Friday, April 27, 2007
I left directly from the office and headed to Pearson via the airport. I arrived at the international Air Canada terminal to see Erika and the girls (and Neda, our nanny who was also coming along for the trip) having just pulled up themselves to the curb in their own limo. Talk about timing. Dave and his wife Charmain were there as well.
Unfortunately there was an astronomically-long lineup in order to check in our bags for the flight. After getting our boarding passes printed up at the adjacent kiosks, Erika got into the line while I kept he kids busy and happy. They were both wearing their Healys/roller-skate shoes, and Pearson is a great place for doing that sort of thing. Erika and co. were in line for about an hour, so it is just as well we came early in order to get our flight.
Managed to have a pleasant, relaxing dinner in the hour remaining prior to boarding once we had got through customs.
The flight itself was simply long. We flew economy on an older plane, one which had not been fitted with personal in-flight entertainment systems. Luckily I had brought along a personal DVD player for the kids to watch movies on to help keep them occupied when they were not colouring or doing other things to amuse themselves. We all had seats in the same numeric row, but despite this the seating was staggered so that the seats for all six of us were not in line with each other. I managed to switch with a woman in the row in front of us so that at least one parent could sit beside the kids. Unfortunately this put me behind some bald-headed guy who perennially put his seat back, even wen he didn't need to for sleeping, putting the top of his seat about six inches from my nose. I had bought a blue flight cushion prior to the flight which wrapped around my neck, but even with this extra creature comfort, I still couldn't fall asleep. The girls thankfully managed to sleep for much of the flight, as did Erika and Neda. I ended up watching Dreamgirls (very enjoyable) from a tilt-down CRT situated a few rows in front of me, as well as part of The Red Violin, which was hard to watch as the video flickered out of synch every few seconds.
This time we flew to Munich, which, being further west, must have tacked on extra time to our flight over and above what we would have had if we had instead flow through Frankfurt or Paris International airports. Getting off of the plane was delayed substantially as Annie was sick just as the plane was landing, and Vanessa had lost her braces. No luck with the latter unfortunately, which will be a costly replacement when we return home.
Getting through Munich airport was not fun. One sick kid, and another customs check to go through, which was much more thorough than usual for us. Our connection time for the next flight was very close, and we thought for certain we had missed the flight thanks to the delays. But when we got to our gate we found that thanks to our friends, they were holding the flight for us. We got on the much more comfortable Lufthansa plane and flew the remaining leg to Nice Airport.
Labels: Air Canada, flying, Lufthansa, Munich, Nice Airport
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