A Paradocs Abroad

In kilometers it's about 10,000 (taking great circle distances from Vancouver to Montréal, Montréal to Paris, and adding in the 600 km from Paris to Brest). But we live in time, not kilometers, and it's a lot of hours, further complicated by 9 time zones difference.

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Bob and Deirdre kindly picked us up at 09:00 on Monday to take us to YVR. The flight to Toronto was pretty mundane, but we arrived at 18:30 Eastern time, so most of Monday had somehow disappeared. The flight to Paris left at 20:30. Somehow Susan had contrived to get us exit row seats, as she had on the trans-atlantic leg 2 weeks ago. The extra legroom was very welcome. I made the mistake of watching the 2nd movie instead of going to sleep, so when I eventually did close my eyes it was only an hour or so until we were awakened for breakfast and landing in Paris.

We landed a little ahead of schedule at 09:30 Central European time on Tuesday. Now Monday night had somehow disappeared too. The real killer of the trip to Brest is that the flight doesn't leave Paris until 15:45, so we had a 6+ hour layover in Charles Degaulle airport. It's not that exciting a place, and the seating is really uncomfortable.

We arrived in Brest at about 17:30, took a taxi to Saint-Renan, and were greated by a thunderstorm - the same weather that we had just before we left - could it have been the same for the whole 2 weeks? A quick trip to the primeur and the boulangerie gave us a little nourishment before we fell into bed about 19:00.

Two days had passed with only a couple of novels read, and a couple of movies watched to show for them. The time zone displacement will continue to make itself felt for another week.

It's a long way from Vancouver to Saint-Renan...