Dreaming of France -- Flying

Please join this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it

I am really dreaming of France these days and wishing I could fly away across the Atlantic. 

This is what the screen in the seat back on the plane looks like as we get close to France.

I'm not crazy about flying, but I'm willing to do it to get to the country I love visiting. 
The smell of coffee brewing on the plane would wake me, and I'd open my eyes, slide open the window shade and see neat square fields of brown and cream and green below me. Then I'd know I was above France.

What are you dreaming of this week?

Smell Memories

Smell is supposed to be the sense that creates the strongest memories. I believe it because a smell can instantly transport me back to a moment. Sometimes it's important and sometimes it's trivial.
Sunday was a day when Grace and I left the house at 7 a.m. so I could get her to a friend's house in Rochester, New York, and she could return to school with that friend. According to Mapquest, the drive from our house to Rochester is 6 hours and 48 minutes.
I dropped Grace around 2 p.m. and she dripped tears onto my chocolate brown wool coat. We'll see her again in two and a half weeks when she has Christmas break. She feels sad every time she leaves. Her friend John loaded things into his car, ready for the three and half hour drive back to school from Rochester. His mother looked pale and as if she wanted to drip tears onto her son too. John's father showed me how they had arranged a strand of Christmas lights into upside down fish bowls along the driveway.
Then I began driving home, alone in the car. I made it through New York and stopped for gas in Pennsylvania for gas. I inched through a drive through and bought a cup of coffee. The digital clock in the car read 4:44 p.m. I had about four more hours of driving.
I didn't realize until I had rolled up the window and called Earl to tell him where I was that the smell of the coffee brought back a smell memory. Of course, the smell of coffee is very familiar. Why should it bring back this particular memory? But there, in the car, after traveling for 10 hours, that smell reminded me of waking up on an Air France flight as the flight attendants busily prepared "breakfast," ready to rouse the sleeping passengers and prepare them for the landing in Paris.
The flight from the U.S. to Europe usually begins with a dinner then all the window shades are closed, the lights are dimmed and everyone pretends they have a normal night's sleep. A few hours later, the flight attendants serve breakfast with hot coffee to help people adjust to the time change. When we arrive in Paris, it is morning.
In the car, listening to a story tape about a food critic, I sipped that coffee and thought of the hours of traveling I do before I land in Paris. Funny that memory came to me.
Do you have a smell memory that came to you this weekend? Thanksgiving is full of smell memories.

Travel Time and the End of a Love Afair

We made things harder on our travel schedule by going to Nantes to visit friends. Of course, we loved seeing them and spending time with them, but the trip home was brutal.
We didn't sleep well the night before, checking the alarm clock to make sure we caught the 7:30 train.
We took the TGV to Paris Montparnasse. That's a 2 hour, 15 minute trip. Once there, we found a bus that goes directly to Charles de Gaulle airport, known as Roissy, I don't know why.
The bus makes one more stop at the Gare Lyon before heading to the airport and we were cramped into those tiny seats for more than an hour. Why didn't we take the Metro, we wondered after paying 33 Euro for the long bus ride.
The metro stops farther away from the terminals and we'd have to walk, but that might have been preferable to sitting on the bus for all that time. Poor Earl, his knees jammed against the seat in front of him again.
Once we checked our baggage and waited in line through security, we walked past shops searching for the correct gate.
"Let's get through, put our stuff down and go back to get coffee," I suggested. Earl agreed. We hadn't had breakfast, still stuffed from our meal the night before of white asparagus in vinaigrette, scallops in a cream fresh sauce, four kinds of cheese and a bakery gateau called Trinidad with mango between the chocolate layers.
We saw our gate at the end of the terminal and found another security line for those passengers going to the U.S. We didn't realize that once checked through the special isolation security, we weren't allowed to leave again.
I asked the security guard if we couldn't go back into the terminal to get coffee.
"There was plenty of time for that," she said in French, but this time I understood her.
I felt like a chastised child. We had hurried to the gate, two hours before the flight, and now we would sit and suffer.
We had a water bottle, a pack of cookies and some edible gifts for the kids. We were tempted to dig into those. I also had no book to read. I had planned to buy one in the terminal since I'd read the two we brought along.

I did have a Sudoku book and my computer. I couldn't get on the internet because it required a special password (Detroit's airport didn't, Paris' did). I played some lame games that came on my computer while waiting and waiting and waiting.
And then the flight home. It's nine hours from Paris to Detroit. Our flight was scheduled to leave Paris at 1:30 (Paris time) and get to Detroit at 4:30 (Detroit time). It's all day time and we didn't sleep. We waited on the tarmac for an hour so left at 2:30 and arrived at 5:30.
Air France has little television screens in the seat back so each passenger can choose his/her viewing pleasure. This helps to pass the time, but nine hours of television? Even watching the screen follow the flight as it goes over the UK and Iceland can seem exciting after five hours or so.

We both felt like we'd fallen out of love with Air France on this voyage. Before, we were always willing to pay a little more to travel Air France. Traveling on Air France versus, say, Northwestern was like having dinner in a restaurant in Paris versus a dinner in Columbus. There was a little more attention to detail. The food definitely made a difference. The seats seemed a little roomier. On both flights this time, it seemed like a cattle call. Boarding was just "Okay everyone with a ticket can now board." Are you kidding me?
So next time, and I'm sure there will be a next time, we'll choose the best deal, unless we can get an upgrade with extra leg room for Earl.
We had been travelling 22 hours when we finally arrived home and surprisingly found all three kids home, for a little while anyway.

Finalement!

Guess where we are?
After all the cancelled flights and volcano dust, our plane left on time and arrived pretty much on time.
We didn't get a lot of rest and Earl definitely had a tougher time than I did. That's why he is snoring behind me right now. This was the smallest amount of space I've seen on an Air France flight. Here's a photo of Earl sitting as far back as he could. Can you see the metal that runs along the back of the seat that gouges into Earl's knees. When those guys in front of us laid their seats down, ouch! Also, the flight attendants banged his knee every time they came down the aisle with the food cart.
In spite of the small amount of sleep we got, we were determined to stay awake when we arrived. We made it to the hotel about 2. We showered and went in search of a Brasserie, which is a French restaurant that serves sandwiches and food all the time. Many restaurants only serve meals during normal hours, so dinner isn't available until 8 p.m. and no one is serving lunch at 3 p.m., except the brasseries.
We sat outside because the weather was in the mid-70s to 80. A breeze kept us cooled down.

I ordered a pichet of red wine, which is a small pitcher, and we both ended up having four glasses -- but the glasses were small, really. Considering that I hadn't had any alcohol the past three weeks, the wine really hit me. I would say I was tipsy, but I think it went farhter than that.
Then we ended our meal with little espressos. Earl doesn't even like coffee, but he agreed to drink an espresso in the hopes of staying awake.
After our lunch, we went walking. We took a bus and then walked down by the Seine and enjoyed the sunshine. And so did an old couple making out along the river. It seemed so French that this guy with a mane of white hair had his hands on either side of this older woman's face and they were, well, Frenching, right there on a bank beside the river.
I love that the sun was shining and the leaves are unfurling, which makes for much better photos than our last trip during March a few years ago, when everything was still pretty gray.
As our energy started to wane, we stopped at another cafe near Pont Neuf for a second espresso. We were setting small goals for ourselves -- if we don't
go back to the room until 7 then we can stay awake until 8... Finally, we caught a bus and returned to the room.
And there is one thing I hope everyone will agree on when they see these photos, and that is that the $25 I spent to have my hair blown dry and straightened on Thursday was definitely worth it. Even after a night on the plane, it still looks fabulous.