Day 1 - Vancouver to Toulouse

September 18^th – 19^th, 2002

28 hours and one pornographic pen later

We left Vancouver on a Wednesday; we wouldn’t be in Toulouse until Friday. We had been so busy at work and also preparing for our trip that neither of us has had any sleep in days. We were absolutely exhausted and were hoping to catch some sleep on the plane. Unfortunately, indigestion and some bad movies kept us awake. We walked around Frankfurt airport (our stopover), trying desperately to keep our eyes open. Then, to our dismay, we find out that our connecting flight had been cancelled. Luckily, we would catch the next flight but that would mean we wouldn’t get into Toulouse till midnight. Despite the minor setbacks, we were already happy, thrilled to be back in Europe. We had spent 2 months in France two years ago and have been pining for it ever since.  During our marathon at the Frankfurt airport, we managed to have a couple of laughs. First, there was the toilet incident. At dinner, Spiros got up to go to the bathroom. He was gone 30 minutes and I was starting to worry. When he came back, he looked a bit frazzled and said “Sorry, I fell asleep on the can”. He was so tired, he actually fell asleep for 30 minutes in the bathroom stall. The image of my husband asleep in a public toilet amused me to no end. Then, there was the pen incident. Somebody was selling pens, special pens…special pens for men. The pen was in the shape of a naked woman…but wait, there’s more… when you clicked down on the pen, red lights would turn on in her belly button and nipples….beauty! 

When we finally got to Toulouse, it was way past midnight. There were no taxis big enough to take our bike boxes, so, we put down our bags, took off our shoes and set up for the night at the airport.  Impressions of our accommodations for the night: 1) seats are hard, but you can spread out 2) hotels are for sissy folk.   We started traveling on the 18th, it is now the 20th, and we still had hours to go before we reached our official starting point, Bordeaux. Amazingly, we still didn’t sleep much. The excitement of being in France again was too great.