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  • Day 33

    Feb 23 - Heading home - finally

    February 23, 2020 in French Polynesia ⋅ ☀️ 29 °C

    Noisy birds woke us up early this morning. We went for breakfast around 8:00 a.m. Going out for Sunday breakfast/brunch must be a big thing around here - the restaurant was very busy and there was a 3-piece band playing. The same cheeky bird was pecking away at unattended food.

    We lingered for 2 hours over breakfast, not because the food was fabulous, but because the weather was nice and because we have both memorized our suite. We are both just marking time until we leave for the airport at 8:00 p.m. Flight to Los Angeles is at 11:59 p.m.

    We did finally venture off the resort grounds on the shoelace express. Since the road rose steeply to our left, we went to our right. We are actually in a suburb of Papeete called Arue. There is one busy road that runs follows the shoreline with a sidewalk on either side. There are fences blocking virtually all view of the water along the way. We did find a public beach, complete with some nude sunbathing (my eyes may never recover from the assault). With nothing much to see and with the temperature rising to 35 deg C., we headed back to the comfort of air conditioning.

    Doug has watched boxing and soccer and is now watching golf, all in French. I've watched British crime drama shows on my phone. Now he's been reduced to watching CNN. Anything to keep our minds at least a little bit occupied.

    We had dinner right at 6:30 p.m. We have learned that the chicken Caesar salad is palatable and not prohibitively expensive, so we had that - same as last night. Turns out that every Sunday night there is salsa dancing here - while we ate, we got to watch some seriously good dancers - both men and women.

    The driver to take us to the airport arrived right on time. We were at the airport by 8:30 p.m. The airport is open, i.e., no enclosing walls, until you get past security so it was very hot and humid. I wished I still had my shorts on. Thankfully, our business class tickets allowed us to skirt the long, snaking line for checking passports.

    We eventually made our way to the business class lounge. Our plane got in about an hour late from Paris, so we didn't leave until almost 1:00 a.m. - that's way past my bedtime. Our seat pods reclined to the horizontal position, so we were quite comfortable for flight. When breakfast was being served, Doug and I both watched "The Bounty" on the entertainment system - it's the story of Captain Bligh and the mutiny on his ship The Bounty. Mel Gibson isn't hard to look at dressed in very few clothes on location in Tahiti. Must find the last hour of that movie sometime.
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