Cherish (Paris)

Sorry this last post is late (Jen) I did say it would be Tuesday, but we left Paris at 8am Monday (Sydney time) and didn't get to Sydney until Monday at 8:00pm.  12 hours sounds neat eh? Except we were in the air nearly 24 hours.

Yes, 'cherish'.  One of the announcements on our China Southern Airlines flight said that the staff "cherish" the opportunity to serve us, as passengers, and to do everything to make our flight an enjoyable experience.   In the latter respect, as the young people used to say, dear reader, epic fail. Nothing cataclysmically shocking - except the food and the fact that when we needed to stay awake on the China-Sydney leg, but we got an older plane with no individual TV screens and therefore no movie marathons to occupy the nine hours of flight-time till we arrived in Sydney during the night. We really did not need to sleep all the way to Sydney to then go to bed when we got home but there was little else to do, courtesy of an older plane since they obviously put the newer versions on the European run as opposed to the Antipodes.  Also we were over the announcements in 3 languages (Chinese, English and then French) and  the appalling (even by airline standards) food options.  We will be going back to Qantas we think but the experiment was worthwhile just to see.

Paris - Ghangzhou - Sydney

The day commenced earlier than anyone would have liked.  I really must put more thought into flight times and the impact they can have, particularly when you need to be at the airport 3 hours prior to flight time.

Leaving a hotel is a much easier process (unless one of us is in a leg cast) - pack up, sign out, catch a cab.  We needed to meet the apartment owner, well, in our case, her mum who speaks no English, so that she can check the apartment and return our bond.  One of the curiosities of renting an apartment through Way-to-stay or Paris Attitude is that the rent (aside from deposit) and the bond, need to be paid in cash.  According to the contract we signed, we had to pay the remaining rent and the bond, which is equal to the total rent, upon arrival.  I'd been collecting € for a few days to hand over more than €3000.  The owner had decided this was too much and waived the bond to €500, which was wonderful, but left us with a lot of cash.  Anyway, we had to have an apartment inspection before the bond was returned.  This had to be tied in to the drive to Charles de Gaulle airport - and in our case, the removal of Steph and Stu who weren't part of the contract.  They had stayed with us the last few nights in Paris.

Flight at midday, we needed to be at CDG by 9am - a 30 minute drive that regularly takes 3 times that long, but we're flying out on a Sunday, so traffic shouldn't too bad - an hour should be OK.  So, we needed to leave at 8 am, which meant madame needed to inspect at 7:45 and Steph and Stuart needed to be gone by 7:15.  To ensure the final pack and showers, alarms were set for 6:30.  Oh dear, 6:30am on a Sunday morning in Paris.  Most Parisiennes wouldn't even know that time existed.

Everything was going beautifully.  The youngsters (such an old school word) were up and organised, well most of them (I'm looking at you Cait).  Bags mostly packed, people getting through the shower process and then the front door bell rings.  The world stopped.  Madame was here and Steph and Stuart were still, as they say, in the building.  Jayne intercepted her and explained that we weren't ready and that she had told Madame's daughter that in an earlier text message.  Madame then went for a coffee while we despatched Steph and Stuart and completed our packing.

Our booked car arrived 10 minutes before madame returned but all went well and we handed over the keys, received the cash deposit and settled into the limousine ride to CDG.  Paris, as expected, was still asleep until we neared the airport where the usual "bouchon" occurred and we crawled to terminal 2.  Luckily, we had allowed sufficient time and made it into the terminal in enough time to collect our tax refund, despite being sent to 2 different counters and then not being able to collect a refund in Australian dollars so we ended up with both Euro and US dollars to be sorted when we finally got back to Australia.  Also retrieved an unwell English matriarch from the toilets for an anxious son who couldn't go into the female toilets to see if she was ok (obviously, that was Jayne) and foiled the CDG check in procedure which couldn't/wouldn't electronically read our passports to check us in so all was done manually.

Six movies later, we arrived back in China to a cooler but no less polluted early morning in Ghangzhou to be greeted by a Chinese airport official with our 3 names plus 1 other on a chalk board as we disembarked for the 2 hour stop over.  Rather disconcerting to see your name on a chalkboard in a country known to consider human rights a minor irritation.  We were informed that there was insufficient passport information provided to enable them to process our transfer flights - assumption that this was a result of the CDG inability to scan our passports.  There ensued a military-style march through the Cantonese terminal at a frightening pace to get us "processed" before our imminent departure to Sydney.  Jayne had to run to keep up - well, given she says she never runs - jog.

Thankfully, we were not there for another 7 hours like the trip to Europe and as a result, they were obviously in a rush to get us processed and so we were pushed through and only had to spend a little more than an hour in the no internet, no photograph terminal.  Then we were back on a plane, not filled to capacity, homeward bound.  Cait got to sleep across 2 seats and Brad, although we had to endure the  frequent phlegm expectoration of a Chinese gentleman (gentleman do not spit, especially on planes - brad) and an ADHD Chinese 8 year old whose father was clearly more practised at sleeping through his antics than we were.  9 hours later, finally, we were back in Oz and plunged from 32 degree Paris to 6 degree Sydney.  The Odyssey was over with all participants in tact, customs negotiated and currency exchanged.  All that remains is the present distribution, the slideshow presentation, the unpacking and the jet lag adjustment..... and  the commencement of the planning for the next trip in 2014 - stay tuned, dear reader (we are open to suggestions if there are destinations you have always wanted to visit).  Or if anyone has any information on the Greek isles ...

Until January and the Mornington Peninsula, au revoir.