August 24, 2008
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NRT-SFO-LHR-CDG
Tokyo-San Francisco- 8 hours
Layover in San Francisco- 6 hours
San Francisco- London- 10 hours
Layover in London- 7 hours
London- Paris- barely an hour
Getting the fuck out of Charles De Gaulle airport- InfinityI doubt I’ve spent another 3 days where time had as little meaning it has had since I left Tokyo. The numbers on my watch or on any of the 5 cell phones I was carrying (don’t ask) could have meant anything. Light and dark came and went with no rhyme or reason, and sleeping and eating came in random intervals and in strange variety.
On my flight to Tokyo I got bumped up to business class on JAL for the second time, either because they value me as a customer or because I had explained my schedule to the woman putting the tags on my baggage and she took pity on me. So dinner that night consisted of things like tureen of tortoise and sea breem and ginger and other things that should never be written down in English. I felt like going a bit less exotic for breakfast so I asked the flight attendant if the western “breakfast sandwich” had pork in it. She answered quite positively that it did not. Then she brought it back to me and said “actually, it has ham in it, you don’t eat ham do you”?
Unless your ham is made out of chicken, no I do not. So I had fish and rice for breakfast.
In SFO I had a $1.63 apple with a side of T-mobile internet. If you can think of anything more bittersweet after an 8 hour flight than seeing the face of the person you love flattened out on a computer screen when you’re used to having it right in front of you, please mail it to me and I’ll send you a mop and bucket to wipe up your tears.
Just before my flight to London I had a falafel platter to the tune of British chatter over a 49ers football game. Very international.
I slept through my flight to London mostly, except for like, the one time I had to get up to use the bathroom when the person sitting in the middle had also gone to go somewhere, and the asshole in the aisle just sat there while I climbed over him rather than getting up for me. Please don’t be that guy.
I was glad I had the window seat when we landed though. It was a beautiful day, and what I saw of the city was very pretty from the air. The captain pointed out the river and the Queen’s residence, and other areas of interest and then made a crack about trying to get home on the freeway. Thats when I knew I was in England.
Layover lunch in England I sprung for a restaurant because it was the only peaceful place to sit in Terminal 5. Heathrow should win some kind of award for “most spilled Starbucks on the floor”. Brava. I ordered the veggie brunch because I had no idea what meal I should be eating. It was good, and I even liked the beans. I’ve never had beans for breakfast. Is that a British thing?
Don’t ask me what I did for the next 5 hours before my flight. I don’t know.
On the (delayed) flight to Paris they gave us a beverage and a chicken wrap. The male server had a gigantic box of them and handed them out as though it was a treat we should be really grateful for. Or maybe we should have been grateful for his efforts to say “Chicken wrap” to every single passenger on the flight.
“Chicken wrap”
“Chicken wrap”
“Chicken wrap”
“Chicken wrap”All hail Andy, bringer of chicken wrap!
Actually, it was a good little snack, but I think the first 6 rows of first class seats got something heated up. Seriously, where do you get off sitting in first class on an hour long flight?
They handed us no entry or customs cards on the flight because frankly, the French can’t be bothered.
And rather than a big room for immigration like they have at SFO or NRT with fancy little line dividers, CDG has two kiosks that people just crowd behind like a movie theatre line. Each kiosk can seat two people, but the second the line starts looking less like the line for Batman and more like the line for Love Guru, one or two of them go on break. It may not have been the longest leg of my journey, but it felt like it.
Similarly, the ticket machines for the RER out of the airport take coins and credit cards, not bills. So it was with great trepidation that I pushed my HSBC card, which had utterly failed me in Tokyo and London, into the machine and typed in my pin, since the 1 euro in change that I had probably wasn’t going to get me anywhere. The card was accepted, and I successfuly paid 8 Euro for a ticket home.
Of course, the turnstyles and ticket stamping machines were closed for repairs, and no one checked the tickets on the train. Merde!
