Dave and Teneille's Excellent Adventure

A WHOLE NEW WORLD

Words cannot describe the stress we endured upon our arrival in fair Paris but I'll give it a shot. Before that though... the journey.

Teneille and I had a bit of a mad rush on Monday as we packed for the trip, she tried to get her job application for teaching positions next year completed and we paid not one, but two visits to her grandfather in hospital. Two out of three ain't bad as Meatloaf would say and it was the job application that fell through the cracks. Teneille's grandfather has been quite ill in hospital for two weeks so it was a must that we saw him before we left. He greatly appreciated us smuggling in three mini bottles of scotch - something he was "f***ing desperate for".

We ditched the kids without much hassle and left them to my champion sister and her champion husband before catching the train to the airport with Teneille looking a little something like this...

Excited much?

A quick dinner with mum and dad who had come in to see us off and we were through customs and at the departure gate. We flew with Emirates and I don't know what to say about it as I've never been overseas before so have nothing to compare it to. Slept for some of the 14 hours, food was average and there was a very angry man who kept complaining his TV wasn't working. I tried to watch Ghost in the Shell but gave up after half an hour because it was merde. He wasn't missing much.

Our flight was delayed out of Sydney which meant our 2.5 hour layover in Dubai became less than hour. We'll try and check it out on the way home. The lady we sat next to was heading to Ireland. We were concerned about getting our connection to Paris. We became slightly less worried when she told us her connecting flight was due to leave within minutes of us landing. Hope she got home ok.

The seven-hour flight from Dubai to Paris was uneventful. More average food and Teneille finishing her job application.

Teaching never stops...

Once we go through customs at Charles De Gaulle airport the dramas started. We landed at 1:30pm and had to meet our apartment manager in Paris at 3:30pm. I'll itemise the issues we faced:

• It was 30 minutes before our baggage arrived. Seriously, ours must have last suitcases off
• It then took ages to get train tickets into Paris.
• The train stopped at Gare du Nord for us to get a connecting train to where our apartment was but our bloody tickets wouldn't let us through the barriers so we had to find someone to let us through manually.
• All this ate up precious time as our 3:30pm deadline loomed. It was about this time we realised our phones were completely useless. No signal whatsoever despite the lovely people at Virgin assuring me before I left that everything would be fine.
• No phones meant no map to navigate to the apartment once we alighted at Saint-Denis and no phones meant we couldn't phone our apartment manager to tell them we were late.
• We eventually got to the apartment an hour late and asked at the gym next door if we could borrow their phone. They pointed us to a nearby public phone that was not so nearby when you have three suitcases plus carry-on luggage to drag around.
• The apartment manager didn't answer when I called from the public phone and I had no return number to offer in my voicemail.

By this time it is after 4:30pm and we were seriously wondering if we would spend our first night in Paris on the street like the 10 million prostitutes we'd walked past from the station to the apartment. I eventually went into a tobacconist where the friendly Chinese owner sold me a sim card and helped me put credit on it and call the apartment manager again. Thank god she answered her bloody phone!

Long story short... I left Teneille outside the apartment with the luggage while I successfully navigated a 10 minute walk to pick up a key. Typing this out has been quite therapeutic I must say. We shall go for a wander to explore our neighbourhood and find some dinner soon after Teneille has washed the stress away with a shower. Tomorrow we have the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame and a cruise on the Seine.

The main living area of our apartment.

The view from our balcony.

Oh, and the name of the post? Think we'll try a Disney theme. This is of course after one of Aladdin's iconic songs because we have indeed stepped into a whole new world. Plus, you know, Dubai - Aladdin... it just works.