The French Experience: August 2012

This morning I was tossing up between going for a walk - rain is threatening - and going for a swim - I don't really want to. Hmmm.... Then I thought I might write in my blog! I know that my Facebook friends have seen a fair few photos of my trip to France, but a few people - OK, two - asked if I would blog about it. So I will. :-)I've been back for two weeks now, and to be honest I have struggled. Not only did I come back with an ear infection, but I was also suffering from the apres-vacances blues. Natural enough! But I'm fine. So. I flew out of Auckland on June 30th on Air New Zealand.(Who aren't giving me frequent flyer points but that's another story!)I despaired somewhat at the boarding area as it was a bit of a bunfight with several highly excited school teams. They were very noisy at first, but they did settle down. And miracle of miracles - for the first time ever I slept for five hours! I took a pill, and as it was after midnight it all just fell into place. Thus, a relatively short trip to Hong Kong. And here is a picture taken from a window there. Exciting, eh?

I hadn't been to this airport before and so I wandered around for a bit. I had a fairly painful foot massage, then a coffee and a stale doughnut. Boarding for the next flight on Air France was delayed, and when we did get on the plane we waited, and waited.... and waited. There were a couple of vague announcements but no attention from staff. All up, we were 2 1/4 hours late in departing. "Boarding problems" was the issue, whatever that means. It was a VERY long flight. I just couldn't get comfortable. Meals were average. However, I have to say that every single one of the cabin crew - male - were totally gorgeous in a very French way. And they spoke to me in French without changing to Engligh when they heard me speak. So that was nice! Fast processing on landing in Paris. No-one has ever checked my luggage there!And of course I was actually very pleased to indeed see my luggage - it's always a worry! I trotted along and there was my bed for the night! I had booked into the Sheraton as my arrival time was too late to connect with a train to Poitiers. And I'm glad I did. Even if there had been a train connection I would have missed it due to our plane being late. And also, I was able to have a really good sleep and feel pretty normal by the time I did go to Poiters the next day. It was wonderful to see Marie-Helene, Christian and Bernard at the station, and we went back home to have a lovely lunch - as always - and do a bit of holiday planning. Nice to be back in my French 'home'. On Tuesday Mare-Helene and Christian both had meetings, and I went on an outing with their (and my) friend Liliane. We went to a little town/village called St Gelais, mainly to see and art exhibition. But it worth going there anyway. Lovely buildings, and a great local restaurant where we had lunch.