Safely arrived in Brooklyn

The trip was wonderful...

I got to travel Business class. I already decided sometime after cancer that life is too short to travel economy for anything over 4 hours. However I am obviously a Business class virgin. I got to the airport and went through the "normal" queue for about 45 minutes to get to checkin. When I got to the counter the woman said to me "You're travelling Business" (in French obviously) and I proudly replied "Yes". She then told me that Business class has a totally separate queue, or lack thereof, at gate 3 instead of gate 5 and I could have avoided all of what I just went through. I laughed and asked if I could still check in here. She giggled and said she'd see what she could do. Off to the Air France Salon where I could get some water for before and during the trip putting some in bag "just in case". The Salon was very relaxing and comfortable.

The extra water was completely unnecessary as the service was excellent. Wonderful seat which reclines fully, 10.4" screen running 6 movies over and over again, good wine (very light Champagne starter and a nice and creamy Burgundy white for the rest), a good meal (foie gras starter; chicken in fennel cream sauce and finally a lovely orange iced sherbert) and sunshine the whole way. It was strange travelling for 8 hours, having left at a little before 16:00 and never seeing the sun go down at all during the flight. I watched La Mome (French movie about Edith Piaf) and a bit of The Holiday (a movie which looks like it was made for TV but made me cry a couple of times which is not a difficult feat these days).

When I got to the airport there was the car waiting for me and off we drove to Brooklyn. I'm sure the driver was a bit surprised as regards the neighbourhood we drove through and to. Mom's neighbourhood in Brooklyn is pretty similar to our neighbourhood in Asnières. We both have a tendency to live where the foreigners live...

As usual mom had food waiting practically when I arrived. Smoked (Scottish) salmon, tomato and mozzarella salad, tortellini with peas and cream sauce... almost enough to make me forget I'm in America.

We sat around watching American television (over 600 or 700 channels!!!) for a while. She's got some amazing televisions (big HD flat screen in the living room and smaller HD flat screen in the kitchen)...

I had purposely not slept on the plane and I actually stayed up until about 23:30 here (05:30 my time) and slept like a baby.