The flight - Day 1 (to 2)

And so I begin the chronicles of our 3 week family Tour de France. I must say it made me giggle a little to log into my blogger account today as the whole page is in French. I'm also intrigued by the keyboard on which I type because it includes the Euro sign (which of course I can't figure out how to type) and also the @ sign is in a different location than US keyboards. For those of you wondering why on earth I am blogging instead of out seeing the sights, let me assure you that many, many sights have been seen!! The Provencal countryside is encouraging me to sit back, slow down, relax and type a post. Enjoy!

Our trip began on Tuesday, June 1st. We had high hopes of snagging the bulkhead seats (with bassinet for Isla) for the long flight leg. Of course Delta only lets you put in a request for the seat but then their actual distribution is on a first come, first serve basis (what's the point in "reserving" it then, I wonder?...) We were instructed to arrive at the airport 3 hours before departure for the best chance at getting the seats we wanted. Of course, as we got in line at the airport to check in, we noticed TWO families ahead of us, both with babies. And wouldn't you know it, both were on OUR flight and got the only two baby bassinets. Boo! We tried hard not to glare too hard at them as we sat in the waiting area and decided to pass the time by making a Skype call from Graham's I-pod Touch. It was then that we realized we had two different kinds of headphones for the I touch, one with a microphone and one without. I had packed the set without which meant our hopes of using the I Touch for free Skypes calls to family while away were dashed. Oh well. We were an hour and a half into our trip with only two small hiccups...not bad but we were hopeful we wouldn't keep up this pace!

We flew direct to Amsterdam. The flight was just under 10 hours which was plenty long for us. Isla was really tired but didn't want to miss out on the action so was fighting sleep and was quite fussy. The flight was scheduled to land at 7:45 AM Amsterdam time (which felt like10:45 PM Seattle time). The poor girl only slept for maybe two hours total from when we left the house at 9:30 AM on. I don't think Graham or I slept a wink on the plane. Overall though, it was MUCH better than I'd anticipated and Isla was consolable.

The airport in Amsterdam was quite cool. Imagine a giant Ikea-ish monster of a travel mecca. It was like an international hodge podge. We liked the sparkly floors (as in crystally sparkly, not squeaky clean sparkly) and the slat ceiling. Oh and the best part were the reclined, padded lounging chairs, like you'd find at a nice hotel pool, that we discovered lined along one of the windows.

We had a 3 hour layover but it went quickly because we had to wait in few lines to get our seats issued for the next flight (apparently they won't assign seats ahead of time if you're traveling with a baby). Oh and when we were going through customs, I picked the wrong line and we ended up behind some lady who'd been gallavanting around the world and her travel visa had expired and it didn't sound like they were going to let her enter--oops. When we got to our gate, we were delighted to find an electronic store selling I-pod headphones with mics-our Skype problem solved!

I finally got Isla to fall asleep in the front pack right before we board our short flight into Paris. We took our seats only to have the flight attendant tell me she needed to be out of the pack, buckled in (on my lap) and forward facing. All I could think was "DO YOU REALIZE HOW LONG IT'S BEEN SINCE THIS GIRL SLEPT AND HOW LONG IT TOOK ME TO GET HER THIS WAY?" But instead of saying any of that, I smiled politely and did as asked (whick woke the babe and resulted in a rather fussy flight). Thankfully, the businessman seated next to us claimed to really like kids and did even seemed phased when he got a piece of banana catapulted onto his nice shirt.

We landed safely in Paris just after noon and.....