Not surprisingly, I was fairly alert at 4am this morning. A fully risen sun did not help. Four hours later we finally committed to waking up. I walked down the street a ways to get us some breakfast. We were also going to get our covid tests this morning that we thought were required for Morocco, but the rules changed in the last 48 hours to only require proof of vaccination. This not only saved us some money, but may also have saved our nasal passages.
We took an Uber to the airport a little after 10 am. We arrived a little over 30 minutes later. We were informed our flight was “very full,” and thus were not assigned seats until last minute. We did some tchotchke shopping while we waited for boarding to commence. I acquired a Swedish football jersey. The flight was indeed quite full. We were placed in row 4 and 5. Now, the complicated thing with this is that row 4 was technically in what Air France inexplicably calls “first class.” To clarify, there is absolutely zero difference in the size of the seat, legroom, or otherwise. This is fairly common for short-haul European flights. They will simply block off the middle seat for the first few rows and say, “Voila!, such better service!”
Per my airline’s contract with Air France, they are supposed to give us only economy seats. Fortunately and very kindly, the gate agents were pragmatic and perhaps thought to themselves, “Who are we kidding?”and put one of us in “first class.” I kindly took my middle seat with “the others” in row 5 and offered Nicole the royal treatment. They brought her a cheese plate at one point. The 2 hour 40 minute flight arrived close to on-time and we had a shockingly seamless process exiting Charles De Gaulle airport. Having both been to Paris and done Paris things, we elected to stay outside the city in the town of Senlis, about 25 minutes to the north of Roissy.
We initially planned to just take another Uber, but the price had gone up to almost 60 euro at this particular time. I did a quick search for rental cars and determined it was cheaper for us to drive ourselves. Perhaps 30 minutes later, we were slowly, yet somehow chaotically exiting CDG Airport. We had a bit of trouble finding our B&B, as parking in small, old European towns is a bit of a challenge, but we eventually sorted it out.
It was a nice day in Northern France with sun and temperatures in the high 70s. Our room doesn’t have any aircon, so we opened the windows to try and get some air movement. After settling in, we headed out to explore the town. Most restaurants don’t open until 7-730pm, so we had some time to kill. Of course, I was hungry and couldn’t resist the temptation of a patisserie encountered during our stroll.
Fueled with a millefeuille, we continued our stroll around the old town, walking into the old cathedral at one point. When the restaurants started opening up, we struggled to determine where to go. Many were a bit too fancy for our tastes, and specialized in French cuisine, which seems to equate to pretentious and small portions. We just wanted some croque monsieurs in the end. We plopped ourselves down at a brasserie that had a chalkboard out front that said, “Croque Monsieur et Salade.” One would think a croque could be ordered there. We were informed that they weren’t serving food, so we crossed the street and found croques available there.
By now it was after 9pm and we’d only just finished our dinner. Europe is silly like that sometimes. Tomorrow we have a morning flight to Tangier, Morocco. Hopefully we get on without any issues.
passports & pepto bismol 