Day 1&2 (10/2&3)

Get up at the crack of yawn. Jump into the rain locker. Call a cab and go to
airport. Grab something to eat and the Ronald house of stuff, barely, and
that’s pushing the definition, edible. Departure is on time (9:45) so I arrive
in Seattle on time (14:45). Shuffle over to the “S” terminal and discover the
wonderful electronic signs don’t show my flight, nor any other for IcelandAir.
Mutter a few imprecations. Finally ask someone at the currency exchange place.
They give me the gate number, which just happens to be next to the one I need.
Flight departs on time (16:40) and after a fairly uneventful flight I arrive in
Iceland (06:45 on 10/3). I say because the only thing of interest was the
Aurora when we over the Hudson bay on the starboard side, I’m sitting on the
port aisle. The young, very young, woman (works at a bakery in Seattle) sitting
on the window said she’d never seen them. I help her out by telling her
“They’re usually green.” I tell her to go across the aisle and ask if she could
take a quick look, they do. She’s practically crying. Depart Iceland on time
(07:40) and arrive in Paris on time (12:55). It should be interesting leaving
the country. Last year I managed to enter the country twice without leaving the
terminal, they got excited. This year I managed to enter the country without
going through customs/getting my passport examined. Get to the hotel and check
in, take a quick 2.5 hour nap. Get up and decide to eat something, recall
Ronald, it’s been a while. Walk out side and look left and right, only 4 places
to eat in sight. Finally go over to a place and have a meal of: A hard boiled
egg halved, mayonnaise on it, a green salad with a tomato wedge, corn, and a
vinaigrette. Order something that I recognize is chicken. Turns out to be a
butterflied breast which has been grilled, Normandy Sauce, and fries. Desert
was a crème brulee, they went a little crazy with the blow torch and there were
a few spots where it was “charred” to not quite burnt. Oh yeah...some beer. The
place was full of 20-30 somethings, the table next to me was 2 couples
laughing, smoking cigarettes (a lot of cigarettes, maybe 50% of the people were
puffing away), drinking and engaging in assorted fist bumps/high fives. They
were extremely rude and didn’t speak English so I could evesdrop.

You can expect these to get shorter and shorter.

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