We left to Paris on a Tuesday night. After dinner and teeth brushing and pajamas, instead of heading to bed, we got into my parents car and drove to the airport. We had been hoping Celia and Josie would fall asleep given this was their normal bedtime, but no dice. The change of routine and excitement about the trip was far too much. There was absolutely no line in security so after checking our bag we had over an hour to wait to board the plane. Most of the stores were closed too as this is clearly a low traffic time at the airport. We walked around, used the bathroom, drank more water and otherwise hung around in the airport trying to keep the girls from being too loud and too unhappy.

Since the girls were awake I started working on one of my goals for the trip which was a number of family portraits. Nothing perfect or fancy, but plenty of pictures with the four of us in it, and especially me since I’m the one usually behind the camera.

We were flying to Heathrow in London and then had 5 hours till we got a very short flight to Paris. They finally called our flight and we got on board. We ended up having a whole row to ourselves as the gentleman near us did not want to sit with us and there were plenty of open seats. Both girls wanted to sit with me though which was tough, and basically Celia got on the plane and started screaming ‘NO NO NO’ for about 5 minutes until she just passed out since it was way past her bedtime. Josie was determined to stay up for dinner on the plane. We tucked her into her seat and not long after the plane took off she fell asleep too. Jordi and I enjoyed a bit of dinner which wasn’t too bad, except for having a sleeping Celia on top of me and we tried to get some sleep.

Breakfast in the morning woke Josie up eventually and so after 5 hours of sleep for her, instead of her normal 10, she ate some breakfast and we landed in London. We got off the plane, walked a long long way to a shuttle bus and then through another terminal to wait for our connection. It was a nice big terminal though with lots to look at and walk around. The only trouble was finding some water for our water bottles, seems the water in the sinks in the bathrooms is not safe for drinking, but there are no signs, I only knew because someone I asked for help told me. There was one water fountain in the whole place, they definitely want you to have to buy some. We ate our snacks and leftover breakfast while watching the Queen on TV speaking to parliament. We muddled around a little, did some drawing and stickers before grabbing some lunch at an asian place, trying to get closer to local time. Walked around some more waiting for our flight and got Josie an ice cream. Note at this point in our  trip Celia did not like ice cream and would not eat it.

Finally our gate was announced, we got to our flight, and settled in for the hour long flight. The girls fell asleep again immediately on takeoff. I got a drink and Jordi and I took some more naps too. In Paris it was an easy trip through customs where they did almost nothing other than stamp us, picked up our bags and grabbed our car service into the city where it was already 6pm local time. All in all, it was a long and tiring trip but the girls were excited about stuff enough that they were engaged with their surroundings.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 10th, 2012 at 5:58 pm by Jen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.