Day 1 – Leaving on a Jet Plane

The trip to begin the cruise was pretty uneventful. We got packed much faster than we expected, so sat around the house trying to work out what we’d forgotten. Sonya’s dad was nice enough to come take us to the airport and pick up the dog for the week at the same time. Dulles security was painfully slow (they only had security lanes open), but nothing unusual.

We had an incredibly pleasant surprise when boarding the plane. We had gotten some super-cheap tickets, which involved being all the way in the back of the plane. It wasn’t great, but it was about what we expected. Then, just as they were closing the doors, the stewardess asked if we wanted to move up to other seats where we might be more comfortable. We gave it some long and hard thought, but ultimately said yes. I thought we were moving up to a bulkhead row, or maybe an exit row, where I would have a trifle more leg room. Instead, we found ourselves in the business class section! Not only that, but it was indeed a bulkhead row. I’ve never had so much leg room on a plane before!

They served dinner almost immediately. Then, I promptly fell asleep. But only for maybe an hour and a half. I couldn’t get comfortable enough to sleep, but didn’t have the brain power to actually read or write. Le sigh. Instead, I watched three and a half episodes of Warehouse 13 (a surprisingly good show). They disturbed us long enough to foist breakfast on us (at 2am, according to our bodies!). Well, maybe it was breakfast. A hard roll, orange juice, and a big tub of plain yogurt. Mmm mmm.

Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris is very clean and reasonable attractive. Efficient, it is not. We got off the plane, and proceeded to walk. We didn’t really know where we were walking to, but the signs and other passengers were all pointing the same way. And we walked. We walked through a man-trap, which mean that we passed out of the secure area. We walked past hundreds of empty offices. We walked through areas that seemed to be nothing more than walkways, connecting two places that looked just the same. We walked through a passport checkpoint (though, admittedly, we did have to walk much slower, because of the queue). We walked through a terribly annoying security check, in which Sonya had to unpack her bag to get her camera out.

Finally we made it to the mall. Oh, I mean gate. Which was on the edge of a mall. Seriously, Tyson’s doesn’t have these kinds of stores. But, I guess that’s Paris for you. The gate was full of cranky, tired people, taking the last leg of an international jaunt. Fortunately, we were at least able to stop walking. I went and dropped $10 on a bottle of water and an Orangina (stupid exchange rate!).

Finally, our plane was called. The whole plane, all at once. Because, see, the sign at the boarding gate just said “Bus.” What does this mean, “Bus?” Is this some odd use of the word in French? Ah, no. What it meant was that CDG does not enough space at the terminal for all the planes. So, they piled all the passengers into a couple of shuttle buses, and we drove across the tarmac. Oh, look, dodge that plane! We ended up at a line of poor planes, exiled to the far side of the runways, because there was no room at the inn. Le sigh.

Well, no random upgrade this time. But, oddly enough, I fell asleep before we even began taxiing, and only woke up briefly when the stewardess was asking if we wanted a drink. Apparently, being totally cocooned in the middle seat, swaddled by polyester and human flesh, was good for my comfort. Or, I was just really, really tired.

We stumbled sleepily through the Barcelona airport. They have a really nice voice actor doing their recorded announcements in English. We collected our luggage, and made our way to customs. Ah, look, the “nothing to declare” door. Which, um, leads straight out into the outer portion of the airport. Huh? Turn back. Look around nervously for some desk we missed. Our passports were checked four times in Paris, but not once when passing out of the international area at Barcelona. Wacky.

We found the Norwegian Cruise Line people, defeated their shuttle snafu with our superior paperwork, then proceeded to wait for the shuttle. I did manage to avoid falling asleep standing up, fortunately. It was a close thing, though.

The shuttle was reasonably nice. We discovered two things that helped immensely. First, it was only about a third full, so we had plenty of room. Second, we had somehow gotten on the shuttle that included a brief tour of Barcelona along the way.

Barcelona is a surprisingly pretty city, with an amazing amount of stuff to see. I think we might arrange to spend an extra day there at the beginning of our cruise next year. Especially because, well, we both slept through a good portion of the tour. Le sigh.

Getting on board the cruise ship was super-easy. Honestly, easier than Disney. I don’t know, maybe we just had really good timing. But it all worked out very well. We went and grabbed some lunch at the buffet, then went and found our room. Sonya sacked out (as she hadn’t slept so much on the flight to Barcelona), while I explored the ship.

We eventually met up with Ray and Tina (origamislayer and stitchinthyme over on LJ), who we were cruising with. We compared travel notes (apparently our endless walking in Paris was much better than their total disorganization in Frankfurt). We thought about getting dinner together, but they were still totally whacked, and we weren’t much better. We went our separate ways for a bit. Then, we went to bed. Ah, glorious bed, how I had missed thee….

This entry was posted on 30. November 2009 at 10:30 and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.