September 19 6:55pm (Toronto):
Today we are heading off to Mauritius, taking an Air France flight this evening. I’m going to try to live blog our travel experience here. It has been several years since our last flight, so it will be interesting to see how much have changed and what remains the same.
We arrived at the airport about 4 hours prior to our flight. The check-in counter for Air France / KLM in Terminal 3 opened about 3.5 hours before the flight. This was perfect timing. We had our bags checked and passed security in about 45 minutes since arriving at the airport.
The terminal is super busy. Glad that masks are mandatory here. We situated ourselves in front of Smoke’s Burritorie to kill about 2 hours or so.
September 20 3:33am (In Air):
Just finished breakfast and we are close to Paris now. Ended up paying for Wifi on the flight costing about $45 for the entire flight. Caught up on the House of Dragons and did some surfing.
September 20 11:31am (CDG Paris):
Even though we are connecting and going through the same terminal (2E), we still had to go through security. The security at CDG airport is more strict. Anything that is electronics had to be taken out. This is quite different than in Toronto. A couple of us were caught and had to get our bags separately inspected. Now we are going to the gate for our connecting flight to Mauritius.
Our layover is approximately 5 hours long. We spent the time snacking and napping. I was partially amazed that our Apple Pay continues to work flawlessly with my Apple Watch at the airport. However, not all electrical outlets had power. This is a bit of a mystery. My theory is that power consumption that is impacting the entire EU, and perhaps this is an energy conservation policy that is being enacted. Just 30 minutes before our boarding, we finally discovered an active outlet. We quickly charged our Apple Watches that were all on their last legs.
September 20 3:30pm (CDG Paris – Gate M45 – Boarding):
During the boarding process, half of us had no issues with our electronic boarding passes and their corresponding QR codes worked flawlessly. The other half were sidelined to get our passport rechecked. I am not sure if this is a random selection process, or something went wrong with the QR code validation.
September 21 5:50am (Mauritius Airport):
There was no issues with immigration, since we had our health information form all previously filled out. We got to baggage claim quite quickly.
I previously signed up for the my.t tourist package. My expectation was that once we landed we can just scan the eSim with the QR codes provisioned after my registration. Unfortunately, this did not go as plan. Our cell activations with the provided QR code continuously fail to activate. While other waited for our checked baggages at the baggage claim area, I went out first to the telecom kiosk to see if we can resolve the activation issue.
I was told by the representative, that a face-to-face check-in is required at the kiosk so that a passport authentication can be performed prior to the activation of the eSim. All of this makes sense, I just wished they told us this when they provided the QR code!
The good news is that everything got sorted out and we all had our dual eSim ready to go online and make calls.
September 21 7:15am (Mauritius Airport – Parking Lot):
We found our driver and started our journey to our vacation home. This took much longer than I thought. The traffic in Mauritius was horrendous! Someone needs to tell urban planning that roundabouts and motorways do not mix. The concept of on and off ramps are the way to go.
September 21 9:00am (Mauritius – Trou aux Biches):
Finally reached our home away from home. The host was very gracious and nice, and the hand over was without a hitch.