What seems like a theme to this trip, we both had trouble sleeping. But, we got up, had breakfast and headed to the airport. We got there early but they don’t open checkin until 2 hours before the flight. So, we walked over to ticketing and cajoled the guy to give us seats – aisles across from each other on the 2 hour jump to Paris, then an aisle and middle for the 10.5 hour flight from Paris to LAX.

Aviva sat next to two oriental women on the flight to Paris. It turns out they came to Italy to study economics, and when they arrived they didn’t speak a word of Italian (this seems to be common – a woman that worked for me from China also didn’t speak English until she came to the United States to study). We both wonder how they can do this and still get reasonable grades. The two were part of a group from the University heading to China, so this was their first trip home in 3 years. One of the women threw up on the flight unfortunately.

We had to change terminals, of course, in Paris – when we got to our gate, they’d already started boarding! So Aviva ran for drinks and snacks while I waited in line. We got on board and found enough overhead space for everything. Let me tell you, spending 10.5 hours with your knees in the back of the chair in front of you isn’t fun. But at least I finished two more books on the flight, so I read four books on this trip:

• Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
• The Taqwacores
• China Underground
• A Short Histroy of Siena

Once we landed we had to wait for our bags (a long time – I think it was the third cart from the airplane). Then a 45 minute bus ride to Van Nuys on the FlyAway (I highly recommend this service if you’re out in the Valley – its cheap and runs every half hour). Got the car, drove home (only went the wrong way once); we got home around 10:30P, so it was a very long day traveling.

I didn’t shave while we travelled this time – if you want to see how hairy I got, you can check out the animation on my blog post here.

And we had a good time! We saw some new things, this time we were comfortable enough to talk with a number of people which is something I enjoy when traveling, and we brought back a lot of stuff!