Today I started out having breakfast with my father at the airport before catching an Air Canada flight to Vancouver, where I caught an Icelandair Flight to Reykjavik. The Icelandair flight was the best flight that I had ever been on because I saw a KP5 index Aurora Borealis! One of the flight crew members that wasn’t flying noticed me setting up my tripod and wedging it in between my business class seat and the aircraft wall and asked if they could take it into the cockpit to take some photographs of the Aurora from up front. I obliged and let them mess around with it for a bit. He came out after a while and talked with me for a bit and showed me the photos. The photos turned out fantastic! The flight was greeted in Reykjavik with a massive snow storm, which ended up delaying flights significantly, but more on that in a bit.
The next flight, Reykjavik to Paris, was about an hour late arriving in from Paris, and then delayed a further 2 hours because the airport was temporarily shut down to the massive blizzard that rolled in. There was a group of women on the flight that became extremely hysterical and confrontational with the flight attendant, so I stepped in and helped to calm the situation by explaining in more detail how things work like checklists, de-icing, flight delays, etc. The flight crew was extremely thankful and gave me complimentary alcoholic beverages and food for the remainder of the flight and asked for my email address so that they could try to see if I could be upgraded on the return flight. To be honest I’m surprised the group of women didn’t get kicked off the plane; as I’m sure they would have if it was in America and Canada.
I landed three hours late at Paris Orly airport and took the OrlyBus and Metro to get to my hotel. I checked in, dropped off my stuff and went out exploring for a bit. I saw Notre Dame, Les Paris Royals, ate a delicious crepe from Breizh Cafe (highly recommended by google and trip advisor), the Louvre (outside only), some old Arcades (enclosed corridors with shops), and The Grand Rex, an Art Deco cinema built in 1932. The cinema has a capacity of 2800 seats, making it the largest in Europe in terms of seating capacity, and it also boasts the largest screen size in Paris, measuring at 300 metres squared.
It was 8:00pm and I was completely exhausted so I went back to my hotel, emailed the flight crew from the first Icelandair flight a few Aurora pictures before heading to bed.
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