When they make the movie of this experience, the montage of our arrival in France MUST be done in sped-up shots. The only slow part was the wait when we first got to the Grand Rapids airport. It took forever to check our bags and get our seats assigned (mercifully three together and one separate--more on that later).
Quick #1: We grabbed a snack and made it through security in record time. There were all of two flights leaving Grand Rapids, so the airport had an abandoned air about it.
Quick #2: The flight to Chicago was 45 minutes, so the flight attendant only offered drinks if you rang the bell to ask. As expected, nobody did.
Quick #3: Our connecting flight to Paris left one hour to the minute after our Chicago arrival. We had just enough time to find the gate, stop at the restroom and let the kids make friends with another girl on the flight. Then we hopped on board.
Not-so-quick #4: 8 hour transatlantic flight. Olivia slept like a champ, Helena evidently had an espresso while we weren't looking and stayed awake to watch three movies. Since I seem to get sick on planes now (and I did last night), the good thing was having Bryan in a middle row with the girls flanking him. I was on the aisle seat of the same row, but the rows were offset such that I was behind them. The girls couldn't have behaved better, so it wasn't a big deal that I was a bit queasy throughout the flight.
Quick #5: Clearing passport control took all of five minutes. No more stupid papers to fill out with your name, passport number and address in France. Lovely.
Quick #6: Since our luggage was last on, it was first off.
Quick (and fun!) #7: For the first time ever, I got off a plane and was looking for someone to be holding my name written on a piece of paper. We didn't arrange for a limo, dangit, but we did have a nice Vietnamese man pick us up. The whole "French with a Vietnamese accent" thing threw me a bit, but we got our points across and got to the apartment.
Quick #8: While the rest of the crew slept, I walked 20 feet across from our front door into a large indoor mall area. I hopped into the giant grocery store and picked up a few staples: rotisserie chicken, Camembert, cornichons (the girls loved them the last time we were here), Nutella (ditto), cereal, milk, salad and an inaugural bottle of St. Emilion--our favorite, nostalgic-choice wine.
Note to the Future Director of Anne's French Adventure (working title), all this should take less than a minute. Suggested music: The Chicken Dance or something similarly frenetic. Maybe a hora, think Zorba the Greek, that speeds up as the credits roll on the black screen. Then as the song really takes off, we see the check in procedures begin and speed through the scene.
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