we could get any other flight out on any other airline. We even considered driving back to Marseille. We finally hatched a plan with the help of two very patient customer service reps from British Airways and from Chase Sapphire. We would take the Sunday night flight to London and get a new flight from London home to California on Monday. The only catch was it was more money and no longer a nonstop. We would change planes in Phoenix. In all, a day late and many dollars short…but done.

Then, we needed to find a Nice hotel for Saturday night and change our London Heathrow hotel forward a day, too. Not so easy. Did I mention that Sunday morning is the start of Nice’s annual Ironman competition! The city is packed full of triathletes and there’s no room at the inn. Any inn!

We finally managed to snag a more expensive, but adequate, room in Nice in a not as nice location. We also had to find a different hotel in London and worked that out, too.

All I can say is we are grateful we had the resources—and the negotiating skills— to make all these changes in 5 frantic hours! And, in retrospect, we had 8 flights to make on this amazing 31/2 week trip and only one cancellation! In this summer of predicted travel hell, being stuck in the South of France an extra day facing the glittering,turquoise Mediterranean Sea is not so bad,

Meanwhile, back in the states, a horrible boot dropped as we finally stopped to read and process the news. The Roe decision is a devastating step backwards for all women and girls. I could not sleep last night thinking about all the awful implications. So many others are saying/writing what I feel, so I will just add my intention to fight back through activism and support.

We made the best of our extra day in Nice. After doing a small laundry at our hotel, we drove to Antibes. Antibes is another medieval/ modern, coastal city with a yacht-filled harbor and another small treasure of a museum— this time Picasso’s .

After, we filled up our little Yaris and returned it to Nice airport as originally scheduled. Then we took a tram back to our one night stand hotel. Following a pasta dinner, we are settling down to sleep. Tomorrow, we hope our flights are clear sailing.

And please, please …no more falling shoes.