Day 2: Still up in the Air!

Saturday, October 8, 2016: Paris to 'Tana

We each probably got 1-2 hours of sleep before waking up for breakfast. This was fortunately a light meal; just fruit, yogurt, and bread with jam, as it can be hard to eat much more food this early in the morning after not sleeping. We landed 30 minutes early, but between 10 minutes of taxiing, and another 10 waiting for a gate, we deplaned only a few minutes early. We landed in concourse L of Terminal 2E, and had to transfer on the train to concourse M. Luckily, no passport control as we remained outside the Schengen zone. Security was empty, so we were through very fast to the main part of the concourse.

We finally stopped for macarons! There is a store in the terminal, which we pass every time we are in CDG. And every time, we say, "We should buy some of these..." We have been meaning to stop for years, and finally did. After that, we we had over an hour to spend in the AF lounge for Champagne, rosé wine, and a few snacks. We logged on to the WiFi and heard from our companions; they were stuck in a very long queue at immigration so they probably wouldn't make it through in time to hang out in the lounge with us before boarding.

On a lark, I explained our checked luggage situation to a customer service agent in the lounge, and asked if he could check on the status of our bag, and he said that he would. After a short time on the computer, he looked up, smiled, and said that according to the tracking system, the bag was now in Paris, waiting to be loaded onto our flight to Tana! That would be great news – we’ll see if it’s there when we arrive!

Pushing back at CDG. Last jetway we will see for a while!

We boarded, enjoyed some (more) Champagne, and settled in for the very long flight. The business class section here was a 2-3-2 configuration, and luckily, I was able to snag a pair of seats in the first row (A-B) at the last minute. All of the two seat pairs had been full since the time we booked, so we had been in the 3-seat section, two adjacent seats but aisle and middle. At check-in Thursday night, seats 1A and 1B were suddenly empty, so I had changed. We met our companions as they boarded too, so all intact so far!

Flying over the Rhine

We took off eastward, and continued that way for a fair while before slowly turning southeast over Switzerland. I got a glimpse of the Rhine Valley, where we have visited before by river cruise and by car.

Somewhere in Italy. Alps and Snow. And Clouds!

And we saw a few Alps poking through the clouds. We looked for Venice as we flew directly over, but only saw clouds.

Island of Pag, along the Dalmatian Coast

Peruća Lake, Croatia

The view got much better over the Dalmatian Coast. We have made a few cruise stops here but the views made us want to visit again.

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Dubrovnik! It looks peaceful from the air. But on our one visit it was so crowded. It is very popular with cruise ships these days.

Center City, Athens

And the views of Greece were nice as well, to accompany our lunch meal. The view of Central Athens was clear enough for us to recognize many sites that we'd visited on past trips.

I finally closed the blinds over the Mediterranean and napped for a while after the lunch and wine. We were finally a bit more relaxed, especially after learning that our bag was on the flight with us!







We flew over Egypt and The Nile, then Abu Simbel but I just missed seeing it. The sky was cloudless, but I had been napping and woke up a few minutes too late.





It finally got dark over Ethiopa and I saw clusters of orange glowing in the dark – fires? Or volcanic activity? I couldn’t tell. I also saw lots of lightning off to the east where there were clouds and some kind of storm brewing. Still 4 hours to go on this 10+ hour flight!

Landfall! Madagascar awaits.

We watched some movies to pass the time. And then we finally made landfall and started our descent.








We landed pretty much on time at 11:00 PM, but the rest of the process was terribly inefficient. We had to fill out an immigration card on the plane, which included a declaration of health. The first step was to walk down the stairs from the jet and across the tarmac, where you enter the terminal and wait in line to hand in your declaration of health. Then you get into the next line to buy a visa. They take all sorts of currency, so I used up some GBP that I had lying around to buy them, but I got Euros in change.

Once your visa stamp is affixed in place, you get in yet another line and hand your passport to a police officer, who puts it into a pile on a counter where three agents look at it, and each process it, in (very slow) succession. Finally the passport makes its way to the end of the counter, where another agent removes the immigration card, inspects the visa one last time, and calls out your name. It’s a total disorganized scrum there, and the whole process took well over 45 minutes. I had found our checked bag on the carousel within a minute or two of handing over my passport, which was great, but we still had to wait for the passports.

View from our Room: Hotel Tamboho, Antananarivo

Finally after midnight, we met our guides and driver, left the airport, and headed to the hotel. It was a nice place, beautifully decorated with wood and carvings, gorgeous rich textiles, and a beautiful shower with the walls finished in dark stone. We took a few minutes to use the WiFi and let our families know that we had arrived safely.



After a look out the window at the inviting swimming pool, sleepiness finally overcame our excitement, and we went to bed a little after 1AM.