I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to post the end of our trip.

The morning of the 15th of May dawned early, we got up at 3:30a to make a 6:15a departure out of Manchester Airport.

Our cab was early and driven by a very nice young man from Somalia. We chatted most of the 4 mile ride. He is going to visit friends and family for 3 weeks in Saudi Arabia in a few days for the Muslim holy days of Ramadan. He was hoping to get lots of sightseeing in even though he would be fasting for 15 days during that time. He was so excited about going, he was almost vibrating. It was the most delightful part of our morning!

After he dropped us off we entered Manchester Airport, checked our bags and entered security. Yikes! Manchester security is awful! We finally got through it and found our gate in the Flybe area. We had just about enough time to find the restrooms when they lined us up like cattle and made us stand like that for at least 1/2 an hour.

Finally about 10 minutes after our scheduled boarding time we began to move slowly onto the plane. We found our seats, shoved our carryons under the seats in front of us and waited for takeoff.

We were getting a little worried since only had about an hour and a half at CDG and were pretty certain we would have to go through security again.

A cool thing happened as we were entering CDG airspace. I’m always hoping to catch a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower and of course I never do; well this time I did! Chris pointed it out through a window on the other side of the plane. It was so exciting! One day I hope to visit it, maybe next year?

When we arrived at CDG we had to wait for a tram to take us to the terminal and from there we needed to take a train to our gate. Then we had to go through security again. This time it was much more civilized even though it was every bit as thorough.

We discovered our Air France flight was a little late which was a good thing. We got to our gate just as it was loading. Got onto the plane and our wonderful trip to LAX began. We love Air France.

This was an especially wonderful trip because we had an exceptionally caring crew.

We were very hungry by the time we got onto the Air France plane as we hadn’t had any time to find any food so when the crew started bringing food I commented on how hungry I was. Our flight attendant made sure we had plenty of food and offered us extra rolls and drinks, making sure we were comfortable. We were extremely appreciative and surprisingly the food was pretty good, plus we love those little rolls.

Pretty icy down there!

After almost 11 hours in the air we touched down at LAX, got our luggage and headed for The Hyatt at the airport on the shuttle. Because we have Global Entry we didn’t have to stand in the exceptionally long line through customs and border control.

We managed to stay awake until 5:00p when we just had to go to sleep.

We woke up bright and early at 1:30a (9:30a UK time) and started moving toward heading home. Coffee and a yogurt downstairs and off we headed for home.

On the way we had a very good breakfast served by a very nice waitress named Carla at the Dennys in Camarillo, then continued on toward San Luis Obispo.

After a stop at Sprouts for groceries we made it home by 9:30a.

Our kitty was very happy to see us. In fact he’s still a bit of a Velcro kitty. 🥰

This is the last post until our next trip.