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Trip Start Dec 24, 2008 Previous
Entry Trip End Jan 05, 2009

  Denver, Colorado, United States
Monday, January 5, 2009

It always seems existential to end a trip and think about where you've been over the past 24-36 hours.  "Yesterday, I woke up in Paris!"

When we got to Paris-Orly yesterday morning, we started off with a bit of a panic.  It seemed when we got to the check-in counter that they were not able to find our seats, or our reservation for that matter, in the computer system.  It was hard not to panic, but after a few minutes of scrambling by the people at the desk, they smiled at us and said "You've been upgraded!"  So instead of sitting in Prem +, (which is like United's old-style international business with the barcaloungers), we got to sit in Biz - which is more of a first class-style product, with fully lie-flat seats!  Score!  Not bad for free tickets!

The lounge at orly was even worse than the one at EWR - it was a generic business lounge shared by multiple airlines

Open Skies check-in at Orly

.  It was ridiculously crowded, the food was pre-wrapped, and they ran out of dishes.  I was going to say "it was better than nothing," but i'm not sure that's the case.

However, the onboard experience with open Skies was awesome.  Far superior to L'Avion, and competetive with United.  The crew (half American, half French) were friendly and had nice personalities.  There were cool, arty, black-and-white photographs of Paris and New york hung on the bulkhead walls and in the lavs for ambiance.  The seats were comfortable.  The AVOD worked much better (I watched "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People" and most of "Appaloosa," and a bunch of random American and British TV).  The food was wonderful - we had a full lunch after take off and then an "afternoon tea" before landing.  The snacks for tea came from a fancy French patisserie/cafe and were all done up in these cute, delicate little boxes.  OpenSkies even had better china than L'Avion (coming from British Airways heritage), which felt quite luxurious to eat and drink from.  In summary, I really do thing OpenSkies provides a good value in a premium/business class product.  L'Avion... not so much.  It will be interesting, now that these two companies have merged to see what the resulting product will be, and if they can sell it. 

Back in New York, we stopped at the United counter to work some of the 1K mojo and see if any one would take pity on us and let us fly out Sunday evening instead of Monday morning (even though..

Open Skies plane in BA livery

. they really had no reason to let us do so without charging us a change fee).  The first agent we talked to didn't seem to really want to deal with us at all, let alone do us a favor.  But the second sweetheart wonderfully set us up on the last nonstop of the night out of LGA, so all we had to do was cross Long Island from JFK, and then we were on our way!  In order to get on the mostly full flight, we used some updgrades to get put into first class, which was a nice way to end the trip and  very long, very exhausting day. (Even though my seat recline was broken :o(( ).  We arrived home at 9pm Mountain Standard Time, approximately 22 hours after waking up in Paris.

And though I loved experiencing France and had a wonderful trip, I have to say that I had an overwhelming sense of love for my country upon returning, and a sense of joy at being home.  Until next time.... a bientot!

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Biz class!	Backward-facing seating	The view looking back	Afternoon tea on Open Skies

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