Part 2, Arrival

Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2008.

I am still feeling a little grumpy over my long and somewhat pointless walk back and forth between the MOMA and Lincoln center yesterday. I did not have the time or energy to meet anyone else I know in NYC, but then I anticipated that might happen. Another vacation another time.

I had enough time to obtain some "airplane food" as I am not sure that Iberia will have assimilated the concept of vegetarian food. I like to have my own anyway.

I was glad that I had scouted JFK before, when I landed on Monday. The departures monitor does not show my flight (I arrived a bit too early). It's just as well that I arrived too early as I stood in the line for Cathay Pacific for about 10 minutes before some helpful person asked me what I was waiting for, then directed me to the right place.

Boarding the flight proved relatively painless, but then we spent an hour on the tarmac. Normally I don't concern myself too much with delays like that (it's not at all like horror stories I've heard of people trapped on airplanes on the runway for many hours and unable to escape). I am a little worried about making my connection to Paris later on.  I skipped the first meal they served, preferring what I bought for myself in Astoria earlier.  I have to good fortune to have a more-or-less quiet person in the seat next to me and a window seat that allows me to get some sleep without anyone brushing past me. My friend Alan once gave me a very comfortable "blindfold" like thing which, miracle of miracles I haven't lost over the years, and that helps too. Oddly, one of the most vivid memories I have of the flight over the Atlantic was waking up to the sound of gentle rainfall inside the airplane. The other passengers peeling off the aluminum covers of the second meal, all at once, sounded like rain to my ears.  The second meal has a "pasta" choice, I'm hungry, so I take a chance. Revolting. But I find some bits I can eat, such as the dinner roll and the salad.

I asked one of the flight attendants about my connecting flight. She assured me that we made up the lost time from the departure along the way and will land on schedule.

Thursday, Oct. 23, 2008.

Madrid's airport is one of those "works in theory" sort of places.  To be fair, I navigated from my arrival gate to my connecting flight to Paris. But what a long strange trip it was. My boarding pass for the Paris flight listed the gate number as "H."  Had it been "K." then Madrid's airport would have then provided the "full Kafka" experience.  Mysterious signs pointed to "H," "J," and "K" (yes, there was a "K," it just wasn't my gate). After each letter appeared a time estimate in minutes.  Following the signs, in the early morning (local time, never-mind my body's time, which was half past hopelessly disoriented) with equally confused passengers (not that I could ask most of them, I do not speak French or Spanish and they did not speak English), led us all to a train. I stepped in without any idea of whether it was the "right" train (or whether there was a "wrong" one to take?). The letters did not correspond to stops, as I thought they would. We arrived at another terminal where there was an immigration station. I found surprising that the young man at the booth who stamped my passport did not ask me any questions. Not complaining. My confusion increased after I left passport control and found that this new and different terminal had many more gates than "H," "J," and "K." The letters were only the first part of the gate numbers. I found an information desk and begged for clarification. I had only to check the departure monitors to see which specific "H" gate I needed to find. I did as instructed and found my connecting flight in plenty of time. Along the way I discovered that the The airport in Spain keeps the smokers in a kind of glass pen. From the right angle they look like animals in a zoo. Homo Fumarius Nicotinus.  Works for me.

I have flown over green areas before. I never realized how familiar flying over the "boxy states" in the U.S. looked until I sat at my window seat during my flight from Madrid to Paris. Much of France (as I saw from the airplane) had more rivers and far more trees than I had expected. It did look oddly familiar in that I had spent many hours in my youth pouring over maps of Europe and European countries. The airplane circled broadly around Paris (I could not find the Eiffel tower from the plane, but I did recognize the Palace at Versailles). I was a bit surprised at myself that I recognized the Palace at Versailles. A French student worker at my library told the story of how the Queen did not like the new palace because she did not have a view. So the King had the forest surrounding the palace clear cut for nearly 100 meters at the corner where the Queen had her apartment. I recall Melonnie saying "those French girls - I tell 'ya."  It took that additional visual cue of the clearcut swath at one corner for me to realize I was looking at Versailles.

I found myself so impressed by how well the French organized the taxi stand at Orly that I drew a diagram of it in my travel journal. Instead of a line along the curb that one sees at airports all over the U.S. (and maybe other places?) the taxis pulled into "stalls" - these were "parking places" painted on the road with a pedestrian crosswalk at the far end. One could then stand on either side of the cab as needed to load one's baggage or oneself in the car without worrying about the "traffic side" of the car, as there was none. Once loaded, the cab would continue in the same direction it was already facing, leaving the space for the next empty cab. (Have you ever had the experience of walking to a cab waiting along the curb, then having to double-back the way you came when the cab pulled up into the front of the "line" at a taxi stand? Then you argue with the person who reaches it first despite the fact you were ahead of them in line? This doesn't happen at Orly).

My cab driver from the airport was a woman with a little dog in the cab with her. She had the front passenger side all decked out with a doggie bed, equipped with chew toys and a little bowl for his kibble. He barked at motorcyclists. He was so cute when she drove past me to the stall and the dog stood with his paws at the bottom of the passenger side window, checking me out. I had written down the French for my destination. Although I tried to say it, she motioned with her hands to see what I was reading from. After politely correcting my pronunciation, she input the address into her GPS.