080617 Going to Paris.

080617 Going to Paris.
Our flight departed at midnight so we have had a really long Sunday. There it was, the object of desire, a fully fuelled Boeing 747. The airplane that has represented the aviation industry for more than forty years. Even the new Airbus A380 is compared to the Boeing 747, albeit unfavourably.
I get a strange awareness when I am sealed inside an airtight aluminium tube hurtling along at 700 kilometres an hour at a height of 30,000 feet with 4 fairly well controlled fires on the wings that I am in what can be described as a dangerous situation. There is nothing natural about flying in an airplane. These machines are the pinnacle of our collective genius and yet they are little more than a bunch of bits of metal bent into the right shape and stuck together by other bits of metal in a slightly different shape.
We flew into a storm on departure and I sat bolt upright and wide eyed remembering selected episodes of Air Crash Investigation while the lightning flashes illuminated the cabin.
British Airways have an interesting in-flight entertainment system that, unlike the system on Brunei Airways‘ A320, actually worked. A quick look through the menu showed me that there were more movies than there was time to watch them - so rather than labour with the hefty decision on what to watch for the next thirteen hours, I selected the GPS channel. This informative channel showed me where were going, in three languages. The minimal amount of research that I had done before leaving suggested that we might be flying east over India, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq, and most of the places where people are shooting at each other. I was pleasantly surprised to see the plane heading north from Hong Kong and continue well into China. It was hours into the flight before we started to make our way east over Russia. This flight path makes a lot more sense if I imagine the plane travelling around the curve of the globe rather than travelling across a flat map - the plane followed a straight line, it was the earth that curved underneath it.

The flight left at mid-night so once the good people at British Airways had fed all the passengers they insisted on closing the window blinds and we started a few hours of enforced darkness. I was determined to stay awake and not miss out on the rare experience of flying in a Boeing 747 but the seats were so comfy that I fell asleep for five hours. When I woke up I sneaked a peek out the window, braving the wrath of the flight crew, and was rewarded with a stunning view of the sunrise over Siberia. I extricated my self from the seat by climbing over Hugo and Alex and went towards the light. The light was in the forward galley. The staff seemed friendly enough, in that I was not asked to leave but rather asked if there was anything that they could do for me. “Can I please look out your window?” I asked as if it was an outrageous request. They replied with an enthusiastic “Yes, of course you can, be careful of the door handle.” Opening the emergency escape door needed a five step process but I am sure that someone has blundered through the sequence by accident.
Outside there was as brilliant red horizon at sunrise. The snow-capped peaks of the Ural mountains slid past at 600 kilometres an hour. We were over Russia and heading into Europe. The peaks of the snowy mountains poked though the clouds as if they were solid clouds with shaper edges. The good people at British Airways made feel comfortable by giving me some noodles and free range of anything in the kitchen. I have heard it said that the best way to thank someone for a good time is to enjoy it. Showing great restraint, I took a few things for the boys.

We arrived in Paris during a strike by the fuel delivery drivers that has left the city bereft of taxis. We had to take the train. Trains in Paris - the city has developed over more time than the entire country of Australia. There were trains in Paris when Captain Cook sailed into Sydney and made the outrageous claim that he had “discovered” the place. Australians have a different railway gauge for each state and think that it is strange. To the Australian way of thinking, there is one country and so there should be one railway system. It is not so in Paris - not only are there multiple railway lines wending their way through, in and around each other, but there are also multiple gauges , some railway line have trains that use truck tyres instead of steel wheels. We travelled on five different trains from the airport to our flat in Le Marias.

Our flat in Paris is gorgeous. It was built in the 1700’s so the original occupants would have sat in this room and read the news about the discovery of Australia.

Suffering the effects of jet-lag we decided that we should stay awake until it was night time in Paris and get a good nights sleep and wake up on Paris time. Rather than just wait , we decided to go to the Eiffel Tower and see the icon of Paris sparkling with its lights on. Little did we know that seeing as it is summer in Paris the sun does not set until 10 o’clock. Jet-lag is truly an odd ailment. This strange condition where our internal reckoning of the time of day does not match with what we see. According to our internal clocks, it was 2am. I fell asleep in the park overlooking the Eiffel Tower.