Day 9 (March 20, 2016): Rough Trip Home

Welcome to the dullest entry in the blog: the logistical details of the trek home. If I wasn't such an airplane buff, I'd have probably ended with yesterday's entry. But an airplane buff I am, so here we go! 

We were supposed to fly nonstop from Reinion to Paris Orly, get a train across the city to Charles de Gaulle, then fly nonstop to Montreal. A few days ago, Air France changed its schedule, making it necessary to rebook our flights, via Mauritius. 

At 9 PM last night, we flew on a packed AirFrance Boeing 777 from Mauritius, direct to Charles de Gaulle. Surprisingly, we slept for much of the flight. 

Our AirFance Boeing 777-300 from Mauritius to Paris, painted in a special Skyteam livery.

Breakfast #1: The French love their bread and cheese for breakfast, and AirFance upheld the tradition!

We arrived half an hour early, quickly cleared immigration, picked up our bags, and rechecked them to Montreal. (For some reason, the AirFrance computer wouldn't let them check the bags all the way through for us.). Since we were outside immigration, we decided to trek from terminal 2 to terminal 1, where we had access to a business lounge. Charles de Gaulle is simply massive. So big, that getting from T2 to T1 took almost an hour!  But it was worth the lounge access. We are big fans of "pain au chocolate" (French pastry filled with chocolate) and croissants. So we had a great second breakfast consisting of both, along with a French cappuccino. 

Breakfast #2: French pastries at the ICare Lounge. 

After a couple of hours chilling out, we headed back to T2, this time using a bus shuttle that stays within secured zones, making it unnecessary to re-clear security. The ride took a full hour, but it gave us the chance to view some amazing aircraft from all over the world. A highlight was seeing the (relatively new) Airbus A380 full double-deckers from Thai Airways, AirFrance, Emirates Airlines and Singapore Airlines. There are only a few places on Earth where you can get to see such a conglomeration of A380s!  

The other highlight was seeing one of the last surviving examples of an AirFrance Concorde, which is permanently mounted in the middle of the Charles de Gaulle airfield. 

One of the last Concordes, on permanent display at Charles de Gaulle's airfield.

We made it to our gate just as boarding was starting. Unfortunately, our Airbus A340 was parked at a remote stand and we had to take a 25-minute bus ride to reach it. 

Our AirFrance Airbus A340 from Paris to Montreal, parked at a remote stand. 

We were all ready to depart on time when the captain announced that a passenger was ill and needed to be removed by ambulance. That added a one-hour delay. Then he announced that, due to the Air Traffic Control strike, we had lost our take-off slot and would have to wait another hour!  We ended up leaving over two hours late. 

I won't bore you with the details but, long story short, we missed our Halifax flight. As it was a separate ticket and as all the flights were packed due to March Break, it was only a lot of begging and the compassion of a very kind Air Canada agent that got us on standby for the next flight. A couple of no-shows at the last minute enabled us to get seats. We made it home by 10 PM. 

What a rich nine days it has been. Both islands - and the Paris stop - were beyond expectations. The weather was perfect. And most logistics went smoothly. All ingredients of a great holiday. Thanks for tuning in!