The trip from Singapore to Paris-CDG started out well when I found than my window seat was directly between two windows, and hence I had a nice piece of flat wall against which I could lean my head to get a bit of sleep during the night. And soon after drinks and the first meal, I tested it out and was soon asleep. However, I was awoken after a couple of hours, as we flew over India, by loud noises outside the plane. It took me a while to work out what was happening, but I eventually figured out, by listening and looking out the window, that we were caught in a huge rainstorm from clouds above. The noise of the rain hitting the top of the fuselage was deafening, so much so that I thought it must have been hailstones, and maybe it was. After about 20 minutes the noise subsided, but was soon replaced by a very bunoy ride as we encountered other weather turbulance.

After everything had settled down a bit, I looked through the movie list and settled on "Under the Tuscan Sun", mainly because it was about a new life in a foreign country, something like what I am doing in France. I watched it for about 20 minutes but had to stop because my eyes were tired and burning, So I paused the movie and took comfort with my flat piece of wall again. Five hours later, I awoke with a start; I think I snored myself awake, and just hoped I hadn't disturbed my neighbour. I then finished watching the movie, which wasn't exactly the same as my experiences in France, but had enough recognisable moments to be interesting.

We arrived at CDG about half an hour late, because of re-routings required because of the Ukraine and Gaza wars. But we had a pretty quick run through Customs, especially since Australians joined the short queue because our passports are digital. It was then a little wait while my baggage arrived, and then off on the Airport Shuttle to Terminal 1, where the main rail stations are. I got there with enough time to change the SIM card in my phone over to my French account, and then off we went on our way to Lyon. As we travelled past the western side of the Dijon region, I could see that it had been raining fairly hard recently because of all the standing water in the fields. This was confirmed when we got to Lyon and crossed the River Saone, which was muddy brown and running fairly swiftly.

Unlike this train trip last year, everything was running on time and there were no missed connections. And after training it back up to Dijon and then catching the train to Auxonne, I arrived there at exactly the expected ETA, 1528h. And even Rita was running on time, waiting there to collect me. As we got to the port, I could see that the Saone was higher than normal, but still well below flood level, as had happened a couple of weeks ago.

Soon after unpacking everything from the car (Rita had wisely done some shopping before the public holidays on the next two days), we ran into Port Capitain John Stevenson, an Aussie who was Port Capitain before Covid, who has now returned to the post after the departure of Alain over the winter break. We chatted for a while, but I could feel the last few days of travel catching up on me. So soon after finishing our talk, and having a light dinner, I went for a nap. And that was the end of the day for me!