The first problem I had on the trip started before I even went down the aerobridge - my ticket was pulled up for being from Qantas - because it was an onward ticket, they had to call up Qantas (or something like that) before they would let me on.
I'd taken photos of the A380 from the outside, but the inside feels even bigger. I'd managed to snag a seat up the back of the top deck, where there's a mini-cabin of 5 rows of economy seats in 2-3-2 behind the premium economy cabin. So I basically walked the length of the plane after boarding. It's mind-boggling to think that there is that much again on the bottom deck (albeit about 200 more seats on the bottom, which is mostly economy):
The outside view
The seat itself had a window that wasn't suited very well for taking photos out of - there was a fair gap between the inside and outside part of the window of about 30cm. There was a small container next to my window seat as well to store stuff in. Lucky I didn't, because I didn't manage to get it open until we landed, despite numerous attempts.
There was a gentleman sitting in said seat when I boarded the plane - evidently he made the same mistake I made on the Qantas flight. He hastily shifted to his actual seat when I arrived:
My seat
The fact that this time the flight was actually full meant I could barely take any photos. The best I managed was camera phone of the meal trays, and that was all. Dinner came about an hour into the flight - at 2am - and consisted of a choice of pork or chicken. Having chosen the chicken, this was what I ended up with:
Dinner
The salad was raw tomato and prawns. That's two big crosses. There was a small camembert cheese, a bread roll, some fruit, and chicken with 'roasted' potatos and beans, and a tasty dessert pastry. The camembert wasn't to my taste, but I'm not a big cheese eater so that wasn't a major drawback. Overall the meal was basically a typical 'airline food' experience.
After dinner I tried to get some sleep. I was able to do so in fits and starts, managing about half a dozen naps of 3/4 hour or so. There wasn't much else brought out by the cabin crew, just a couple of drinks runs.
At about 5am Parisian time, so about 8 hours after the first meal, breakfast came out. The cabin crew asked us to keep our windows shut until breakfast, so that everyone could sleep. Breakfast was much the same, but with a chipolata, a hash brown and eggs. The eggs were a bit tasteless, which meant I could actually eat them, and the hash brown was a bit sad-looking. There was more fruit, a bread roll and jam, and another delicious dessert pastry. I also got a hot chocolate, which was nice, but not a touch on Qantas':
Breakfast
With a couple of hours left, I started watching Need for Speed. I'd wanted to see it for a while because it had Harrison Gilbertson in it. He's an Australian actor that I've seen in a couple of other movies and TV shows where he did a good job. The movie was OK, the plot was a little predictable but it was pretty much your average action movie.
With the movie over, we started our descent into Charles de Gaulle Airport. The first thing you notice is how the city is spread out so much yet has so many more apartment buildings than Australian cities. The airport itself is so massive that we flew a parallel approach with another Air France A380, landing on opposite sides of the airport.
Once we taxiied and taxiied, and taxieed some more, we arrived at our gate in Terminal 2E. Once again I was lucky enough that the flight crew allowed me to take some photos of the cockpit. The cockpit of the Airbus A380 was much larger than I've seen on twinjets:
The cockpit of the A380
The airport itself is very organised, with clear directions to baggage collection. From Terminal 2E, you have to catch two trains to get to the baggage collection area. Some of the people getting off our flight had great difficulty communicating with the French person herding people onto the trains though.
Once I arrived I was only waiting about 5 minutes or so to collect my bag, after which I headed towards the RER station. There was a queue to buy tickets, because the automated ticket machines outside only accepted coins and credit cards, of which I had neither. It was slightly cheaper for me to get the RER, because I was only going as far as Le Bourget, instead of to the centre of Paris.
Checking out for this report, I'll add another post after Day 1 in Paris!
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