Nice; Friday, 13 December, 2013

I dislike cutting things fine, but with work being busy the check-in desks at Gatwick had already opened by the time I finally got out of work just before 5 and made a dash for the station.

The train decided to crawl part of the way, cranking up the stress just that little bit further, but in the end there was plenty of time as despite the airport being very busy nobody appeared to actually be flying as both security and the departures lounge were deserted.

I had a quick bite to eat in the Yo! Sushi before wandering over to the gate and onto a flight that looked, thanks to the very large school party, like it was going to be packed.

Ready to push back almost 10 minutes early we ended up being delayed as the air-bridge linking us to the terminal decided it didn’t want to co-operate and refused to detach from the plane. Eventually engineers from the airport managed to manually crank it far enough back that the plane was able to be manoeuvred out.

An uneventful flight later we landed at Nice Airport and with a stand close to the runway, a short walk through the airport and very quick baggage delivery I managed to make the shuttle bus to town that I was convinced was uncatchable.

I walked the short distance through town to the hotel, checked in and headed to bed.