Bonjour de France! ⇒
Well, we made it! 'Twas a lot better travelling than I had imagined. Thankfully, we had access to the Air Canada lounge, which allowed us to relax with some drinks and some free food before the chaos began.
On the first plane trip (Vancouver to Frankfurt), Elise was awesome. We managed to get a bulk-head seat so we also had a sky crib for her to sleep in, which was great for us. She actually slept for about 4.5 hours all told we think. But when she was awake, she was pretty good and rarely cried. When she did we either played with her in her crib or did laps around the plane.
Christine got some sleep, but unfortunately I did not. For some reason I just could not doze off at all. We arrived at Frankfurt on time and got ready for our connecting flight to Lyon. Due to windy weather, however, our flight was delayed an hour, so we wandered around the airport for an hour trying to get Elise to sleep. By this time though, she had had enough of travel and just wouldn't sleep; we think it was due to the bright lights and loud noises. Of course we finally got her asleep just before we had to board the plane for our 55 minute flight. Being so tired and confused she mostly just whined the whole time. Thankfully though, it was a loud plane (darn Canadairs) so we couldn't really hear her that much! ;=) She did manage to fall asleep again and didn't wake up until I almost fell over in the shuttle bus.
Once we finally arrived, we met one third of our hosts, my friend from university Nigel and we loaded all of our stuff (3 suitcases, two carry-on bags, a camera bag, a purse, a stroller and a backpack) into his car and headed to our new temporary home in Meylan (just outside Grenoble). We would have gotten there sooner, but it took Nige and I about 20 minutes to figure out how to get all of our luggage into his car. Good thing we didn't bring anymore luggage!! Mercifully, Elise fell asleep again so that made the picturesque drive out that much more pleasant.
Mel had prepared a lovely traditional French dinner (zucchini salad and grilled Salmon, along with the ubiquitous baguette) for us along with a birthday cake for Christine (more on that in another post). As I hadn't slept at all (going on 30 hours) during the trip, I finally crashed at about 9:30. We sure had an "interesting" night; we think Elise was really confused and tired last night. She woke up around midnight (dragging Christine and I from really, really deep sleeps) and was nearly inconsolable for the better part of an hour. Nige and Mel probably thought we were torturing Elise with red-hot sticks or something. She was so upset I couldn't even calm her down; only Christine would do. Repeat process at 3:30am. Thankfully, we slept from about 4:30am till just after 10am (thanks Elise).
We started our first real day in France with a trip to the pharmacy (to attempt to get rid of my cold) and of course the bakery for our breakfast croissants. Yum.
Today will be a quiet day as we attempt to get Elise back on schedule and recover from jet lag. We wil just hang out and go for some walks.
All in all, we were really proud of Elise and the way she handled the travel. She was understandably extremely needy, but still she rarely cried for long lengths of time. So all those who may be afraid, feel free to travel with your child!!!
Stay tuned for further adventures.