Sept. 27: Getting to Paris 2--Toronto to Paris

Once in Toronto for our five-hour layover, we wondered how we should spend our time. William suggested we rent a day-room, so we could nap, like he had in Detroit on some trip well before I came into the picture. Toronto International Airport doesn't have day-rooms, so we asked instead about our gate (the marquee had read "529"). We took a shuttle to the 500 gates, where we bought a Napoleone pizza, whose crust was crunchy, but in a fresh-baked cardboard way. Then I sprawled over four armchairs, intending to sleep the remaining four hours away. I woke two hours later, expecting our gate to be full, but it wasn't: we were one gate off (never mind what the marquee said). Sure enough, at 7:40 pm, Toronto time, now, our flight was boarding. We hurried aboard.

Seated, we were subjected to the same quaint video introduction. There would be two movies on this flight, neither of which we watched: Mission Impossible 3 (for lack of interest--hold the Tom Cruise, pls) and Whale Rider (for lack of the will to stay awake). I debated writing in my journal, which would become this blog, but I felt I hadn't experienced anything worth writing about really, except for maybe the onset of jetlag. (Of course, I wrote about all this stuff later, just like I'm adding this note much later... nine months later.) William slept for the better part of the flight; the white noise of jet engines puts him to sleep like riding any kind of vehicle puts me to sleep. He woke only to eat his lactose-free meals. I found the food to be decent, and thought--not for the first time--about how airplane food often gets a bad rap. Maybe my palate just isn't cultivated enough. An hour or so before landing, I see French soil for the first time and also find out we'll be landing an hour early... Which leaves us a good eight hours to kill in Paris before Ingrid is ready to receive us.

Charles de Gaulle is a confusing airport, we quickly learn. William bought some water and some candy for me to get change for the navette to the RER terminal. There we find out change is still too big, unless we wanted to wait a long time to get a ticket. We managed to finally get tickets after standing in line for a change machine. We got onto the B-line, which some other passengers (wrongly) informed us that we'd have to change trains at Gare du Nord. (In retrospect, they were probably right, except we weren't going straight to Pigalle. We had planned to kill some time in Le Jardin du Luxembourg.) When we were on our way and past the initial tunnels, we saw how beautiful it was outside. "Un type" witha little speaker/mic/music set-up sang for change, at which point, William looked at me and said, "Now you're really in Paris."