Traveling by airplane just doesn’t have the sense of excitement as it used to – particularly when there are three to catch.
The flight from Port Elizabeth to Johannesburg was non eventful. We had a short wait of about an hour or so until the overnight Air France flight to Paris. Entering the plane things weren’t so good. It seemed there was no cold air flowing so it felt like an oven. Worse still – someone near us (couldn’t/wouldn’t figure out who) had wiffy armpits and it smelt like someone with 20 arms. We were promised the plane would cool down when we took off. The best we got is it got less hot. The smell didn’t blow away.
I was wedged between Helen and a German lady. My seat didn’t want to stay back and it felt like the padding beneath my arse had worn out as the chair felt quite hard. The German lass didn’t feel this as she had a rather large amount of padding of her own which made it’s way into my seat from time to time over the night. As a consequence of all this (the heat, the smell and the German invasion) I slept very little, if at all.
I caught up a little sleep at Charles de Gaul airport where we had a three hour wait for our London flight. Helen found some adjacent seats without intervening handles which allowed me to lie down and sleep for a bit.
The London flight took off about 45 minutes late for various reasons. We landed about 10 to 11. The busses which we wanted to catch left the central bus station at 15 minutes past the hour. We didn’t hold much hope for the 11:15 bus but despite this we hurried along. We whizzed through immigration without delay and the first of our bags appeared almost as soon as we arrived at the baggage claim. Our hopes were raising. Could our second bag arrive in time?
An agonizing wait ensued and eventually our next bag arrived. We practically ran through customs, ditched the trolley, down the stairs, picked up another trolley, ran to the bus station basement, crammed ourselves into two separate lifts (elevators), and finally ran (me with three bags/cases) to the bus stop. We arrived a minute late. The bus left two minutes later. Phew.
On the bus we started our calls to figure out what we’re doing for the next couple of weeks. Looks like we’ll stay in Chesham for a couple of days then drive up to Manchester to visit one of Helen’s sisters. A couple of days there then down to Cornwall, probably stopping off somewhere along the way. A few days in Cornwall then back to Chesham. We may have an opportunity to stay in London for a couple of days so we’ll do that if we can just before heading back to Grenada.
