Another spring in France...

April 1st, 2009

If there is a better way to start off a traveling adventure I don’t know what it is. I say that because I participated in a tasting of twenty-five wines from around the world at Dancing Bear Imports in the Bronx just a few hours before my plan was to leave from JFK. Now I suppose the tasting could have occurred in Tuscany or Australia or even in California and it might have been better but after five tastes it really didn’t matter where we were. Of course I spit most of it out (remembering flights where too much alcohol was consumed where the brain expands at a faster rate than the skull…) but still there was the “remark-ability” of tasting so many great wines.

Having said that the only things I can remark upon about the flight are a) it’s the first time I left so early in the day (and arrived so early into Charles de Gaulle at 6:00 am) which resulted in it being harder to sleep, b) Air France is so superior in its amenities on transatlantic flights in coach that there really is no competition, which got me to thinking about the differing sets of expectations that each home market has driven in to the culture of their home airlines (they could no more serve bad food or wine on Air France than they could forget to fuel up, while American Airlines serves up yet another rasher of dry biscuits and assorted nuts and charges for a beverage) and c) no matter all the planning in the world it is just bad luck to be seated near a cranky child and parent with not one whit of parenting skill, of course it is the devil’s own curse to be seated with one in front and one behind as I was on this flight (which is why I once again praise Air France and their personal video system which allowed me to watch three of their 12 movie offerings since sleep was out of the question.