When I finally got up from what should have been the greatest nap ever, I wandered over to one side of the hotel room. Then I wandered back to the other side. Then back again, a couple more times, before my wife finally realized I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.
She pointed me toward the shower. Yes. Shower. That will wake me up.
It took another 30 seconds or so for me to grasp the concept of turning on the water. There it is. Ooh, not too hot, not too cold. Let it wash over me. A little more awake now.
Grab my body wash. Wait, I usually wash my hair first, then the body. Oh, well, the bottle of body wash is in my hand so I’ll just go with it. Squeeze it out. Here it comes. … Wait, I stopped squeezing and the body wash sucked back into the bottle.
The absurdity of the whole situation hits me and I start laughing like a loon. “You OK?” Bessie asks.
A piece of advice: if you’re flying a long distance, especially overnight, DO WHATEVER YOU HAVE TO DO TO SLEEP ON THAT PLANE.
Trust me.

So our first trip overseas was to Europe, specifically Germany and France. Paris has been on Bessie’s bucket list for years; this year we finally made it happen.
But first, a couple days visiting friends in Germany. We stayed in Frankfurt, in a hotel at the airport/train station. (A friend and former co-worker, who’s originally from Germany, basically asked why in the hell we’d want to go to Frankfurt—“I hope you’re going somewhere nice after that.”)
We certainly did … but first, Day 1(ish).

Timing is everything. I don’t like to get places at the last minute; fortunately, Bessie’s the same way. The problem with that is we tend to get to the airport sometimes a little too early.
In case you somehow weren’t aware, there’s not a heck of a lot to do at the airport (especially true at Orly in Paris, but that comes later). So at Indy and later JFK, we had plenty of time to sit and eat and try not to go stir-crazy waiting to go to the next place.
At least Shake Shack at JFK was damn tasty.

“Dude shows up dressed like a cat and you don’t wanna know more?” The nice thing about long flights—well, let’s be honest, really the only nice thing—are the movies you can watch. There’s probably some sort of irony to me watching “Captain America: Civil War” while on a flight to Europe.
Great flick, by the way. Two thumbs up. Full reviews of “Civil War,” “X-Men: Apocalypse” and “Batman v. Superman” to come. I sense a theme.

“You’re watching the BBC.” So, a little bit about TV. Now, obviously, we didn’t go to Europe to watch TV, but still, you get to the hotel room after a long flight and you’re trying to stay awake long enough at night to get accustomed to the time change and, well, you turn on the TV to see what’s on. Fortunately, our hotel in Germany had a few different BBC channels so we were able to watch shows that weren’t in German.
Some interesting stuff.