This Summer me and a group of friends from school last year decided to go on a European trip together. We all now go to different universities it is sometimes hard to see each other on a regular basis and we like to keep in contact and keep our friendship going.

Anyway the plan was London for a few days and then directly on to Paris for a few days totaling a bill of maybe 600 pounds by staying in hostels and eating cheaply.

It was all going great until we found out our flight from London Luton to Charles de Gaulle was delayed by 3 hours. For a change me and my friends had actually turned up 2 hours in advance so we were greatly annoyed. I knew this was going to be bad from the start.

So we got into Charles de Gaulle at around 10pm that evening eventually and it was so unorganized, there was maybe a hundred or so people on our plane and they only had 2 passport checking stations open, the queue was enormous and our hostel was a good way from the airport.

When we did get through the airport was empty every where was closed and all the information desks were closed for the night (is this not supposed to be a respected international airport?).

After walking around aimlessly for half an hour we found our way out of the airport and into the metro system which was fine and the holiday was off again.

However leaving to get home via this airport was twice the trouble of trying to get in, Firstly we reached the airport via train again like we had left but the machine refused to validate anybody s ticket and the ticket machine on our side was out of order, it was only around 5pm but once again nobody was around to inform us or anybody else traveling through this airport what to do. My mother had warned me about jumping these gates as her and her colleagues got fined 50 euro the last time they didn't validate their tickets, but we had no choice and nobody seemed to care which i think is a bit odd. I thought the security was a farce.

So we got in that was good we looked up the screens, turns out we had to walk half way around the airport to get to the easy jet section, so we did, just to be told that all Belfast directions were back out where we originally started from.

After what seemed like hours in a massive queue once more we got to check in our bags and walked through to the duty free area without being checked or anything just stared at by a guy in a booth waving us through which i thought was a little weird.

When we got to the end of the hall i wouldn't have described it as a duty free area, it had maybe 3 tiny basic shops, one feeble looking cafe and the toilets as standard.

We just decided to go straight into the lounge as there really wasn't much to look at, the security here was better but it was really small and slow and hardly what i would call efficient or secure compared to Luton airport.

The lounge was sort of ok but was tiny, the flight was delayed (again) and there were no toilets or cafes in the lounge just a humble vending machine with overpriced sugary snacks and drinks.

We queued yet again when we heard our flight being called just to find we had to stand for about another hour in what seemed like a greenhouse portion of a hall surrounded by glass walls, this really didn't help considering the heat outside was around 29 degrees Celsius and the airport had no real air conditioning from what i could tell. Also considering we had left our hostel at 10am and it was now almost 8pm we were wrecked and just wanted to go home.

I shall not be traveling through Paris via this route again, maybe next time i shall take the channel or something over to London first and travel home from there.