Ah, Parisian wallpaper

Bonjour everyone! Greetings from beautiful Paris!

Kate and I arrived yesterday at about dinner time, and didn’t last much past 8pm, so here is a belated, fairly brief, update.

We left Melbourne at close to 1am so bunkered down to try and sleep on the leg from Melbourne to Paris. We both did OK… not great as you can expect on a full plane… but enough to get by. As a result it was no movies or reading for me, just trying to tune out from the hum of the plane and the serving of food. Kate focused a bit more on some reading, but otherwise, it was just 9 hours of getting from A to B.

A couple of hours in Hong Kong airport let us stretch our legs and have a bite, but really in no time at all we were on the main leg… we were heading to Paris! Yay!

As a regular traveller of economy class, you usually prepare for the worst. You assume you will be cramped, and that it is just an exercise in making time pass to get to the other end. This leg was going to be not really sleeping, but catching up on some movies and reading as a way to get through the time. But also when you travel economy you enjoy the small victories. And this leg was one. As all the passengers settled on board, this was the state of our section of economy…

the luxury of economy

Yep. That was it. Only about 1/4 full. Yes! Win! We even had the front of the section with extended leg room which in the end was kinda wasted on this trip, but very much enjoyed regardless. So as the plane got in the air, everyone shuffled and took complete rows to ourselves. It meant that lying about, stretching out, wandering about as much as we liked was going to be the order of the day. Oh the luxury!

While Kate thought the time dragged on a bit, it went by pretty quickly for me. Four movies and a book later (as well as a little sleep) and we were arriving. I could totally get used to having planes only this full.

taking the long way

What may have added to Kate’s thoughts though was the quite confounding route map. It seemed we had not really taken the most direct route we could. It seemed there was a lot of up and over taking place. Hmm. I’m sure they had their reasons.

Anyway, we arrived safe and sound into CDG on time and jumped on a train into the centre of Paris. Given the time of year, the sun set at about 5pm, so it was dark as we arrived at our digs, the Hotel Grand Hommes in the cool Latin Quarter. A super charming hotel, our lovely receptionist let us know our room had been upgraded to one slightly bigger and with views of the local sights. Very nice!

the nighttime view from our hotel

What were the local sites? The hotel resides right next the the Pantheon. Yep. We were in Paris alright.