Homeward Bound

6:00AM and I was wide awake. Our wake up call did come in at 6:30AM much to my surprise. By that time we were both in full swing packing and gathing belongings.

We took the metro to the Gare du Nord where we'd be able to pick up the RER B to Charles De Gaull Airport. While at the Gare, John and I went to the Paul Pastissier and John bought about 18€ of croissant and pastries to bring home to share with his coworkers. I guess they must have thought that we were quite hungry!

It took some doing to figure out which RER B train we needed (there's like 5 of them) and determined we need the RER B3 train specifically. We stayed on the train until it's final destination, CDC2 and then exited. The metro lets out directly into the airport itself so it isn't even necessary to go outside to find the terminal that you need. Quite nice when the weather is bad. We had used our Carte Orange passes to get into the train area, but exiting was another matter. Upon exiting you have to put in your metro ticket in order to be released. We hadn't bought an "area 3" ticket so we were pretty much trapped. A nice Italian lady that we had chatted up on the way to the airport said, "just jump it!" so, behaving like locals, we did just that. The French trains run pretty much on the honor system, but if you get caught jumping over entrances and exits you can be fined. We saw a lot of this occur in the Paris metros, but also never saw anyone busted for this as well.

After having checked in at the front counter at Air France, we passed through the security checkpoint and then went on a dutyfree buying spree. We bought a number of bottles of wine and then sat down to have a cafe before boarding the plane.

Despite arriving two hours early, the airport was quite busy with people and we had just enough time to board the plane. We really didn't have any spare time after having coffee to dawdle about. We passed through the boarding gate and were directed onto a huge "people mover" vehicle on a "scissor lift" that shuttled us off to the plane, which was situated out in the field. Unbeknownst to us, our plane took off about a half hour late and we would arrive 45 minutes late in San Francisco.

As usual, Air France stuffed us with a great deal of food and wine. They really know how to make sure a person is fed and wined. Perhaps they do this so that we'll sleep on the way? They served us two meals and in between made a point of letting us know that there were drinks, sandwiches, and hagen dasz in the "self service" area in the back of the plane. Amazing. And we have a hard time getting a tuna sandwich out of American Airlines.

My only gripes about Air France are that the seats are scrunched way too close to each other. I am 5'10" and John is 6'2". We barely had room to cross our legs, and a few times the people in front of us would recline so fast that we nearly had our glasses of wine launched at our faces without warning at all. I think that the next time we travel abroad we'll try Virgin or KLM and hope that their seats are more comfortable. Hopefully the food will be as good and plentiful as it was on Air France.

While in the air, we took some photos of the ice sheets in Greenland and the mountains in Banff national park. The flight was slightly more bumpy on the way home than it had been on the way over, but I'm particularly frightened of turbulance and really notice it when it is present.

We arrived 45 minutes late, and slipped through customs without any problems. I asked for my passport to be stamped after realizing the French didn't stamp it on entry or exit. I like the idea of s stamp as a souvenier of a trip. I'll have to be sure to ask for them in the future.

John's dad was there waiting for us in the drive through pickup area. It was a nice warm day in the Bay Area and we both enjoyed feeling sunshine on us for the first time in 10 days.