Crossing the pond.

 Today is a travel day, and an especially exhausting one.  

My brother Barron picked us up at 9:30 am for our 1:13 flight. In my defense, the Delta website said to get to the airport 3 hours early.  Barron, who is an airline pilot, told us that we didn't need to be there that early.  Barron was right.  By 10:15 we had checked our bags and gone through security (TSA pre-check is great).  We then spent the next 2-plus hours killing time!  After a 45 minute flight to Seattle we had a 5 hour layover.  The score is 0.75 hours flying, 7.75 hours killing time!  The flight from Seattle to Paris was uneventful enough.  After a 1 hour 25 minute delay, we caught the jet stream, reducing the flight time from 10 hours to about 9. We had originally booked a flight from Paris to Biarritz departing at 4:20 pm Paris time (that would be 7:20 am Friday Spokane time) but I was nervous about the 3 hours between arrival and departure considering having to go through customs (which wasn't that bad), go from one terminal to another at Charles de Gaulle airport, and then recheck our luggage.  On the advice of an Air France customer service rep, I changed our flight to Biarritz to depart here at 8:40.  We are at this moment killing more time.  The final score, considering the 1 hour and fifteen minute flight still to go, is 11 hours flying and 13 hours and 45 minutes (about) waiting.  No complaints though, we did travel halfway around the world!

This all adds up to being very tired.  We've been up for 27.5 hours, with still at least 4 more to go.  We will sleep well tonight.  Tomorrow we take 2 trains to get to Saint Jean Pied de Port where we will spend 2 night to sightsee and rest.  We start walking (climbing) on Monday the 11th.  More to come....