Day One – Travel + Bastille = ?:
Faster planes mean shorter trip – a good thing most of the time. However, given that flying to Europe involves an overnight flight from the east coast, shorter trips mean less sleep. That meant about 2.5 hours of net sleep on Monday night.
Note to self: Landing on Bastille Day in France (Independence Day), not recommended. No one is there to work. The luggage took forever and when it finally arrived in baggage claim, the bike box wasn’t appearing.
Psyched to dust off what little French I know, I walked up to the baggage service rep and asked in French where the oversize baggage was delivered. I was actually a little proud of myself stringing something like that together on the first shot.
He answered, “the over-sized baggage will come out right over there buddy.” Perfect English. Pride was short-lived. It turns out, British Airways flew two guys in on our flight to handle bags on Bastille day. The local help “isn’t reliable” on holidays (he said with a smile).
After meeting my cousin Kent outside of baggage, we proceeded to get an encore performance at Avis (2 people working, 10 people in line, 2 employees out back on a smoke break). Ah, joie d’vivre!
After getting to the hotel in Provence, a whole new page turned on this first day though. Eating at a decent hotel in France trumps any restaurant in the US (I mean any). This hotel has a chef that is well-known in the region – and for good reason. A five-course dinner with Kent and our guide David was a very cool way to end the day.
The specialty of this region is chocolate and wine. I could live here. And weigh 300 pounds. Vive le France!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment