“Whiling away” is not one of the things we do very well, sadly. Within minutes of checking out of our hotel, despite swearing that we would do nothing to get hot and sweaty all afternoon, we found ourselves poking around in the ‘burbs, dropping in on the odd food centre ("No!" poking me on the shoulder; "You must stir the noodles FIRST sir!") and just meandering through the streets and shopping centres watching the time entirely fail to pass.
Eventually, having meandered, eaten, drunk, eaten, walked, browsed, walked some more and observed for what seemed like days but were barely hours, cooling off between meanders by either riding the overly air-conditioned MRT, or hanging about in overly air-conditioned shopping malls, sufficient time had passed for us to return to pick up our bags and head to the airport. A quick check of our pedometers (bought after Singapore last year - thanks Phil and Serene!) showed that we had walked for nearly fifteen kilometres. Perhaps this was not quite the sort of whiling we had intended.
The whole purpose of stopping over for two nights en route to France is to try to minimise the impact of the time differences on our bodies and more particularly our brains. We always imagine ourselves just sort of hanging around, resting, preparing ourselves for the big event which is the overnight flight to France and once again we have failed entirely to fulfil our imaginings.
Where the plan always falls down a bit is that once we are here, we tend to run around a lot, filling in our day as tourists rather than as the sensible travellers we fancy ourselves to be, while at the same time sleeping at night in fits and starts on harder beds or softer pillows than those to which we would aspire.
One night perhaps we will check into the airport bright eyed and bushy tailed, but I fear this won’t be it.
Tomorrow when we alight, we know that we will have failed and life will be a little like viewing the world through a reflection.
But who cares, it’s been a brilliant couple of days!
1 comment
Lovely to have you back. I was wandering though my "favourites" this morning, thought I would have a quick look at Biting Midge and there you were. I love my yearly vicarious french travel adventure with the Jo and Pete!!
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