Over Served

 As the time approaches to head to the Denver Airport for our flight to London and then on to Paris, we get an email that our departure time has been delayed. More time to needlessly check and double our suitcase to be sure we have every time we need for 6 plus weeks of travel, while we certainly have more than we actually need.

We eventually venture to the airport where the flight is delayed even longer. Finally we depart about 10:30 at night, a delay of 3 hours. Shortly we are served small bottles of wine, not just one but one for before dinner and one to enjoy with dinner. Then dinner is served with two more bottles of wine. About midnight the meal wraps up but not before the flight attendant brings both Scot and me each another bottle of wine. We somehow lose count of the bottles consumed but Scot will admit to 4 consumed and one “saved”. My intake was similar. Plus we were able to enjoy the wine in an real glass wine glass.

Within minutes the cabin lights start to slowly dim so I make a quick trip to the restroom. When I finish the cabin has gone dark and the flight attendants have vanished for the night. I stumble back to my seat in almost total darkness, blinded by the well lit restroom. As I find my seat, I manage to tip my wine glass over from its perch on the small square rest pad that is located on the arm rest in the newest Boeing aircraft. The rest pad is metal rimmed and is well designed to break glass. My wine glass shatters, leaving only the base and stem intact as the rest of the glass breaks into pieces and lands on the floor between me and my unknown but sleeping seat mate. At this point the cabin is dark and I have pieces of glass by my feet. Using my cell phone flashlight I am able to find 6 large pieces of glass. I gather it all up in one hand and then contemplate what to do with a handful of glass in a dark plane with no flight attendants. No choice but to stumble back to the restroom and deposit the fragments in the trash. A classic case of being “Over Served”.

The rest of the flight is uneventful with a few hours of sleep before we land in London. Immigration is a breeze but our next flight to Paris has already left without us. We are rebooked on a later flight to Paris. We spend the night in Paris near the airport. Early next morning we return to the airport where we wait over an hour before we are thru security. French airport security is a chaotic nightmare which makes us appreciate the efficiency of our TSA in the US. The French have a person at the security line just before the x-ray machines whose sole job is to rearrange items in the bins before they go into the x-ray machine but after you have walked thru your scanner. Their job is to re-arrange the items you have placed in your bins and to move items from one person’s bins into another. This is no joke! I find an iPad in one of my bins that belongs to a lady in front of me and Scot and I both have items misplaced as well.

Before departing for Biarritz France, we check the weather to see that there is a Moderate Avalanche Warning for Biarritz. This quite puzzling for this time of year. As we descend into Biarritz we see the ocean on one side of the plane

and snow covered peaks on the other. Seems that a late season snowstorm has covered the mountains and we disembark to 33 degree weather. We look forward to a good night’s sleep and one day of rest before we start our hike!!