Today was a contrast in two flights.

Air NZ departs at 11pm for a twelve hour flight. So we all start weary after a full day. There’s a meal at 1am which you don’t really want and then the cabin is darkened and you try and sleep or stare numbly with increasingly sore eyes at the back of the seat in front of you. There’s a moving image but you keep losing concentration on it. And your mouth gets drier and drier and your nose and ears block up. After hours and hours you look at your watch and 15 minutes have passes.

The passengers are 95% Chinese and they all seem to have brought young children. The children all want to scream and after a while you want to scream too. It’s dark inside and dark outside but nothing to see anyway because it’s all sea. After a lifetime the walking dead emerge into a hot humid beige haze land.

For some reason our luggage could only be checked through to Shanghai,  not Paris as other people’s were. So instead of going to a transit lounge with no formalities we had to fill out an arrivals card, queue for immigration, wait at baggage claim, queue at Customs and queue at security. Then a 2 km walk through what must be the largest terminal in the world to check in at Air France. No eticket kiosks here. Queue for ages to get a boarding pass, queue for security, queue for departure card at immigration. A 2 hour 50 minute stop over and spent 2 hour 20 minutes in queues.

We were not looking forward to the second flight of the zombies. But no, what a difference. The flight left at 10am so all the other passengers were fresh and excited, they were Chinese excited to go to Paris and French excited to leave China and go home.

After 2 hours lunch arrived and it came with champagne, wine and beer, and concluded with aperitifs. And it all came with chic, elegant flight attendants who truly smiled with their eyes and not fake smiles with only the corner of their mouths. They purred at you seductively in French even if they were only saying merci monsieur. I think lack of sleep and relaxing after lunch with a small bottle of cognac were having their effect.

Barb thought the flight attendants were a bit intimidating being so tall and immaculately groomed.

Little groups gathered in the aisles and the lobbies to the galleys and the rest rooms and everyone was very chatty and smiling and making new best friends. A million selfies were taken with nameless people you will never see again. Next month: delete, delete, delete.  Nobody bothered watching movies.

Outside and inside it was bright and we flew all day in the sunshine and it was all over land even if it was Mongolia or all the Stans. Is there an Anzacistan somewhere in Turkey? The only nagging thought was how many war zones we were crossing. In no time we had landed and it felt like you had spent a pleasant afternoon with convivial friends and you sort of didn’t want to leave.

It is interesting to sit in the plane and listen to the difference between Chinese and French. To me Cantonese seems to be sharp and jagged and shouted. French seems to be soft and silky and almost whispered.

Everyone talks about airline food so here goes. The food on Air France is no better than Air NZ. It is just slightly more adventurous and interesting.  What seems delicious in French is just a bit ordinary in English. On Air France, in the afternoon when the throat was starting to get a bit dry,they brought around ice cream on a stick. Just perfect.