Relatively uneventful flight...
We slept less than expected on the plane which, I suppose, is to be expected. They seem to make these planes more and more crowded with the intent of making a buck but it is getting absurd. I am not a tall guy and my knees were literally touching the seat in front of me. Now this might be due to the fact that we were directly in front of the bathrooms which prevented us from fully reclining, but it still seemed quite claustrophobic.
We spent the first part of the flight getting squared away, doing a bit of journaling, etc. Melissa’s Mom ordered vegetarian meals for us and they arrived labeled “strict vegetarian” which made us both chuckle. Neither of us are particularly strict in any sense. The dinner was Indian and was actually quite good for air fare. I opted to drink a bit of wine to try and get drowsy and Melissa took the more pragmatic approach of Ambien. She certainly got more shut-eye than I did. In the future, I’d recommend getting as much sleep as possible the night before and planning on a rough nights sleep on the flight.
When we arrived in Paris, there was a bomb scare of some sort (likely someone just left their luggage unattended) and they shut down the passport check-in entirely. As time wore on, more and more flights packed the corridors until one could barely turn around and soon it was sweltering. People were ripping off their sweaters and jackets. One man shouted he’d had enough and roughed his way through the crowd only to find it impassible near where we were. After about an hour like this, they opened the floodgates and a virtual mass of humanity poured through the turnbuckles. Apparently overwhelmed by the enormous crowd, the customs officials abandoned the usual booths and just quickly grabbed our yellow cards (which basically re-state your identity information) and sent us on our way without a stamp in our passport or even a thorough look through our info. Needless to say, it seemed fairly insecure and we are now gallivanting around Paris with no France stamp in our passports and likely not much record that we are in the country.
We spent the first part of the flight getting squared away, doing a bit of journaling, etc. Melissa’s Mom ordered vegetarian meals for us and they arrived labeled “strict vegetarian” which made us both chuckle. Neither of us are particularly strict in any sense. The dinner was Indian and was actually quite good for air fare. I opted to drink a bit of wine to try and get drowsy and Melissa took the more pragmatic approach of Ambien. She certainly got more shut-eye than I did. In the future, I’d recommend getting as much sleep as possible the night before and planning on a rough nights sleep on the flight.
When we arrived in Paris, there was a bomb scare of some sort (likely someone just left their luggage unattended) and they shut down the passport check-in entirely. As time wore on, more and more flights packed the corridors until one could barely turn around and soon it was sweltering. People were ripping off their sweaters and jackets. One man shouted he’d had enough and roughed his way through the crowd only to find it impassible near where we were. After about an hour like this, they opened the floodgates and a virtual mass of humanity poured through the turnbuckles. Apparently overwhelmed by the enormous crowd, the customs officials abandoned the usual booths and just quickly grabbed our yellow cards (which basically re-state your identity information) and sent us on our way without a stamp in our passport or even a thorough look through our info. Needless to say, it seemed fairly insecure and we are now gallivanting around Paris with no France stamp in our passports and likely not much record that we are in the country.
posted by Joshua Field at 2:51 PM
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