Ironman France - Wednesday

Jun 18, 2008

Oh man, travelling from Toronto to Nice is an endurance event in and of itself. But when we did finally arrive at our destination, it was well worth it.

Our flight was scheduled to leave Toronto at 6:25 pm and since we had to be at the airport 2 hours early, we actually left the house at about 3:45. The thing I don't like about travelling by air is that I feel like I have absolutely no control over anything. The flight was delayed about half an hour because someone had elected not to get on the plane but there luggage did get on the plane. This meant searching through all the luggage for this person's luggage. Hence the delay.

The flight over was actually not that bad. They fed us pretty good plus there were movies and T.V. available at each seat. I had a good book so felt no need to view any of the movies but the other's did watch 2 or 3. The flight over the Atlantic was pretty spectacular in places. I believe the course took us over Greenland but I'm not sure. Wherever it was it was extremely baren and cold looking. What surprised me was that we were over this piece of land for a long time. We didn't actually spend that much time over the water. The other neat thing about the flight was that, even though it was an overnight flight, the sun never completely disappeared. There was always at least a bit of a red tinge on the horizon like the tail end of a sunset.

I managed to get a couple of hours sleep on the plane but it wasn't enough. I was pretty grumpy and tired during the stopover in Heathrow. I was happy when we were finally allowed to board the plane and I pretty much slept through the entire 2 hour flight from London to Nice. I slept right through breakfast.

I woke up about 15 minutes before landing which gave me enough time to view the mountains prior to landing. From the air, they didn't look all that formidable. It wasn't until we started to land that the mountains started to grow. The more we descended the bigger the mountains got.

Once we had landed in Nice, I searched out a bank machine because in Nice they use Euros and I didn't have any. No problem, that's what bank machines are for. I tried my card - no go! I found a different bank machine - same result. Information told me to try Terminal 2; they had an actual bank there. So I took the shuttle to Terminal 2; same result. So I tried getting a cash advance from my Mastercard - declined! "What's going on?" I felt like Jason Bourne in Bourne Identity with everyone conspiring against me. I finally got a number I could call collect (since I didn't have any money to pay for a phone call) and discovered that the bank had blocked my Mastercard because the cash advance attempt seemed suspicious to them. I'm inferring something similar occured with my debit card. Lesson learned: Never ever travel to a foreign country where they speak a different language without first making sure you have money in the currency of use.

We finally did make it to the apartment. It took a few trips (I think 4 in total) in the cab to get all of us plus our bikes and luggage. By the time we had gotten here, it was after 5 pm which would be about 11 am in the GTA. We had been travelling for over 19 hours.

The view, once we had arrived, was so spectacular as to be almost surreal. We have kind of a penthouse apartment with a spacious balconies/deck on both the east and west side. On the east side we have a spectacular view of Nice, the mountains in the background, and the Mediterranean on the left. On the west side we have a spectacular view of Nice, the mountains in the background, and the Mediterranean on the right. Life is good (finally).

Anyway, everyone else has gone to bed. It's 10:15 here which would be 4:15 in Brampton.. seems kind of early to be going to bed. But it's been a long, long day and everyone is extremely tired. So, until tomorrow..

-richard