"Come fly with me, lets fly, lets fly away" - Frank Sinatra

I had not credited how difficult the goodbyes would be and it was a week filled with goodbyes.

We left Perth in total panic. The bags wouldn’t close so we needed to add an extra suitcase at the last minute and pretty much packed everything we owned into vacuum bags, which added a lot of extra space that we seemed then to fill with more and more stuff. Sadly our lovely Christmas Eve breakfast with the family ended up a mad dash as we had failed to expect the unexpected.

 

After our last tearful farewell at the airport we were on our way.

The nineteen hours of flights and four hours spent in airports went by in a blur of entertaining the children, eating dreadful food and catnaps. We were keen to adjust to the change in time zones quickly so encouraged the kids to stay awake on the flight from Perth to KL and I suggest that this is a good strategy. As Julian is too young for TV we sat separately from Emma and Rob, and played together until Julian could stay awake no longer and he woke up to find himself being carried off the plane.

From our experience the other tips I can offer about flying with kids to Europe from Australia would be pick a quiet flight, Christmas Eve was perfect as there were a few empty seats and then you should make friends with the flight attendants. My sister in law suggested this brilliant strategy to avoid the mad dash for spare seats once the “fasten your seatbelt” sign is turned off and am so grateful that she did.

It worked a charm on our second flight, from KL to Paris. Somehow we were only given three seats together so we asked if we could be moved if other seats were available. Better than this, before take-off the lovely hostie ushered us a row of four seats that were empty and when I suggested that perhaps Rob and Emma could sit there for take-off and Julian and I could stay in our three seats she was happy to oblige and suggested we stretch out to ensure other people do not try to take out extra seats. There were some very unhappy people once we had taken off wandering around looking for an empty spot and they had all been taken.

Once we endured our dreadful turkey dinner at midnight, and I mean truly dreadful, Julian lay down across his two seats and slept soundly for eight hours and Emma stretched out across her three seats and slept for six. Meanwhile Rob and I sat up in our single seats and got little rest. I managed to watch two very good foreign films in between trying to sleep, which I could manage until the next person flushed the toilet.

By morning the kids were bright and cheerful and we were zombies but we were in Paris and this soon swept away the torment of the flight. Catching a taxi across a deserted Paris in the early dawn light, the sun was beginning to rise at 8am, was something out of apocalyptic movie. There were no cars and no people but famous sights appearing around us in the half light, La Madeleine, the Opera Garnier, the Place de la Concorde, Notre Dame in the distance and of course le Tour Eiffel, an instant and fast favourite with the kids.

And finally after a little more than twenty four hours since we had left Rob’s mum’s home for the airport we had arrived in our little attic apartment near St Germain in Paris. Time to rest, but of course not, it was Christmas morning and Paris was calling to us.

Paris at Christmas time was a dream come true and I will share it with you soon.