Flying to France – Monday 10/1 – Tuesday 10/2

As expected, a long day!  Two weeks before the trip, Maxine checked online and found out that, for just 40,000 more airline miles, we could upgrade the overnight flight (just going to France unfortunately, but not coming back) to business class.  So, this trip being, among other things, our 25^th anniversary, we did.

Lufthansa doesn’t really pride itself on business class service!  For these overnight flights, the airlines usually offer a quick dinner that they can serve you just after takeoff.  You get a shortened meal, take an ambien, then try to get some sleep.  But…  with Lufthansa, it took over 2 hours into the flight for them to manage to get the food service far enough along that we’d eaten part of the “quick service” meal.  Eventually, I gave up waiting on them, took the ambien, and took my shot at sleeping.

Not easily though…  But, it was much better than I’d been envisioning the flight would be like two weeks earlier.

Our connection was LAX-Frankfurt-Toulouse.  We will give Lufthansa credit for one thing, efficiency on the ground.  They had a woman waiting outside the jetway to herd the passengers going onto Toulouse, and a couple other short flights, onto a bus.  They drove us across the airport, past planes taxiing, past gates, past maintenance, and directly to the area where our flight was boarding.  We don’t think we could have possibly made the connection without their efforts.  (On the way home we have a 2 hour wait in Frankfurt, so we’re assuming we won’t get the same treatment).

Got off the plane in Toulouse, checked out which conveyor belt was going to have our checked luggage and starting walking to #7.  We’re jetlagged, despite the 3-4 hours sleep, so it takes me a couple seconds to realize that I recognize the guy walking towards us in the tan blazer.  I haven’t seen him in a blazer in 33 years, aside from a wedding tuxedo.  It was my college roommate Bill.  He was meeting us (unknown to us) at the airport!  What a great surprise!!!!!

Just to be clear, we knew he was in the area – that his office was adjacent to Toulouse-Blagnac airport.  And, that he lived nearby too.  We’d been to his house several times.  And we’d already made plans that we would spend part of every weekend of this trip with him and his family.  But, and I’m sure I’m not doing a good job conveying this, the last thing that would have occurred to me was that we would see him at the airport!