We have safely arrived in Paris, France! It’s the second day of our trip, but the first full day. But before I start telling you about our adventures, I want to tell you about the process of getting here, because it was VERY INTENSE.
I feel like when people talk about their travel, they never actually talk about the process of getting to the place. They just talk about how cool it is, because that’s the exciting part. But the travel is the part I was actually the most worried about and dreading, so maybe somebody else feels the same way.
It’s cumbersome for me to upload pictures in these blog posts, so it’s going to be text only. To see photos, please visit my Instagram @claireoliviagolden. I might come back and upload photos to these blog posts later when I get back to the USA, but I haven’t decided. For now it will just be my travel journal.
We started our journey at 9:00 AM in Oregon, when my dad came to drive us to the airport. Our flight left at 1:15 PM, so we had plenty of time to get through security. I was absolutely terrified for the airport, but the PDX Airport is actually pretty chill, and everyone in Portland is really nice. (Americans in general tend to be friendly and helpful, but especially on the West Coast, I find.) I wore some Loop Earplugs that helped filter out the background noise, but I didn’t need them the whole time.
Our first flight was to Alberta, Canada, and it was on a small propeller plane. Unfortunately I had sized my carry-on luggage to fit in the big plane we would take from Canada to Europe, and it didn’t fit in the overhead compartments. So right before I boarded the plane I had to take all my medication out of the carry-on and put it into my husband’s carry-on so they could check my bag. (You aren’t supposed to have medication in your checked baggage in case it gets lost, and boy did I have a lot of medication, something like 15 bottles because they all have to be in their original containers.) I was slightly frazzled after this and couldn’t stop apologizing, but these things happen sometimes.
We were the last on the plane. It was really little and only had two seats per side, so I had the window and my husband had the aisle. It was only about 1.5 hours and I mostly just watched the clouds go by with a stuffed animal tucked under my chin. The takeoff and landing were a bit bumpy because the plane was so small, but I find that super exciting.
We landed at the Alberta airport in Calgary. My friend Cathrine Swift lives in Canada in the province of Alberta, but I had a bad understanding of just how big Canadian provinces actually are. They’re even bigger than USA states. So unfortunately I was still 3 hours away from her. The worst part about having international friends is that you never get to hang out with each other. I waved from the plane anyway.
This airport was huge. We had to go through customs, which was pretty easy and involved a touchscreen where you had to say if you were bringing anything exciting into the country. (Exciting in this case meaning guns, explosives, drugs, etc.) Then we went to our next gate. It was actually fairly hard to find. When we did, we still had about 3 hours to pass, so we got some Thai food that was better than it should’ve been and camped out. I read some of my new ebook Whalefall that’s about this guy who gets swallowed by a whale.
I went to use the bathroom before boarding the plane, but there was a long line and I started to get nervous. Then I saw a mom carrying her little girl into the bathroom to wash her hands and she was speaking to her in French. I’ve never gotten to see a parent interact with their child in French before and it made my day. “Je me fache, Alice,” she was saying. “C’est une bêtise, tu sais que c’est une bêtise.” (I’m angry. That’s mischief/misbehavior, you know it is.)
We boarded the big plane. It had three aisles of seats with three seats in each aisle. We were on the right side of the plane and I had the window seat. This is my favorite side of a vehicle and I just don’t feel normal when I have to sit on the left side. Yes, I’m well-adjusted. We had a friendly seat-mate who asked if it was our first time going to Paris. He was going to visit his parents in Serbia.
I popped some Dramamine right before the plane turned off, which serves to both settle my stomach and completely knock me out for a solid two hours. My husband and I watched Interstellar together on the screens on the back of the seats in front of us. Unfortunately the two people in front of us wanted to recline their chairs for the majority of the flight, but they have every right to do that even if it makes the people behind them have less room.
They served us dinner on the flight. I’ve never had that before because my longest flight before this was about 5-6 hours (across the United States). It was pretty gross to be honest, but it’s hard to mess up pasta that bad. I gave the airplane potato salad to my husband because I’m not messing around with that kind of evil.
My husband passed out on my shoulder. I listened to some music and ASMR on my cell phone with the cheap earbuds they gave us on the plane. I’m great at entertaining myself for long periods of time, but what I hadn’t accounted for was how stiff I would get. I am 5’6″ and have fairly long legs, and economy seating was NOT CUTTING IT. Around 3.5 hours into the flight, my legs started twitching without my consent, and it was pretty freaky. I tried to stretch them out without kicking the person in front of me, but every few minutes they would seize up and start kicking. I was thinking “How am I going to make it through the rest of this flight when I literally can’t sit still?”
I thought stretching might help, so I got up and went to the bathroom, bumping into almost every single person on the way. (Those aisles are just so small.) The airplane bathroom is so much smaller than I remembered. I don’t think of myself as claustrophobic, but it was just really tiny. I took some deep breaths and stretched as best I could. I took this opportunity to use the bathroom and give myself a mental pep talk. (I would later learn that my mom was checking on the flight tracker at this exact time, so I like to think she felt my anxiety vibes and was sending me some calm. She’s good like that.)
I got out of the bathroom and did some more stretches, not caring that I was showing my butt to everyone in the cabin behind me when I bent over to touch my toes. Consider it some in-flight entertainment for them.
When I went to sit down, I took some more Dramamine in hopes it would knock me out for the rest of the flight. I wouldn’t say it was good sleep, but it did help me have this weird half-sleep for a few hours. When I woke up, my husband was handing me an egg-and-cheese sandwich. That’s always a nice way to be woken up. The flight attendants were saying “good morning” as they walked down the aisles of the plane. They have a funny idea of morning, I thought as I opened my sandwich. It’s 2am back home.
Our seat-mate didn’t eat cheese, so he let us split his sandwich between us. It may have been the best thing I ever tasted after the world’s worst “night” of sleep. There was only 1.5 hours to go. I listened to some more music and cuddled my Jellycat frog Flumpie. My knee hurt so bad that I couldn’t even stretch out my leg. I had no idea how I was going to stand up when we made it to Paris. My husband was having similar pain in his lower back. This flight was just brutal.
I watched the flight tracker as we got closer to Europe. It was really happening. I can’t tell you how many dreams I’ve had where I’m in Paris, and then I wake up and I’m decidedly not in Paris. Sometimes I’ve thought I will die and never have made it to France. I didn’t even know what I was going to do after this trip. What do you do when a lifelong dream comes to fruition? (Of course, I know the answer to that from the movie Tangled. “That’s the good part, I guess. You get to find a new dream.”)
The feeling of seeing France far below us was surreal. I elbowed my husband from the movie he was watching and jumped up and down in my seat as much as the space would allow.
As we drew closer, I spotted something tall and pointy and said as much to Husband. “That’s the Eiffel Tower!” he said with dramatically wide eyes. “YES IT’S THE EIFFEL TOWER OMG OMG OMG,” I replied with complete calm.
As we landed, I popped one earbud into my ear, the other into my husband’s, and played “Les Champs-Elysées” by Joe Dassin.