26th December Paris-London-New York

Another freezing day saw us bid adieu to Les Deux Parcs and make our way with heavier-than-before backpacks to the now familiar train station at Noisiel, en route to the airport. We had to catch two trains, the first to Chatelet-Les-Halles on Line A and the second on Line B to l'Aeroport Charles de Gaulle. Each segment took around half an hour, with no problems connecting, so we made it to the airport in good time. We got off at Terminal 2 and walked into where we thought we had to check in, only to discover that we had to be at 2B, and needed to get on a people-mover to do that. After wandering around trying to find out where to get on, we ended up where we were in the first place upstairs. It is quite confusing if you haven't been to Charles de Gaulle before.

Check-in was also interesting as we were moved from pillar to post. The British airways check-in desk was not operating, and even though we tried to check-in automatically, Neil's booking wouldn't go through, and an official took his passport away. Rather disconcerting! You have to advise them of your intended address in New York before leaving England or Europe, and the machines wouldn't process Neil's.

Eventually we got through and still had plenty of time to board. I had been worried that Heathrow would still not be operating because of the fog, but it was back in action. After calling in a machine to blast the ice off the plane (eek), they let us take off, and in 40 minutes we were back in London. This was when it got really interesting.

Because Heathrow is often (always) overcrowded, our plane had to pull in in the middle of nowhere and everybody except us and another lady in a wheelchair went off in a bus. We had to wait for a high-lift to come, and of course it didn't. So we sat on the plane with cleaning people around us and cabin crew bringing us snacks for about an hour, when finally we did what we had suggested in the first place - got Richie down the stairs. The British Airways crew were really embarassed and apologetic, so we didn't growl at them. The only thing on my mind was that we had so little time between landing and taking off again for New York we would miss our friends Jenni and Grant who might have turned up to see us. Thank goodness they didn't or it would have been a wasted trip for them.

At around 5.50pm we flew out from Terminal 4 at Heathrow on our eight hour trip to JFK International, New York, New York.

This was not the end of the day, of course, as we went back in time as we flew, arriving in the Big Apple at around 8.45pm. I was a little out of sorts, having enthusiastically consumed the three bottles of wine the nice British Airways man gave me on the way over! However our journey through customs was not nearly so long, and after being concerned about getting grilled about baggage - this was New York, after all- we whizzed through, after all except Chelsea were fingerprinted, and found a taxi big enough to take us. Actually, it probably wasn't a taxi, as he had no ID displayed, and he got hopelessly lost trying to get us to our hotel, the Ramada Plaza, which was supposed to be at the airport! It was actually quite a way from the terminal, the address being JFK Airport, JAMAICA, NY(!) but we did get there eventually. The kids immediately tuned into one of the many live courtroom dramas they were to watch on TV in the US, while we had a shower and hit the hay.