Day 0 - Bonjour to Paris and Geneva - Travel Day

July 2015

Minigan's Travels -Summer 2015

Bonjour to Paris and Geneva!
Day 0 - Travel day

Sounds of Paris I grew to love:  

Waiting for the shuttle to transport us to the airport!

• Trash pick up every morning at 6:00 am. 
•  Motor scooters 
• Bells on bicycles 
• Rollerblades 
• Car horns 
• Foreign languages 

Day Zero (travel day)

The anticipation of an international trip is always enjoyable.  Time seems to go slowly until those last few days before you leave and then all of a sudden the day is upon you!

Have I packed everything?  Did I lock the car doors?  Did I feed the cats?

We left home at 9:00 a.m. and were all very excited.  We dropped the car off, got to the airport,   and got checked in with ease.  We were prepared for the long flight with headsets, books, Kindles, Ipads and magazines.   

The 1 hour 40 minute flight to Dulles was short and uncomfortable.  Very small plane with what felt like cardboard seats.  We landed without any problems though.  Dulles was much less crowded than we expected.  We got a bite to eat and headed to our gate.  It was very exciting to look up at the board and see our flight to Paris DeGaulle listed.  

While we were waiting and charging our phones, we started a conversation with a wonderful man from Africa.  Sierra Leone to be exact.  He works for United Airlines but travels back and forth from Africa to Detroit, where he currently lives.   Great conversation and listening to his accent was very enjoyable. Jim joked with him about being our new best friend and "oh, by the way, can you upgrade our seats?".

We are going to begin boarding. Yippee.  And then………  the gate attendant announces that the motors on the plane have to be “spooled” and checked out.  She tells us the heat may be causing a problem.  This of course causes tons of murmurs with everyone in line.  "How long would the delay be?"  We dreaded the possibility of a long delay. "Would the plane be safe?" That was a scary thought. 

The two ladies behind us in line were very nice and began to talk to me about air travel and what a pain it can be.  We talked and watched a bird that had landed on a tv just above our heads.  The bird was actually watching us.  Thankfully, after just a few moments, the chief mechanic came out and announced, "We have a good plane and we are ready to go!".  (And here we had all thought the worst.) 

The plane was a pleasant surprise.  Very roomy with a lot of accommodations.  We had the three seats in the middle , row 27.  The ladies that were behind us in line at the gate ended up sitting right behind us.  We joked with them that we were going to keep running into them throughout our trip.  They were a mother and daughter from DC.  

We got all settled in our nice new plane and had yet another surprise.  Free movies in each seat-back.  Hundreds of choices.  Throughout the flight we watch movies. We eat.  We try to sleep.  Dinner was very nice for being on an airplane AND they served wine with our dinner. Jaimey is having the most difficult time sleeping.  She’s got her blanket covering up her head but I'm not sure it helped.   

We watch our progress on the tv screens throughout the flight.  

A little over seven hours later - WE LAND!

Day 1 begins!!!!!