Landing in Paris - Charles de Gaulle

And soon we were boarding another British Airways aircraft. This time the flight was going to be a nice and short 40 minutes! In my humble opinion Terminal 4 at Heathrow is too congested. Both for take off and landing. We taxied for a while till we got out close to the airstrip and waited our turn to take off. There were flights taking off almost every 45 odd seconds at 9 on a Sunday morning! Finally, we were air-borne having a lovely bacon sandwich with café au lait flying over the Queen’s Windor Castle and then over the English Channel and soon we’re in the French air-space. The aircraft was starting to descend and I was craning my neck from my window seat to spot the Eiffel Tower even though we were miles away. I was passionately curious.

Soon we’d be descending into this dream city. It felt as if I was landing into an oilscape of dreams… The chains of small hills trapped fog in the valley that ran along the horizon as far as I could see. Lots of green patches all around. The winter Sun at 11 in the morning still shown from close to the corner of the sky rather than on top. Soon I was to learn the sun had no power at all, it merely coloured the day brighter with hues of crimson and orange and rose occasionally at 9 or so. Strange but nice in a unaccustomed way We had landed and were taxing into the old terminal at Charles de Gaulle.

Landing in Paris - Charles de Gaulle
Photo shot a little before we landed at Paris - Charles de Gaulle, Notice the angle of the sun at 11 am?

Passport control was a breeze and we did our bonjour, merci, au revoir and were in a lovely clean leather upholstered cab speeding down L’Autoroute du Nord at 140kmph driving on the wrong side of the road… It was freezing cold outside!! Only 1°C almost felt a few degrees in the minus with the chill, the sun though out and shinning from a 40 degree angle at midday had no effect what so every truly… I didn’t blink an eyelid… was busy taking it all in as we drove through the motorway, then onto not so fast roads and then 2 tunnels. The cab driver was really well dressed and smelt so good. Still no sign of the Eiffel Tower though…