trip back

Today was the day we were not looking forward to: the long day of planes, trains, buses and automobiles to Grenoble. I used to get nervous traveling by myself (ever since I forgot my ticket once, coming back from Williams), but now I get pathologically nervous. I had weighed all of the bags the night before and made a last minute Target mission to buy a third suitcase, so I knew there would be no problems with exceeding the maximum weight. Tickets, passports, babies: everything was in order. We got to the airport in plenty of time and said our tearful goodbyes to the parents, then checked in and cleared security. A kind TSA person moved us into the family line for security, so we got through fairly quickly. At the gate, we were told that they did not do family boarding by one attendant, and that they do by another (and that it was at the discretion of the agent). This was not a good start to the day. The flight itself was a little less painful than the flight from Europe, but only slightly. The stewards and stewardesses were United employees, which is to say the worst and most unhelpful imaginable. Alex actually slept a few times, which was wonderful, but there were no in seat movie screens (on an 11 hour flight -- are you kidding me!?!) so Zoe was constantly bored. We had plenty of toys, puzzles, and an iphone loaded with Pixar, but she went through all of those in the first three hours or so. After a while, chloe and I resorted to playing with oranges with Alex to keep him occupied. Highlights were getting peed on by Alex a few hours in, and the United choice of videos. Specifically, they were playing Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations, which was filled with beautiful and delicious looking food footage. This was in between serving us some of the greyest, most nausea inducing "food" to ever grace the fold out tray of a 747-400. Thanks, United! I did learn that some of the best Szechuan food outside of China can be found in Melbourne, Australia though!

We arrived in Frankfurt groggy and sickly feeling, and then had the pleasure of clearing security again! I wish that one of these massive hub airports could be designed in such a way that you don't have to clear security more than once. Due to some airplane problem, we then sat on the bus to the airplane for a half an hour. The front of the bus was taken up by a contingent from the Canadian World Cup Snowboarding team, dressed in sponsor clothing and talking about their upcoming races. We eventually made it to Lyon, where they told us that Alex's stroller had never left Frankfurt! There was actually a long line of people queued up for the lost and damaged baggage counter: I saw three suitcases on the conveyor which had been ripped open, with clothes falling out of them. All of the luggage (including ours) was completely soaked, too. The only bright parts of the day were finding our car in the mega lot (I took a picture of the zone when I parked it), the car actually starting, and arriving to a home which had *not* been burglarized (most people that I know have had their house broken into in our area at some point). Good times!