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October 24, 2006

Paris, Day Ten: Departure

Today was a travel (read: lost) day.

We were up at 7 AM Paris time (which, if you're in to that kind of thing, is 10 PM Pacific ... the previous day), showered, did a coffee run, finished packing, did the last-minute straighten-and-clean of our flat and then waited for our landlord to show up for inspection. He arrived at 9, pronounced the place satisfactory, returned our deposit, shook our hands, and left.

We caught the Metro for Gare du Nord, switched to the RER, and headed out to the airport.

(Oh, if you're ever flying Continental out of Paris, you want Terminal B. This is the second and final stop at Charles de Gaulle on the RER "B" line. Nobody, uh, you know, told us, and we had an entertaining time finding out the hard way.)

The first leg of the flight home (Paris - Houston) departed at 12:55.

[Time passes.]

• John Grisham's "The Testament"? Done.
• Dan Brown's "Deception Point"? Done.
• A quick note on Dan Brown: I read (and enjoyed) "The Da Vinci Code", but actually liked "Demons and Angels" more. Based on the strength of these two books, I've since read "Deception Point" and "Digital Fortress." They're both fine, but I don't really recommend either one of them too highly. Brown has a very definite formula for how his books are put together - formula in the Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer mode - and it makes reading anything more than one or two kinda painful. By about the 200th page of "Deception Point" I'd pretty well figured out whodunit, and from there it was just a matter of watching the dominos fall.
• (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

We arrived in Houston at 4:30 or so, local time. Our layover was a couple hours, so, after clearing customs, we had a quick bite (if you're gonna eat airport food, Panda Express is a pretty good choice), made calls, checked e-mail and then lined up to board our second/final leg back to Seattle. The flight departed at 7:05.

[Time passes]

• I am deeply, deeply tired of in-flight peanuts.
• Michael Crichton's "The Great Train Robbery"? Done. This is a really great read, by the way, a nifty blend of historical fact and conjectured fiction. I bought it at the grocery store on a lark (it was about $2 or $3), and found it well-written and delightful.

We touched down in Seattle at 9:40 PM (at this point, we'd been up for nearly 24 hours), retrieved our bags, and were picked up by the should-be-nominated-for-sainthood Richard, who bundled the both of us into his Jeep and got us back to the city. I think I was drooling on myself by the time I got back to my apartment.

It's good to be home. Bedtime.

Posted by Gavin Shearer at October 24, 2006 11:02 PM. Posted to Travel.

Comments

Posted by: Allie at November 2, 2006 3:12 PM

Posted by: ravi at November 4, 2006 3:00 PM

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