Christchurch to Paris - 12/13 July

I felt a little sad as we left Christchurch, almost as if we were abandoning our much loved, quake-ridden city. We all thought there was a shake as we were about to step on the plane, but it was just the movement of the people on the air bridge.

My gluten free meal on the way to Sydney was a shocker (also dairy free, as well as being dry and tasteless). We had a couple of hours to wait after arriving in Sydney so sat and built up our fluid intake for the journey; Jan and I played a few hands of Bridge on my iPad and walked around to keep moving while we could. We felt a bit spooked a few times because the floor kept moving as if there were small earthquakes but Steve gave us his engineer's opinion that it was all normal.

The leg from Sydney to Dubai was 14 and a half hours, and sadly my dinner meal was the same as on the previous flight, although this time there was a decent dollop of sauce and it wasn't so dry. I'm relieved to report that breakfast on the plane was very nice scrambled eggs, but they had given me Vegemite to spread on the bread - NOT gluten free - sigh!

We arrived at Dubai Airport at ten to 2 on Tuesday afternoon NZ time. I headed straight for the MacDonalds for some fries... It was first thing in the morning there, so I've had the rare treat of McDonalds for breakfast.

The 7 hour journey from Dubai to Paris was a doddle after the previous flight. Jan and I enjoyed watching some video clips on my iPad by Rick Steves, about some of the places we will be visiting. And David and I got hooked on the Angry Birds game. Steve and I bought 4 day Museum Passes at Paris Airport, before getting a taxi to the Hotel Cecilia and squeezing into the tiny elevator two at a time to find our rooms on the first floor, overlooking the street.

The hotel is quite quaint and although the room is basic and small, it's good enough, and way better than our hotel in Venice had been. After showers and a quick email check using the hotel's free wifi, we went for a walk along the top end of the Champs Élysée. The Arc de Triomphe is probably only 200 metres away from our hotel and it's bigger than I imagined. We'll have a proper look later.











On our first evening, still feeling like we were on Kiwi time (it was after 3 in the morning your time) we just felt like dawdling. The crowds were bad so we ended up diverting down a side street and finding somewhere for a cool drink and then had a dinner. I had the first of what will probably be many Caesar Salads sans gluten - I used a GF language card.

We were all knackered and finally headed to bed around 6 am NZ time, 8 pm in Paris. We were out like a light, but rudely awoken by a drunk woman laughing and shouting loudly all the way down the street outside at 2:00 am. Still, we both had a good catchup on our sleep.

Footnote for Michelle, Judy and my other gluten free friends. You'll be interested to know that I sure hope the Emirates food improves. Thought it was great 2 years ago but my meal out of Christchurch was a piece of very dry fish with a tbsp of dried up tomato sauce on top - it added no flavour - and I'm not exaggerating. Gordon Ramsay would not have been impressed, and it sure wouldn't get the Emirates chefs into the Master Chef competition! Boiled potatoes and beans, some lettuce, a piece of tomato and cucumber - no dressing. 2 slices of very dry GF bread. Everything dry. The wee ginger/apple cake was 'ok'. David had a lovely fish meal and gave me the cheese he had with his crackers. He even had a chocolate with his meal - bah! The problem, I think, is they're making gluten free meals dairy free as well and combining their allergy provisions and putting no imagination into it, which means I'll be losing weight on these flights, so I guess the food cloud has a silver lining! You wouldn't like it though, Andrew. The meal out of Sydney was the same one, but marginally better cooked. But things improved. The breakfast was lovely scrambled eggs, mushrooms, tomato but still dairy free. The GF breakfast and lunch out of Dubai was excellent - salads with variety and flavour, and a casserole with a lovely sauce. A fabulous fresh fruit jelly for dessert. The bread was a more moist buckwheat variety. And I even had a chocolate!