The journey begins...

It's been a long time coming... almost a year of planning including getting the Business class tickets on non-stop overseas flights through Air France, hotels booked and canceled, hundreds of rooms and AirB&B reviews... we were finally on our way to Europe on our 3 weeks plus vacation. This was to be our longest time traveling, being away from home in one stint. I was excited. I thought S was too, but I suspected she'd also be a little ambivalent about being away from our home for so long. But as always, she was all game.... We said good bye to the house and climbed into our ride to SFO under bright California summer afternoon sunshine.

Check in process was smooth with Air France. We went through security quickly. At least at SFO the TSA has done an excellent job with the international security lines. We found the AF lounge, and were soon settling into our little seating area and started hunting for food. We had not eaten lunch so the little fingerling sandwiches were extra special tasty. :)

Soon came the call to board. The boarding area at the gate was an absolute mess of humanity. We crawled along. When we got to our seats, there was no welcoming drinks. Business cabin in the A380-800 was spacious, seat was comfortable. Lie flat but not completely horizontal.

There was delay of close to 30 minutes before we pushed off from scheduled departure time. Then came first drinks, with a box of mixed nuts/mini pretzels. Really ?!!! Meals were served from a rolling cart, unlike Business and First Class from other carriers, where they would ask your order and brought it straight to you from the galley. Not top shelf service. The appetizer with lobster meat was fantastic. But then I spilled salad dressing directly on my shirt. Boo!

The main course, as said earlier, was served off the cabin cart. Kinda took a lot of the luster off... It was not very good either. We managed to grab a couple of hours of sleep after the meal. The flight was smooth and the cabin comfortable.

The transfer at CDG from one plane to the next one, onto Florence was one of the low points of the trip. Our plane from SFO landed and took close to 20 minutes taxiing to the gate. Then we had to go through a long line to get through passport control. Even with Sky Priority stauts, we were late for the scheduled departure time to Florence. Fortunately for us, that flight was delayed. Unlucky for many of our flight mates, they missed their next flights and had to scramble fantically to reschedule.

Finally the delay was over, we got on the tiniest airplane in AF fleet, and off we went to Italy.