Aug 12 - so far so good

I actually slept until almost 5am.  That's pretty good, considering the 6 hour time difference ...

Backing up ...

We had an easy trip to the airport; traffic was light; then an early dinner with Jim and Sheryl at the same restaurant that we'd had dinner a year ago prior to the trip to the UK, with Michael.  Three of us had the half-rack of ribs, which were great; Sandy had ... I think ... a skewer of something.

It went like clockwork in the airport; the Option Plus getting us straight in, bags checked, right at the weight limit, no bike charge, no extra bag charges.  I'll have to look back at what we paid for that.  Also, so far so good for the S&S case.  They couldn't figure out my one bag at security -- the little Randonneurs Ontario bag that's full of cereal, a big Costco bag of almonds, a couple of GPS's, some other small odds and ends ... and ... the bicycle shoes, which were causing them angst until they opened the bag and figured out what they were, ensured that they weren't shoe bombs, I guess.

We found a place inside to have a glass of wine, whiled away the time, headed to the gate, boarded early (Option Plus), and were seated about 45 minutes before flight time.  Our seats had extra leg room (2-by, close to the rear of the plane) and little seat covers denoting the fact that we'd paid for OP.  Later that would provide a bottle of champagne, a snack that we declined (chips etc), bottle of wine with dinner vs glass for everyone else.  I'd say that the prime benefits were the fast check-in and the included extra bag.

Ok, just checked my old emails; actually Sandy had ordered this one.  It was $278 for the Option Plus.  Doing the math, without the OP we'd have paid $100 for the extra bag and $30 for the bike, so $130 each way, so basically break even.  Oh yes, the other MAJOR benefit of the OP was the seat selection and thus the better seats.  We might have lucked into the better seats, since they are not exclusive to OP, but couldn't be guaranteed.

I'm going to be looking into Air Transat for our planned ski trip in January from Toronto to Vancouver.   I'm pretty happy with them ... so far.

Ok ... so far so good ... the flight pulled away from the gate a few minutes early; full, full, full.  An hour or so later we were served dinner, naturally, and naturally I picked the chicken vs the pasta (my diet).  Ignoring the rice, desert, bread, that meant that I ate, at most, 1 oz of chicken in gravy, a tiny, tiny bit of chicken.  Later in the flight we would get breakfast, which consisted of a sweet bread of some sort ... also ignored.  Once on the ground on the way to our rental car, Sandy had a pastry, but there was nothing without bread at the little walk-by cafe.  I was ok though.

So, well into dinner the person in front of Sandy suddenly leaned her seat all the way back, knocking Sandy's glass of red wine all over and likely ruining her pants, white t-shirt, white sweater.  What a mess.  A bull in a china shop would have been a better traveling person in front of us.  No apologies, nothing.  Sandy talked to the flight attendants and they said that this hardly ever happens, takes sudden, explosive-almost, leaning seat back to do this -- which is what they "lady" had done. 

... and, what's done is done, no taking it back.  Sandy will try dry-cleaning once we're at the Novotel.

The flight arrived on time, I'd gotten, oh, 1/2 hour of sleep.  I don't sleep very well a) upright, b) without something to lean my head against.  In all my years of travel, I would always take the window seat, because I can sleep there, but cannot sleep in an aisle seat.  Sandy likes the window ... the price one pays ...

Off the back of the airplane, onto the tarmac and into the shuttle bus to the terminal, we were almost the first ones through and then through Immigration.  There were no landing cards to complete, simply stamping by the Immigration person. No questions to be answered, nothing.  Odd.  Then we waited for our bags.  Two, Sandy's and the green bag with my bike clothes, were quickly out, then the other two, my bike and civies, were towards the end.  No matter because the entire crowd was  going nowhere.  There must have been something security-wise happening because Customs wasn't letting anyone through.  There were officers present but the tape was drawn.  After a time, perhaps 1/2 hour, they moved the tape aside and we all traipsed through, no questions, not stopping, no forms, nothing.

Onward ... with our two luggage carts, a long walk towards Terminal 1 -- we'd arrived at 3.  I'd forgotten this part but we then got to the train station, had to leave the carts behind, go down the escalator to the train -- much better with S&S and no big wheeled duffle that I'd had last time, and onto the train to T1.  Still, I was sweating like a pig.  It was hot.  It was at the train station that Sandy had the pastry and Espresso; I had a cappuccino.  

We finally got to the Europcar desk at T1, waited endlessly for the one person to get to us, who said that they didn't have the car that we'd selected (we had booked January 17 !), and did we want such-and-such upgrade for a measly 10 Euros per day.  Well, that would come to an almost 300 Euros more than the 500 Euros for the month, so no way !  I've had it with Europcar; next time I'll try Enterprise or Avis, both of which are in these major cities.

So after much back and forth, he came up with a car, but it wasn't onsite.  The expected 20 minutes wait became almost an hour, so we ended up at that Europcar desk for 2 hours.  Such is life.  We have a Daccia something-or-other that is almost the size of the Vauxhaul that we had in the UK, almost, and everything fits.  It's nowhere near as nice a car as the VW Polo Diesel that we ordered, but, we're rolling.  Everything fit.  It's something after 1pm now; we'd landed at 9:30.  Luckily this isn't a two day trip !

It's about 1.5 hours to Reims, give or take, but we stopped at an "Aire" (service area) for some lunch and did a little bit of dallying because the roads didn't match my Europe Garmin mapset.  I'd built a new mapset using the online tool but didn't want to try it out yet.  I'll do that before we go any further.

We found our cute little hotel downtown Reims without any difficulty, checked in, unloaded some bags, grabbed a snooze that started sometime after 4pm and were up at 6:15 p.m. catching up with email etc. and then off walking to find someplace for dinner.  There are little cafes everywhere and we found a grocery store, sat at some tables along the street, talked to the people at the tables almost touching ours -- on the left, from Netherlands; on the right, from Toronto.  The ones on the right had also arrived that day and were staying somewhere outside of Reims.  She was born in New Liskard ... small world ?!? ... Barb ... I forget his name.  Nice couple.  He just retired but she's still working.

Dinner, yes, great lamb chops, wine, you-name-it, good company, great weather (had cooled down to somewhere in the 80's, expected to hit 96F today), and my stomach & head started to feel better with the time change and some food in me.  We went to the grocery store afterwards and I picked up a small salad and a case of Pellegrino "with gas" bottled water, one of which is sitting beside me now, in the hotel lobby, as I write this.

So, yes, asleep around 10:30 or so, awake at 5am, down to the lobby with Sandy still sleeping.  As I walked down the stairs the night guy bustled around, turned on lights, got me coffee (whew, don't want that withdrawal headache), and opened up the lobby desk for the day.  I have no idea how that would have worked / timing-wise, without my creaking down the one flight of stairs.  They do have an elevator, thank goodness with our bags.

Coming back from dinner, I brought the S&S case into the hotel (we're parked in the street) but left my bike-clothes-bag.  I haven't opened it yet, but I'm counting on no problems.  I'd like to do a quick inspection before we head out to any activities today, to ensure that everything looks ok. 

Well, that was a long blog, but it was a long day.

We did hear from Abby via Sheryl, that everything is ok at that end and that she really wanted to come to France with us, but it wasn't to be.  Both Sheryl and Sheila write these from-the-dog emails, which crack us up. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there's been a mini tornado at our house in Florida.  A downspout pulled away, some soffit pulled down, shingles removed from our boat house and blown through Gene & Judy's screens, nothing major but significant none-the-less.  That happened the day before we left for Hemmingford. Calling it a mini tornado is using Judy's words; I'm sure that it didn't actually come to that but it certainly must have been windy for a few minutes !

Harris and Debbie had a pipe broken on their dock which was spouting water.  Judy got hold of us, we contacted H&D who were in Montreal (amazing) who in turn contacted their person, who turned off the valve.  Gene gave me the name of a roofer who he'd used in the past and had just glued down two loose shingles; I called him as we were driving to Hemmingford; he agreed to check out the house.  The work has now been done for the agreed-upon price (a little too much, but what can you do), and I just paid him via his girlfriend via PayPal.  I could have also sent him a check via the bank or he was willing to simply wait, but I thought that I'd get this out of the way.  I'll meet up with him when we get back to Florida.  The shingles are still missing from the boat house, that can wait.

It's actually not a "boat house", really, it's a cover over part of the dock with the little Whaler suspended below.  Perhaps I'll simply re-shingle the entire thing.  I'll buy dinner for Gene and Judy to a) thank them for helping and b) pay them back for the replaced screen, which Gene figured wouldn't cost very much.  Strictly speaking, we're probably liable for it.

The two houses own us, not the other way around.

Onward !