Roses are blue, Voilets are green, this is the first tropical cyclone I’ve ever seen.
OK, so I know that we had one in 1974 (AKA “The ’74 flood), but I was only 12 and I believe that we were on our way back from a family trip to Sydney and by the time we got home, the cyclone was gone and just the floods remained.
So, as luck would have it, the day we flew out of Brisbane to Paris via Dubai was the same day that TC Alfred was due to slam into Brisbane.
Due to the weather, Joey dropped us off a bit earlier than planned and we headed down to International departures. It’s a fairly standard process where you show your passport, tip out any water, put all of your liquids in a plastic bag (or the bin, depending on how big they are), and go through Customs … or Border Control – I’m never quite sure.
Empty your pockets, take off your belt, put all your electronic devices into a tray, and then stand in a CT-like machine thing with your arms out for a full body scan.
I asked the guy checking the machine whether this is the one that allows him to see the scan-ee (person being scanned) with his “x-ray vision” so he can see everyne naked.
I really shouldn’t do it. I might as wll just ask for a strip search and a full body cavity search because these people have zeo sense of humour.
But it turns out that this guy did (have a sense of humour), because he said “yes it can, PLUS it can read your impure thoughts”.
That’s scary đ
Emirates have a fleet of Airbus A388s with a 3-4-3 configuration in cattle class. And that’s a problem when it is just the 2 of us.
We either take the middle and aisle seats and have someone at the window who needs to ask nicely each time that they need to pee during the night, or we take the centre and window seats and then we have to ask the person on the aisle when we need to pee.
We opted for what’s behind door 1, and made the “asking” the other guy’s problem.
But it turned out that he was going to Zambia and must have had a long-range bladder installed before his trip, because he only needed to go once in the 14.5 hour flight.
The flight was uneventful, which is exactly the way you want it to go. “Catastrophic engine failure” are 3 words that you never want to hear when you are on a flight over large bodies of water.
Part way into the flight I realised that I had broken my #1 rule of travelling – always wear a black shirt. Why? Because when you inevitably drop something on yourself during meal service and turbulance, it doesn’t show.
Or even when there is no turbulance.
But I chose to wear a pale blue shirt for reasons that I can’t recall, so the beef stroganoff made a bit of a mess when some landed on me. Sigh.
Sleep was impossible, but I tried to imagine myself on a “lay flat” bed like the ones up above us in Business or First class … but my imagination must be broken because I only caught a couple of hours of sleep a couple of times in between being woken up so that they could feed us again.
And the little bit of sleep I got was thanks to some pharmaceutical assistance.
We arrived in Dubai uneventfully and bought 2 seriously overpriced coffees (about $22.00) from Macca’s to keep us going.
A couple of hours in Dubai and then we were back on another Emirates A388 heading for Paris.
Another uneventful flight, but by the time we landed we had been travelling for about 28 hours and really feeling it.
We caught the RER train to our local station (30 Euros) and checked in to the Hotel Cluny Square.
We went for a quick walk to look at the newly opened Notre Dame, then found a Monoprix (like Walmart) and bought some stuff for dinner.
I’m so tired that I am no longer functioning, so that’s all you get tonight and I’ll try to do better tomorrow.
Editor’s note: You are probably disappointed at how late “Day 1” was posted, but I’m glad that I took the time to review it before posting – I was obviously very, very tired and it didn’t make a great deal of sense. My reviewer was obviously very tired also because she missed most of the errors too.
All better now, though … I hope.)
Ciao
