Had a noon flight out of Tunisia. Their airport is definitely different than ours. You can only check in when they say you can (usually 2 hrs before hand) and it's usually a chaotic mess. Paris was like that as well.
Our flights are Tunis to Paris (2 hrs) and then Paris to NYC/JFK, all on Air France. The Paris to NYC flight was amazing. I got my seat assignment - row 69. I'm thinking, wow, this must be a huge plane for 69 rows...yep and I was UPSTAIRS!!! Yes, this is an old 747 that has an upper deck and I was seated up there!! It was kind of business-class-like. Extra leg room, TV screens in the backs of the seats. All my other planes this summer had the TV's in the seats, but on this one, downstairs, nope. Since it's an older plane, they haven't updated it yet, so those poor folks downstairs didn't have a choice of movies and just had screens up on the ceiling...oh, remember those days!?!? My, how times have changed. We've come to expect movies/TV on demand and when we don't get to choose, we pitch a fit.
Needless to say, everyone in our group kept wandering up to check on us and see what life was like upstairs. There were 5 of us there with LOADS of students. There were groups of Italians & Spaniards going to USA to study. They were scattered all over the plane, so they used our upstairs oasis as a lounge - good thing I didn't want to sleep.
NY wasn't bad, surprisingly, to get through Immigration. I expected it to be a zoo, but wasn't. Customs had a huge line since they only had 2 guys working...basically, they looked at your Customs Claim Form and let you go - no searching of luggage! WOO HOO!!
Had an overnight at the Hilton where we all basically checked in, ate dinner and went to bed. It was at dinner that someone pointed out that we had been on 3 continents today!! That floored me!! Wow!!!
Said good-byes to everyone at dinner since we're all on different flights in the morning. It's amazing...when you travel with people over an extended time period and talk to them every day and laugh with them every day, you grow attached. It's always hard going home since those people aren't around and they're the only ones who share those memories with you. It's always lonely when they aren't there in the morning at breakfast, or when you see something that reminds you of them - it makes you smile. Those are the best souveneirs to bring home - the memories & experiences with people, not necessarily the destinations.
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