Flight reviews: Return to the Motherland

December 19

Airline: French Bee

Flight Path: Paris to San Francisco

Notable plane moments:

There’s nothing like that feeling during a long flight where you’re finally descending into your home city. I could see the lights of San Francisco and the reflections off the bay. After almost 12 hours on this stupid plane, I was listening to “California” by Joni Mitchell, and was finally minutes away from landing and eating the burrito my mom brought me. When there was less than a minute from touching land, the crew decided that we hadn’t had enough quality time together and pointed the plane straight back up to cruising altitude for a cute, 30-minute tour!!! I was THRILLED. If you’re allergic to shellfish, stay away from me because I was as clammy as they come! Luckily, we landed after a quick trip over the Pacific and around Santa Cruz.

Neighbors:

Next to me - a young couple. Unlike the last young couple I sat next to on my international flight, these lovebirds did NOT join the Mile High Club.

Across the aisle - a man about my age sleeping with his mouth open and his shoes OFF. Seriously, I feel like putting the dawgs in the aisle should be illegal.

Diagonal - An older man who speaks only loud English to the flight attendants and keeps yawning very loudly. Turns out he needed to hit the hay ASAP because soon after he covered his head and face with a blanket (possibly forgetting about the eye mask they gave us), and it was lights out. It turns out he’s quite the trend setter because three other passengers have taken on this new sleep method.

Movie 1

House of Gucci:

I remember when this movie came out, and I saw the trailer in theaters. In the trailer, Lady Gaga says her iconic line of “father, son, and House of Gucci,” when making a promise to another character. I have to say that this moment and the trailer certainly made the movie out to be better than it was. One of my pet peeves with movies is when it’s set in a foreign place, but all the characters are speaking English. This movie was set in Italy, and every character was speaking English with a painfully wide range of ability to execute an Italian accent. Of course, I benefit from movies like this because I don’t speak Italian (shout out my 52-day Duolingo streak though), but maybe it would’ve been a better film if it were in Italian with subtitles? I don’t have a strong grasp on Italian accents and what’s super accurate, so once I set foot on land, I checked out what a linguist had to say about the movie and the accuracy of the actors’ accents. Lady Gaga, apparently, did a pretty good job with her accent and even managed to reflect some class differences in her accent versus the other characters.

Plot-wise, the movie really jumped around timelines, and at no point did I feel like I was following the main story. They had a daughter early in the movie and I feel like it was as if she did not exist afterward. The movie had me asking myself who’s the asshole??? It seems like everyone is the asshole.

Overall, I enjoy the retelling of iconic histories such as this story of the Gucci Dynasty, but I don’t feel like it lived up to its full potential. I was constantly checking the time left in the movie, which is not a good sign when you already have 12 hours to kill.

Meal:

Turmeric pasta salad with tomatoes and orzo:

This was an unexpected character on my plate!! The olives and tomatoes were both dried, which I feel like was a nice, sweet touch to the overall flavor and balanced the bitterness of turmeric.

Mashed potatoes, mystery chicken, and sauce:

Mashed potatoes were more of a purée because they were rather thin, but I feel like it’s pretty challenging to mess up mashed potatoes, so they were good. The chicken was cut into small pieces. It was tender and covered in a rich sauce that was definitely cooked down with some red wine. The potatoes were a good addition to balance out the rich flavors.

Bread

Cheese

The cheese was kind of just cream cheese, but also a nice, mild addition to the richer main course.

Chocolate cookie

Similar to a shortbread cookie. A nice sweet treat with the chocolate.

Mystery cake:

I think that this was an apple cake??

Movie 2

Marley and Me

Of course, the next logical movie to watch is Marley and Me. Some lighthearted fun to make the time pass. One thing I don’t remember from this movie was that the two main characters were both journalists! Jennifer Aniston was arguably the more successful journalist of the two, but she decided to stop her career as a journalist to take care of their kids full-time. The kids were so cute, and it was also so tragic hearing them try to understand the life cycle of a dog. I should have considered the last phase of the life cycle of a dog because I was publicly sobbing.

Glee:

Shout out to French Bee for 1. Including Glee in their small selection of shows and 2. Only having three episodes, but one of them was when Kurt dances to Single Ladies and Quinn finds out she’s pregnant. But my favorite part of Glee is Sue. She has so many iconic lines in this show. Here’s one, for example:

Will: “You’re out to get me.”

Sue: “William, if I was out to get you I’d have you pickling in a jar on my shelf by now.”

I ended up watching all three of the available episodes and found myself chuckling at all of them.

Games:

After many failed attempts at sleep, I decided to try playing a game. They had a bit of an odd selection, but I settled on Angry Birds World Tour. This lost my attention very quickly because I was bad at it, and it was boring.

Oceans 8:

I’ve never seen Oceans 11 or this movie before, but I have been meaning to watch it since it first came out. A lot of time has gone by since then, so I don’t really know why I’ve been slacking so much. I loved the all-female energy and the stacked cast. Also, after being in France during the Louvre heist (I have an alibi), this jewelry heist was very timely. I knew shit was going to go down in this movie when all the ladies pulled up in their gowns and “Boots Are Made for Walking” started playing. Overall good movie, and I am now more inclined to watch the other Ocean movies.

Long story short:

This was a long long flight. I have to say if I had managed to sedate myself to sleep for the entire ride (like my neighbor), it would have been much better for me. But alas, we can’t all be sleepers. Some of us have to be binge watchers. See you never, French Bee.