Paris, France to Málaga, Spain
Here I am on the last flight of this seemingly never-ending day. I am dead tired and my head is vaguely pounding. On the flight from JFK to CDG (Paris, Charles de Gaulle) I had an aisle seat in the center, so unfortunately I did not get to look out the window at Paris getting closer. However, I have a window seat on this flight, so I´ll get to watch Paris disappear and Málaga appear!
The CDG airport does not have food once you are through security for international flights. Eat first, or have plenty of coin Euros for the vending machines. I went through customs (who, disappointingly, did not stamp my passport neither arriving nor leaving), disdainfully passed by a McDonalds, went through security, and headed to my gate.
On the previous plane, at first I sat on the wrong side of the aisle. (I make mistakes at least once a year.) I blame it on the soporific effects of Dramamine and lack of sleep. I sat next to two youngish black women from France. I turned to the one next to me and asked (in French), “So, where in France are you from?”
She blinked and responded (in French), “I´m sorry, I don´t speak English. Could you ask me again in French?”
Well! This was a serious blow to my French self-confidence, let me tell you. What I *wanted* to do was fall into the bottomless pit I was hoping would appear any moment to swallow me whole. But since that failed to hapen (and since she´d asked so nicely) I tried again, this time enunciating as clearly as I could. “Where. In France. Do you. Live?”
This time, she smiled and answered, “Oh! In Paris.”
I returned the smile, told her it was my first visit, and retreated to my proper seat, resolving not to poison the air any more with my apparently incomprehensible French accent.
Tired as I was, I couldn’t seem to fall asleep. That´s when I started ordering the wine. (Come on! Free alcohol is one of the joys of an eight hour international flight, and besides, it comes with every snack/meal just like Diet Coke.)
After I was halfway throught the second bottle (There´s only one serving in each bottle. Really.) I was totally knocked out for a good hour or two. I kept waking up because they kept showing up to feed us. First, a snack (pretzels and wine) then dinner (there was no vegetarian option because the school forgot to forward the information, but they did come back around to give me another bread roll).
This morning (aka midnight EST) they fed us breakfast – some kind of pastry, peach yogurt (Dannon la créme), coffee and OJ. (No wine for me, although the guy in the row in front of me got a Budweiser, breakfast of champions.)
