Traveling is one of my favorite things in life. But sometimes the process of getting to where you want to go can be suboptimal. Thursday was one of those days. Bianca and I were flying Air France to Paris and then had a connection to the south. But about 5 hours into our flight, they shut off all the TVs and informed us that, due to a technical issue with the plane, we'd be making an emergency landing in either Dublin or Brest (in northwest France). The technical issue was an unidentified burning smell.
We ended up at Brest Bretagne Airport and got the opportunity to explore this small and almost food-less airport for about 10 hours. For some reason, they had to split our flight into two planes. So what Air France did was fly a special plane to Brest to pick up and fly group number one to Paris, fly it back to Brest to pick up group number two, and then return to Paris. We were in group number two. By the time we arrived in Paris it was close to midnight local time and we had, naturally, missed our connection a long time ago.
We are staying in our 6th hotel of this trip right now. And only 50% of these hotels have had air conditioning. This had led to a few restless sleeps where it was simply too hot. In one of our hotels, we had to ask them to bring a fan up to our room. But hey, this is Europe. I'm sure everyone thought we were spoiled North Americans. Interestingly enough, not having AC forces you to be more aware of the environment around you. Very quickly you learn that if you don't shut the blinds or shutters when the afternoon sun is shining in, you are going to end up with a room that is too hot to sleep in. I try to be mindful of this back home in Toronto, where we do have AC, but there really isn't the same imperative to both design and then operate around climate and local conditions. Active mechanical systems do much of this for us.