Friday, July 13, 2012

The flights to Paris

Our journey started bright and early at around 4:30 when we had to get up. Preparation was pretty quick, and since we were both already packed we got to the airport around 5:40 (thanks to my wife, Cheryl, and our two dogs who drove us to the airport!) and were through security by just before 6:00, an hour before our flight.

Normally, when I have some time to kill I go to the US Airways Club (one of the privileges of being a frequent traveller) and today was no exception. Well, one exception: it wasn't open yet. So opened up Nathan's laptop and started watching the live stream of the day's stage in the hall in front of the club:

Gotta get your Tour on!

The club opened at 6:00 at we watched a bit more Tour, then headed down to the gate to board. Here is a photo I took of the two of us on the plane (it's a lot harder to do this with a regular camera than with an iPhone!):

Nathan is excited (as am I, you just can't see it!)

We had an uneventful 4.5 hour flight to Philadelphia where we had about a 2 hour layover. We went to the club again and fired up Nathan's laptop, this time to watch the Tour on delay.

More Tour, this time in Philadelphia...

We got just about to the end of the stage when we had to head to the gate. Of course, the gate was much further away than I thought it was, but after a bit of hustle through the airport, we got there. After we arrived, we had some time to kill:

Nathan getting in a last bit of phone time

This would be a good time to add that every time I talked to someone from US Airways, I begged for an upgrade to business class for Nathan and me. This included the lady at the gate. Apparently, they all have their story straight: I was told each time that there are no complementary upgrades on flights to Europe. Oh well, can't blame me for trying!

This was the plane we took to Paris (this is an obligatory photo for all my international trips):

Obligatory photo of our A330 wide body

We got our seats and left pretty much to the minute. Here we are in the seats we'd occupy for the next several hours:

Still fresh and smiling!

Everything was going very smoothly (and indeed went smoothly the whole flight). We watched some shows on the little screen they give you (of course I couldn't see the last 10 minutes of The Descendants because we were landing!). Nathan took some time to solve some puzzles in the book we bought in Philly:

Keeping his mind sharp for France!

And that was about it for the next 6.5 hours. Since our bodies said it was only 3:20 in the afternoon when we left, neither of us could sleep, so we read, watch videos, and basically killed time for the whole flight.

We arrived in Paris pretty much on the dot at 7:30am local time. Unfortunately, it was overcast so we could not see anything until we were almost on the ground. That said, we did see this out the window while landing:

A tiny village right next to an international airport?!

That is apparently a tiny village surrounded by farmland. That's nothing unusual for France, except this village is about a mile or less from one of the busiest airports in Europe! This is when Nathan and I knew we weren't in Kansas anymore!

1 comment:

  1. Sounds like a pretty sweet trip so far! Glad you made it there safely! -Flo

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