First, long, exciting day of our next trip to Europe

This day has been a long time coming. We are off to Europe again, five and a half years after our last big trip.

We will spend the first 11 days in France, then after 3 days in Lisbon we will be thoroughly spoiled on a wonderful 22 day cruise of the western Mediterranean. After the cruise we will spend two weeks in Italy before flying home. Seven weeks in total!

Our first day was VERY long.  We got up at 2:30 am after a pretty ordinary sleep for us both (just too excited) and had a limo pick us up from our apartment at 3:15 am. Our Emirates flight was to depart at 6:15 am. We got through check-in and immigration quickly and spent just over an hour relaxing in the lounge. We had a light breakfast then boarded our flight for an on-time departure.

It was a long flight to Dubai, 13.5 hours. We changed, had light mattresses placed on our seats and tried to sleep in the first few hours, skipping breakfast, but really only had short naps. We had a very nice lunch, both had beef tenderloin, and watched movies for much of the flight. Had a couple of drinks in the on-board lounge - it was nice to stand up and stretch. We landed on time in Dubai and had about an hour in the lounge before joining our final flight to Paris. 

Looking a bit bleary eyed on our flight to Paris

It took 7 hours to get to Paris, arriving on time at 8pm local time. We both slept reasonably well for a couple of hours. On landing we had a long wait to get through passport control. We were almost at the front of the queue with four windows open, then three of the officers finished work for the day, leaving one window open! We eventually got through, picked up our luggage and met our chauffeur for the drive to our hotel.

We are staying at the Hotel Maxim Quatier Latin, just by the Latin Quarter. We have, apparently, one of their best rooms, on the top, sixth, floor. It is very small, with the bed occupying much of the room, but we have two balconies, one from the bathroom and one from the bedroom! Not a lot of room for our (small) suitcases, so mine is in the bathroom. 

We partially unpacked and finally got to bed at about 10:15. We had been up and travelling for over 27 hours!