Let The Adventure Begin!

After nearly 30 hours of travel from door to door, we have finally arrived in Paris! I am exhausted and in a bit of disbelief that we are finally here!

We left home at 3am for the airport. Emirates check in service was fast! We had to wait  until 4am for immigration to open. Once through, we got ourselves the first of many caffeine shots to inject energy into our already flagging bodies.

The children very excited and waiting for their smoothies to go with their breakfast

Our awesome parents bought some ham and cheese buns because they knew we'd be too disorganised to do anything ourselves...

The only place open at 4am. Smart McDonalds. The other shops opened about half an hour later but it was too late, Most people had already acquired their caffeine boost at the golden arches

Malcolm completely zonked. Waiting to board our plane for Duabi

Our flights thankfully were uneventful. I might even be brave enough to label it highly successful! The children behaved unbelievably well, including young master Jonah. That is until we got off our 14 hour flight to Dubai and realised that we had lost him! He had decided to hide in between the seats on the way out. So embarrassingly we had to re-enter the plane to retrieve him. Our transit at Dubai airport went very quickly, so quickly that I didn't have time to take the camera out. That as it turned out will become the theme of our travel today.

This is our first time flying Emirates and I must say, their service is excellent. The economy seats are no better than others and their isles actually seem a bit smaller, but I love their staff! EVERY single staff member were so warm and friendly. The food and drinks were offered many times throughout our long flights but we had the option to NOT be woken up for meals which I loved. The meals were decent! The children got some pretty cool stuff and were treated like royalty. We will certainly put them right up there with Singapore Airlines.

Flying Emirates on a boeing 777

The kids knew what to do. It was straight to the games

I had my entertainment sorted out

The cabin crew organises a birthday place for Elliot complete with a chocolate cake with  berry coulis! They then took a picture and put it in a frame for us.

Another photo taken by one of many  friendly stewardess. As you can see, the children had no problems sleeping on the plane.

The Birthday photo

One of the meals came in a cool lunchbox...

...that had cool snacks inside it!

The children also received their own fleece blanket which had a monster soft toy to keep it together. I'm impressed!

Our arrival at Charles De Gaul also went super smoothly. We got off the plane at 7:30pm in Paris and looked with dismay at the lonesome 2 officers at immigration. To our surprise though, the lines moved very quickly and by 8pm, we had collected our suitcases, cleared customs and was in our cab heading for Paris. No time for photos!

Traffic was awful! And apparently that was normal. We arrived in our cosy apartment along Rue St Honore in the 1st arrondisement and were met by Patrick, the rental agent. He was friendly and took us through the impressively thorough manual including the all important nearby supermarkets, bakeries, restaurants and public transport. The loft apartment is very small but just enough for our family of 5. It comes complete with a kitchen, washing machine and free wifi.

The first opportunity I had to take a photo after landing!

The ridiculous lift that is so mall it fits only 1 adult.

Our apartment

The ktichen area

Going up...

The beds in the loft

We arrived in Paris to a chilly 3 degrees but our jackets must work because everyone felt hot despite wearing no other layers other than jeans and a long sleeved T-shirt! Let's hope the weather stays good for the remainder of our stay in Paris.

I want to change my date settings so that it displays correctly. However, I seem to be unable to do this despite having done it multiple times before. I am too tired to think. If you are friend reading, please kindly email me some instructions!