Travel Days Are Not Nothing 12/26/19 Day 2

Some may think of the travel days as non-vacation days. The McGehee's Abroad make waiting look good, so we make it a travel day worth posting about.

Waiting, and then waiting some more. 

An Unexpected Adventure:

A remarkable feature to our first leg of the flight is the heat. We prepared for cold, not heat. Nothing like dozing off and then waking up in an increasingly hot sweat on a 10 hour plane ride. When that happens, first, there is the reach for the vent, but it will turn out to be just a light, then out of desperation there is the moment when cooling down matters more than anything else. Thus, despite the now dark and otherwise sleeping cabin, and being middle seat between Fischer and Nolan, my boots come off to no avail. Then my boot socks required peeling off, which I swear I placed in my jacket pocket, only to end up lost for the remainder of the flight. I became cool-ish and finally slept. And then came the time when I should be fully dressed for the fight, only I cannot find my socks. About 4 hours later of searching, Nolan recalled the safety video and advised me, "You're going to have to call the attendant for dropped items." Yeah, no. Not going to call a flight attendant over to help me find my socks. This is weird enough. Next best thing, I offered to pay the whichever kid could find my socks one- Euro and one-Gyro. Less than one minute later Nolan found them under my seat. Not 30 minutes later we were wandering through Customs in France and complaining of the uncomfortable heat throughout the International terminal. We can all agree that we are looking forward to cooling down soon. 

Finally coming into France. 


Rating the Airport/Airline Meals:

LAX International Airport: Christmas dinner consisted of Pizza, burger, shoestring and sweet potato fries, and a small KFC mash potatoes with gravy. Best part was the sharing of the food.

Air France LAX to Paris: We seem to all agree that the pasta in red sauce and banana chocolate marble cake were good for plane food. The French breakfast was not so good: Plain yogurt (thin & sour), hard bread, grilled frommage (cheese) sandwich with sauteed mushrooms, tomatoes and spinach on the side steaming in a little tin chafing type dish for far too long and a Madeleine cookie for dessert (the Madeleine was the winner).

Charles De Gaul International: I had to escape the heat but I could have stayed and lived off of the food. We divided three slices of various types of quiche, a lasagna, frommage and salami sandwich and a banana for good measure before moving onto macaron cookies hand picked by James and Fischer. The rose flavored macarons were unforgettable. 

  French Macarons

Air France Paris to Athens: Ding, ding ,ding! We have a winner. A little sack of delicacy to munch on. Inside: Cheese and olive tapenade sandwich, Mediterranean marinated vegetable cold salad, an interesting cookie (highly valued by Nolan and James), with a little juice (unrecognizable sweet flavored drink). 

The meals along the way have eased our palates into what will be a barrage of unfamiliar tastes. Try not to discount this part of the journey. Enjoy every moment. Especially the "I caught you sleeping game."

Day 2 came to an end when the flight landed at 1AM. No customs. Straight to the taxi. But not without noticing Greek mythologies tethered to benches. 

Hoping we get over our impending jet lag soon - we'll keep you posted.