Song would already be in Europe with her family. Everyone said I was crazy to go because France was having a record heat wave, but Song is very persuasive.
The Thursday before I planned to leave, I mentioned the trip to my friend Pat and she said she would go with me! Pat is also a retired airline employee and experienced in the ways of stand-by travel so I was thrilled to have her company!
On Tuesday, our plan was to take Delta to Amsterdam through Detroit and connect with a KLM flight to Marseille. We did our research and knew our other options for getting across the pond, but when military jets were doing exercises at the JAX airport, every flight we had planned was delayed so we would miss our connection for the ones that had seats to Europe. We stood by for DTW, BOS and ATL, switching flights several times as the flights were delayed. We got a flight to Atlanta just in time to make a connection to BOS, but it, too, was delayed out of ATL so we had to abort. The NCE flight at 9pm looked impossible but we decided to hang around and try it. We had a nice meal at One Flew South in E concourse and then settled in at the gate to wait. Lo and behold, we, not only got seats, but got D1! Life is good!
France Day 1
We used Rome2Rio to figure out how to get a bus to Aix-en-Provence where we would be staying. We used the Omio.com site to book Flixbus for the 2+ hour drive. It was pleasant enough until the driver missed the exit and took an extra 15 minutes to navigate the small heavily trafficked streets of Aix-en-Provence. We got an Uber to our BnB. He could only get us close because many of the streets are off-limits for cars.
We got to the Airbnb we were sharing with Song's family and found that it was up 4 flights of winding stairs and was sparsely air-conditioned. Once we got inside, we discovered that the kitchen and family room was up another set of winding stairs and there was a loft bedroom above that! Song and her family were kind enough to let me and Pat have the lowest/coolest bedroom! Besides the A/C situation, the other big drawback was that there was only 1 key/key fob to get into the building/room so we had to do a good bit of coordination to make sure no one was locked out.
After our long day of travel we didn't feel like doing much sightseeing, especially in the heat, so after a bit of wandering, we found Garrisons Pub with a nice table in the shade for some wine and snacks.
On the way back home, we stopped at the Monop' and got some wine, cheese and crackers for dinner.
France Day 2
We had a leisurely morning and then walked over to my friend Reemy's AirBnb. We met her friend Samia and rode with them to Boulodrome Jules Lenoir in La Ciotat the birthplace of Petanque. Reemy is an excellent driver, but she did take 1 curve on 2 wheels!
The Boulodrome had beautiful shady petanque courts flanked by a restaurant on one side and a bar on the other!
There were petanque players from our Amelia Island Club, the Athens club, the South Florida Club, the Atlanta club and others who had traveled for the tournament!
Ed, our organizer had arranged for the restaurant to serve us a wonderful 3 course lasagna lunch before the tournament.
After lunch, lots of French folks started showing up and practicing for the tournament. Song and I were partners. We were paired against a couple of French guys for our first game. We took an early lead and we're ahead 11-8. They had the point and we were out of boules when they accidentally shot their own boule out and gave us the 2 points needed to win.
Our second game was against two very nice handsome young Frenchmen. We, again, took an early lead, but they came back to make it close! We won that one 13-12. The third game was also against some Frenchmen. We were way ahead of them but they fought their way back and we beat them 13-12 to win the tournament!!! We got a trophy, a commemorative boule, a t-shirt and some Euros! We must thank Enzo of Pieds Tanques 1910 for the commemorative boule and stand!
We had a celebratory drink and then headed back to Aix-en-Provence in time to observe a happy town watching France beat Morocco in the World Cup match!
We took a circuitous route back from the car and saw a beautiful church.
We had planned to go out to dinner but since it was so late, we opted to stay in and eat what we could find at home. We tried to pick up a bottle of wine but apparently they stop selling wine sometime before 9PM.
France Day 3
Reemy came over to cook a delicious breakfast at our Airbnb!
Angie had arranged for us to have lunch at L'Ousteau de St Mars, a wonderful restaurant with a shady patio and it's own petanque court.
The chef had prepared a special meal for us of steamed fish.
After lunch, we played Petanque on the restaurant's court and then went across the street to see the dam Barrage de Bimont and the beautiful mountain scenery beyond.
Angie had arranged a social with her Petanque club in the evening but we had an early trip to the airport the next day so I had to miss it.
Pat and I had a nice dinner at Arev and then headed off to bed.
France Day 4, Time to go home.
We had arranged a ride using the ride sharing app Blablacar.com. Anthony and his wife picked us up at the nearest bus stop and drove us the 2 hours back to the Nice. Anthony, was a bit of a chatterbox which is a lot to take at 5AM, but it was better than the bus!
The security staff would not let me bring my Petanque boules in my carry-on so I had to check a bag (a HUGE no no for stand-by travel).
We stood by for the 10:15AM flight to Atlanta. Delta let the plane go out with empty seats because it was overloaded with cargo.
An agent had to walk the sad standbys back through passport control and we had to collect our checked luggage before we could check in for the flight to JFK.
The JFK flight boarded some standbys but ran out of seats when they got to me.
Back we went through passport control to baggage claim.
We decided to get out of NCE any way we could so we decided to take Lufthansa to Munich and try to get home the next day.
The LH flight was delayed so we had a few glasses of wine while we waited and almost missed the flight!
We had trouble finding a hotel in Munich and ended up staying in an office park hotel that wasn't near any restaurants so dinner was a sandwich and a bottle of wine from the nearby gas station.
On the way, we passed a place that had an indoor surf park.
France (Now Germany) Day 5
We took a 6AM Uber back to the Munich airport to standby for some more flights.
We were very happy to get seated and didn't care at all that we were in economy. The flight was very pleasant and the food was good. I recommend the chicken curry.
When we got to Detroit, we made contingency plans in case we didn't get on the direct flight to Jacksonville but we didn't have to execute those plans because at the last second we were given seats and got back home in time for dinner!
It was a really fun trip!
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