Flight and Arrival

The lunatics at Air Canada who checked us in gave us the worst seats possible, this was after we were told during booking, ages ago, that we had seats over the wing. We were the only people at the very back of the plane and as the pic indicates, there were a zillion better seats from which to choose. So the flight attendant gave us a row of four seats to use, we got to hog all the pillows and blankets in those seats. The airplane is an Airbus 333 and is noisy at the back, the movie was The Incredible Hulk which was terrible, but we watched it out of boredom. Dinner sort of came, for some reason which the flight crew could not figure out, they ran out of hot entrees so three of us, at the back, got served the salad and bun while the entrees cooked. Finally, a guy came and offered us Arctic Char, Beef something or veggie pasta dish, due to being dog tired, I cannot remember shit right now. Anyway, John got dibs on the beef so I had the pasta, this was food from business class as the other shmucks in economy with us got some groady looking pasta dish.

People were sprawled all over the plane due to empty seats, since John and I had four seats we actually caught a couple hours of sleep after the second movie finished, the monitor was near us so the light kept flashing and driving us mad.

The airplane route was in an arc, going over the center of Hudson’s Bay, over the southern tip of Greenland and over Northern Ireland. The flight took 8 hours and at 9:00 UK time, they served a crappy breakfast (white muffin, OJ and diet yogurt, blech) then we landed ahead of time at Heathrow. Heathrow was no problem, we hustled along and caught the bus to the other terminal just before it left. In Terminal 1, we went to check the flight board to get our gate and it wasn’t posted yet. Then a lady, who must have thought we actually had a clue, asked us where to get her flight to Madrid, hers wasn’t posted yet either, so we told her to wait and check back. The cheap Brits who run BMI, airline, which we took from London to Brussels, don’t even give water; you have to pay for everything. After a 45-minute flight, we landed in Brussels.

Picked up the sardine can car and then tried like hell to get out of Brussels, total nightmare. The drivers are aggressive and lay on the horn at all times, if it wasn’t for the GPS, we would still be in Brussels. The streets are narrow and at uncontrolled intersections, well, we don’t know what is supposed to happen, they seem to suspend logic and all drive at once, passing within inches of each other and it is a total gong show. If you snooze, you loose. We missed two turns and had two detours and it was bloody hell getting out, when you think you are out of the city you aren’t and then suddenly the lane we were on vanished and we had to turn left and do a u-turn to get back. We took secondary roads through Belgium and went through about 20 roundabouts, which blow your mind at first. There never seems to be much rural area as one town just falls into the next.
It rains a lot here, the deciduous trees are huge and the dairy cows are fat, really, really fat. The houses, new or old, all have beautiful doors for some reason. It was getting dark as we drove through Belgium and finally figured out the speed signs. We didn’t get onto any freeways until we got to France and then things went a lot faster (130 Kmph) and it was then dark. Got to Arras without any problems, found the Center and the hotel. It is a small, typical French hotel with closet sized rooms. Since we had not ate or drank anything for 9 hours since breakfast on the plane, we were famished so went and ordered mussels and OMG, we got a pot full each. We are bagged and have to pack it in, off to the Canadian War Memorial at Vimy Ridge tomorrow.