Paris, here we come

Our 12.15 am flight was delayed for 50 minutes but we weren’t worried as we are on an A380 with the widest seats and the ability for the seat to become a decent sized single bed. Jo and I have 2 pods in the centre and keep pinching ourselves at how great our seating has been. Our fabulous travel agent Kylie deserves loads of praise! Anyhow, as much as our seats are great and we are made very comfortable by staff on the plane I am now in full blown melt down as my sinuses are blocked and my nose is running like a tap!!! Not happy. I’ve been dosing up on cold and flu tablets all day but I think they have simply added to the sore throat. I have not come all this way to be sick so am determined to fight this bloody malady off. So throughout the 13 and a half hour flight I keep up the fluids, drink lots of orange juice and try as I might, to get some sleep. Unfortunately sleep eluded me so by the time we arrived in Paris almost an hour late, I feel really poorly. We have missed our Insight coach pick up by half an hour so now have a 2 hour wait for the next coach. It’s 9 am Paris time. We have a coffee and then I’m ready to throw myself under a bus at this stage but instead flop on a chair in the arrivals area while we wait and wait and wait. Once on our coach we head into the centre of Paris, passing the Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower, plus the obelisk and the original Statue of Liberty. We drop off a few people at their hotel, they are doing a tour of the battlefields, and about an hour later we finally get to our hotel. It is almost 2 pm. We are met by our tour guide Laura, and can finally get to our room where I am only too happy to flop on the bed and pray for God to take me now!!! Only joking, I’m not about to shuffle off my mortal coil, but I am feeling very poorly and it doesn’t help that my ears are now totally blocked from the change in pressure during our landing and I’m as deaf as a post so I figure I can only start feeling better from now on. We have arrived to 26 degrees and clear skies. Plenty of good photo ops on the way to the hotel, but it gives you an indication of my state of health and mind that I just couldn’t find the inclination to get my camera out of the bag. No doubt there will be more a Kodak moments in the days to come. As a small aside, whilst on the subject of photos, it was quite an ordeal to work out how to load photos onto the blog on my new mini iPad. Just when I’m convinced the photos have loaded and I can see them on the preview, once I post them, some disappear, leaving a blank square. Will try and sort it out but as I have no idea what is going wrong, will have to check out what Google had to say about it, or meet a 9 year old local kid who is likely to have all the answers. Dinner is at a restaurant on the Left Bank but I’m not fit for human company so J heads out on her own. When she returned she said the meal was good and there are about 29 on our tour. She has already identified a Perth woman who is current number 1 choice to be voted off our island! Lol! We opt for an early night and as I have hardly moved from my bed since getting 8nto it, I’m more than happy about that. Our room is very stuffy as the a/c isn’t working properly. At about 4 am we are both awoken by a loud rumbling noise. Thankfully it is thunder as we didn’t want to imagine what else it might have been... I forgot to mention, that many of the front large windows at the front of our hotel are all taped up as they were damaged in recent protests. Glad I wasn’t here when that happened! Anyway not much sleep after that So I opened the curtains and we watched the lighting and storm pass. Up early, showered and off to breakfast. Bags out by 7.30 and then we sit in the lounge to wait for our 8.30 departure. At least the a/c is working here, as well as the internet which crashed during the night too. 26 degrees forecast for the day and I am feeling like I am on the improve. At last my nose has stopped running, however I could act as a stand in for Rudolph the reindeer at the moment with my very bright red nose!