Tuesday, December 30, 2003
We met up with Jennifer and David at the airport and soon made our way over to the Air Canada international flight desk to check in our baggage and get our tickets. We met Jennifer's friends Allie and Gord there, who would also be accompanying us on our trip and experiencing Chateau Volterra with us. Jennifer has been staying with the couple while she is taking her studies at Brook in viniculture, and Gord is coming along to help prune the grape plants and train the staff in his techniques.
Thanks to the kindness of another passenger we managed to get all four of us together in a single centre row of the plane. Was pleased to find that the seating relatively spacious, for once not feeling that I didn't have enough leg room.
The ride over the Atlantic was very bumpy, the plane almost constantly buffeted. Not a roller-coaster ride of a flight by any means, but just constantly bouncy. This, likely combined with a bug that Annie had had the previous week, made Vanessa very very sick, and after a couple of hours of flight we had used up all of our air sickness bags and had to get a fresh supply from the flight attendants. She couldn't keep down the Gravol we gave her and it was all we could do to just keep her hydrated. Thankfully, probably due to exhaustion more than anything else, she ended up sleeping a good part of the journey, usually punctuated by bouts of being sick. Poor thing.
For the record, the movies shown in-flight were The Hulk and Moonstruck. The Hulk was completely predictable and really about as dopey a movie as you can get. Vanessa had fallen asleep against my arm for most of Moonstruck, so I didn't get to my armrest to plug in the headset to hear the dialog. No big deal really.
For the most part Annie fared better, and was so excited by everything that she fought hard against falling asleep. She finally ended up falling asleep at 10:30pm, and managed to sleep pretty much until the end of the flight when we landed in Frankfurt.
The Dash Through Frankfurt
The plane from Frankfurt to Nice was only booked an hour after we were to land, and that time was considerably whittled down by the time we time we got pass security. We only had about 15 minutes before our boarding time left.
Alley made a plea that we should check our to see if our gate had changed, but urgency pressed us on to Gate A21, which ended up at the far side of where we were when we started. One thing that ought to be said about Frankfurt airport is that it is huge, one of the largest airport hubs in the world. Up and down elevators (or "alligators" as Annie liked to call them), and then a brisk walk with kids and luggage across the people-movers – at least the ones that were working. All the while our lungs realized that we were in a continental European airport – in other words there were lots of people indoors who were smoking. After a brisk walk and much huffing and puffing we got to our gate – only to find it deserted. After a brief panic thinking that we had somehow missed our flight, a check on a local monitor told us that the gate for our flight had been changed, and that it was about half-way back along the way we had came. A mad dash ensued, with Annie gleefully bopping up and down on her Mother's shoulders and me holding on to Vanessa as we scrambled back half way along the way we had just come. We got there just as they were checking the last batch of passengers in, though we had to pause to allow poor Vanessa to be sick again, probably a combination of still feeling ill and the result of the excited running through the airport.
We soon climbed aboard the smaller 737B and I got a seat with Annie at the back of the plane along with Jennifer, Vanessa getting a seat wingside with her Mother. Jennifer pointed out that one of the passengers in front of us had a dog on her lap, something you'd never see in North America. It was a small dog, well-behaved, and I wouldn't have even known it was there if Jennifer hadn't pointed it out.
While we left Frankfurt with good weather, it was storming over Nice, which made for another bumpy ride, especially as we came to final approach. I know that Vanessa was sick around this time, and as we were in the back of the plane and had a really bumpy ride, even Annie got sick. Ugh. We were among the last to leave the plane, Vanessa in really rough-looking shape, staggering off the plane with her Mother, the twin effects of both exhaustion and her legs having fallen asleep on the plane.
(Not) So Nice in Nice
When we arrived at Nice airport the rain was slathering down, coming down in sheets. Several people in our party murmured that the weather we had left back home in Canada – colder, but sunny – was nicer than Nice currently had to offer. It was a tropical downpour without any of the associated warmth.
We trekked over to Nice's other terminal, grabbed a row of available seats near the Arrivals section, waiting for Joseph, Ariane and Cassandra to arrive from their flight from Bali, where they had just spent a 10-day vacation. We must have looked a pretty sorry sight, with most of us either sick or overtired, but we still had an hour-and-a-half's car ride ahead of us.
Joseph and crew arrived and soon after we stepped out into the pouring rain to pick up our rental vehicles. Luckily I had an umbrella packed away so the kids didn't get wet, but I got drenched. Soon we were off, chasing after an ever-speeding Joseph in some of the worst wet driving conditions I have been in. Thankfully both girls fell asleep in the back seat with me, though near the end poor Vanessa woke up only to be sick again. Finally we made our way up the soggy hillside where the Chateau is, and dragged ourselves inside.
We were ushered into a huge, dazzlingly white room with a huge pink couch in it. A small bedroom was attached to the main room, and that is where we put the kid's stuff. Jazzed at finally arriving, both girls were happy to be here, and we dropped them both into a nice warm bath prior to them completely conking out for the rest of the day on their bed.
We soon followed the kids, after first saying our greetings to everyone else in the place, and then gratefully crashing out in the master bed.
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