For the last couple of weeks I have been saved the torture that is Ryanair and have instead sampled the delights of a “proper” airline.
Air France recently opened a new route from Nantes to London Ciy Airport, and I was there on the first day to try it out.
Upon arrival at the gate we were greeted with free coffee and cake…
As this is a proper airline, I had already booked my seat on the Fokker 50 plane, so there was no need to muscle my way to the front of the queue, elbows out and waving my boarding pass. I could just sit and drink my free coffee and eat my free cake in peace. Very civilised.
As boarding commenced, the 25 or so passengers ambled up to the desk and walked straight out to the plane. No being herded into the glass sweat-box/holding-area as with a certain other airline!
The plane was very smart, with a 2+2 formation of seats, which were very comfy. We had the luxury of seat-back pockets (yeah, posh or what?!) and ample legroom.
Once airborne, as it was the inaugural flight from France, we had a free glass of champagne. A free sandwich and drink were offered too, which is the norm (sadly the champers was just a treat!). The plane is propellor-powered so it was pretty loud, but as the flight is only an hour and a bit so it wasn’t too much of a problem.
It was a smooth flight in the main, with an easy landing at London City Airport [web site] in the heart of Docklands. It’s a very nice little airport, small enough that you can get in and out very quickly, but with a good selection of shops and food outlets. Five minutes from landing and I was standing on the station of the Docklands Light Railway that is attached to the airport. Fifty minutes from then and I was at my hotel in Paddington.
Comparing this experience with my previous journeys via Stansted, it felt like I had just travelled First Class. One just gets so accustomed to the basic level of service from Ryanair that when experiencing a normal airline one feels like royalty! And although there are far more facilities at Stansted, I would be very happy never to see that airport again, especially the ghastly Stansted Express, which has to be one of the worst train services in the country.
And as for the price? Well my initial trip cost just £157 return. Now, considering I booked this just 2 days before I flew, had I booked that late with Ryanair it would have cost me about £250 for the ticket itself, that’s without all the extra payments that one has to take into account with Ryanair. So it was really a great alternative and one that I have continued to use.
There are currently two flights per day during the week, with the outward flights leaving Nantes at 07:45 and 17:15 and the return flights leaves London at 08:25 and 17:45. at the weekend I think there are is only one flight per day. But this is a much more flexible timetable than Ryanair and is ideal for me on my weekly commute.
I am hoping that my travels to Maidenhead each week will not be a permanent feature for too much longer, but for now I’ll certainly be sticking with Air France. Not only is it a more convenient timetable, but the extra comfort, 20kg baggage allowance, easy check-in and boarding procedures, price and frequent flyer points programme all add up to a winner for me.
A few snippets of news for you today…
Lost languages
Today the BBC are featuring a story [here] which reveals that half of all UK adults have forgotten the languages they learned at school. Luckily for me this wasn’t the case as my schoolboy French had to get me through many tricky situations when we first arrived!
What is hopeful for our kids is the following:
more than two thirds (69%) said they were jealous of people who were able to speak another language fluently.
Of those who can speak another language, 61% said it had been of benefit to their career, with a third (34%) saying their language skills have given them opportunities to travel and work abroad.
This bodes well for the future of our 3, who will leave school being fluent in at least 2 languages, possibly even 3.
Happy Birthday Craig
Craig McGinty runs the superb ThisFrenchLife web site [here], which is on my daily read list. It’s a great read, always full of interesting articles and news about all things French.
Well today is Craig’s birthday (age not revealed!) so what better time to head on over to www.thisfrenchlife.com and wish Craig a joyeaux anniversaire!
Front-page news toady includes Nicolas Sarkozy and his extra leg (!), news about banned Chinese milk products in France and a pointer to some free travel guides.
A busy weekend coming up
I will fill you in on the details next week, but this wil be another busy weekend!
On Saturday we are heading next-door to the apple-pressing barn where we will hopefully see the whole process from picking to pressing to bottling. With a bit of luck we will walk away with a nice collection of freshly-squeezed apple juice, which should keep us going for a while.
Then on Sunday we will be testing our French again as we meet up with some families who have links with Lisa’s nephew through school exchanges. So a trip to Montaigu near Nantes, then over to the beach to La Tranche-sur-Mer.
On the road again
(Photo under CC Attribution 2.0 Generic by krejcirkmira)
Due to some changes at work, I’ll be hitting the road to England quite a bit this month. This is a real pain and not something I really wanted to happen, but the situation is rather unavoidable at the moment.
Hopefully it will only be a very temporary measure and I can return to my rural hideaway very soon 
In the meantime, if you’re anywhere near La Rochelle, Stansted or Maidenhead, feel free to get in touch and we can have a coffee.
And finally…
Next Friday I will be the ripe old age of 37. I’m looking forward to a majorly-fun-time-friday, and an especially fun weekend with great friends.
Anyway, that’s what’s going on with us. Keep a look out for updates. Or why not subscribe to my email newsletter [by clicking here]? Every time I add something new to La Vie en Foussais you will receive it in your inbox - what could be easier?
I have just returned from a brief jaunt back to England, my first for a long time. My job being what it is, I am able to work from home most of the time, which has been fantastic. Setting up home in a new country is hard enough without the strain of having to leave it all behind every week to return to the rat-race. It can be quite tough though, working remotely. After a while you do start to feel a bit forgotten and, although there are always conference calls, email, MSN and Skype, there’s not really any substitute for a 1-to-1 face-to-face meeting.
So I actually don’t mind spending odd days back in the office. It serves several purposes.
It keeps my brain active. Being one of the more senior guys there, I am generally a magnet for enyone with tricky questions. This does me good as you can very easily “zone-out” when working from home, especially when home is a quiet corner of rural france and its sunshine and blue-skies outside!
It reminds people who I am. In a large organisation it can very easily become a case of out-of-sight-out-of-mind. And you can find people unconciously excluding you from conversations or going elsewhere for information just because they haven’t seen you in the office for a while. It’s nothing personal, you just start to “fade-out” of their conciousness after a while.
It’s a change of scenery. My desk faces the corner of the wall, so, like a naughty schoolboy, I can see very little of what is going on around me. The lazy spider that lived near the cieling above me seems to have slipped down and is now hanging on his web, looking rather dead. So I don’t even have him for company. Going back to the office gives me a new view of the world, with lots lots of faces around, none of which are generally dead.
I get to earn loyalty points at the hotel. One of the few perks of the job – staying in lots of hotels means one soon collects a stack of hotel loyalty points. I shall soon enjoy spending my collection on a bunch of nice stuff
I can reconnect with the organisation. Working at home it’s easy to forget that you are part of a wider organisation. Just visiting HQ for a day reminds me that there is more out there.
But the best thing for me about going away is that I get to come home. As I drive into Foussais Payre and see all the sights that have so quickly become my signals of home, I can feel myself relax and all the stresses of trains, planes and automobiles are left behind on the road.
It’s worth going away just to get that feeling.
