Week 16, Day 2

A nice wake up alarm at 7am give me enough time to get sorted before meeting a colleague at 0830 for pick up.

We spent the morning visiting a couple of customer locations before meeting my boss and stopping for lunch at midday. By this time I had already had 3 espressos! I do like my coffee but more than two proper ones in a day and it starts to send me a bit mental. Goodness knows what 3 in a morning will do to me and there is still half the day remaining.

Our meeting was scheduled for 2pm so we made our way across to our customers head office and we were all done by 3pm. A nice easy meeting with a couple of good action points to complete going forward. It is nice to walk out of a meeting not thinking "how the hell are we going to fix this?"

Our colleague then dropped us two off at an RER train station in central Paris as I was going to CDG and my boss was taking a train from Gare du Nord.

A few snaps of the Eiffel Tower from the car.


I would like to say it was foggy but no that's just the S4 camera!


We hit lucky on the train as the next stop was Gare du Nord and then it was direct to the EXPO centre and then CDG, in the end it only took 35 minutes and all of a sudden I had lots of time on my hands. Well almost, terminal 2A is a hell of a walk from the terminal 2 train station.



Route CDG-LHR
Flight Number 311323
Departure 1920 1815 (Actual 1815)
Arrival 1935 1830 [ (Actual 0920)
Seat 11C (Economy exit seat) 8C
Aircraft 320

Last night I tried to check in at T-24 but the website said it was not available. This morning I retried and then later on I did the same. Each time the computer said no. Eventually I give up and decided to head to the desks on my way in. My one worry was that there was flight issue due to either overselling or due to the strong winds at LHR.

At the desk the agent asked if I would prefer to take the 1815 flight to give me more time in LHR for my connection due to possible weather delays. She also commented the outbound flight was already incoming so there would be no issue with its arrival. I agreed and thanked her but not before requesting an exit seat. I know, pushing my luck right? Well there were only middle seats left but she offered 8C which had the middle spare which she would try and keep that way as it was close to departure.

My new flight give me 30 minutes before boarding which was ideal. A quick visit to Laduree for some French treats and I made my way to the Cathay lounge for a quick drink and I tried my luck with one more espresso. What a nice lounge this is and almost a shame I didn't have more time to spend here. Not long after sitting down I made my way to the gate.



Boarding started soon after and indeed my middle seat was free, we pushed back on time which removed any scenario where I had changed to the earlier flight which turned out to be delayed or cancelled. I had this happen once before at Copenhagen where I got on an earlier flight only for it to end up being delayed with an expected departure time after the next scheduled flight. I then needed to negotiate being put back on my original flight in order to make my connection. Que much confusion for the agent and computer system. I even managed to get my original exit seat back on that flight.

The normal economy seats are certainly tight.


I am still not a fan of these new nuts. Bring back the honey roasted nuts.


The flight was spent writing up this part of my TR and yesterdays. If you ever think that Dave is rambling a bit, it most likely means I have wrote this on my iPhone whilst sitting on a plane.

We landed on time so the flight swap worked out well this time. I noticed that my original flight had also taken off on time so I would have been fine either way for my connection. For the first time on a short haul flight we landed into the B gates so we needed the transit back to the A gates.

I decided to take the connections route to compare it to Saturday as I didn't think it would be too busy at this time of night. Indeed it wasn't busy but there were also not very many staff. I guess timings would have been similar but I prefer to be walking than standing in a queue. Back to the landslide connection next Tuesday I think.

Once in the lounge I had time for a quick dinner and to catch up on email and submit yesterday's TR update. I found it a little weird that a lady decided to share my table when there were others available but it wasn't a problem.

At 45 minutes before departure I had a slow walk down the length of the terminal to gate 22 for boarding.

Route LHR-NCL
Flight Number 1338
Departure 2045 (Actual 2045)
Arrival 2150 (Actual 2155)
Seat 12C (Economy exit seat)
Aircraft 320

No issues with flight timings, I spent the flight reading my new book and took a tea when the kart came around. Back in on time and then back home around 20 minutes later. I quickly unpacked and then I was into bed reading my book.