Today was meant to be an easy day. One of those necessary ‘travel days’ in order to get to a ‘holiday’. We have a few of those ahead of us.

We walked from our hotel, which was inside Lyons Exupéry Airport, to check in for our AirFrance flight to Paris a good two hours before our expected departure.

I hadn’t bothered to check in last night as my ticket said I only needed to scan the QR code on my ticket to get our boarding passes and luggage labels.

We found the kiosk and completed all details and were greeted with an error message. An AirFrance staff member could see we were struggling and offered to help. She explained the plane was full and that we were on “standby”. We had to proceed to Gate B10 by a certain time to find out if we had a seat.

I asked how that could happen as I’d booked the tickets in February – 8 months ago.

I also asked could I take two bottles of red wine with me that I had in my backpack. That was a definite “no”. Some might say that was obvious, but in Australia it is possible to carry unopened bottles of wine in your hand luggage for domestic flights.

And this was a domestic flight.

Plan B clicked in here. The wine was wrapped carefully and well in my thick jacket and placed in my checked bag. Mick already had 3 bottles in his bag that he is planning on carrying all the way to Australia.

Anyway, we checked our luggage through. It was tagged with bright yellow stickers indicating we were on ‘standby’, and headed through security.

Then we had to wait.

At the designated time we were told to be at the counter to see if we had a seat, we approached a staff member behind the counter and waited for her to check.

Luckily we were given seats. And in fact we were sitting together.

I still do not understand how that works.

We were in the very back row. But at least we had a seat.

And there was a spare seat next to me! That confused us even more.

Our baggage arrived quickly from the carousel and the bottles of wine were still intact.

Tomorrow we have an early start for the next flight on our around the world trip. We must go via Istanbul where we have 70 minutes to connect with the flight to our next country. All up our travel time will be 20 hours, not counting the wait before our first flight tomorrow. And unfortunately the Business Lounge won’t be open as it will be too early.

I’d never book times like this – but for this RTW ticket that is what was chosen for us. One huge negative of this type of tour. I think I’ll go back to booking my own flight again on future holidays.

The time in our next destination will be 9 hours behind France’s. It will be quite a bit colder than any weather we’ve experienced so far on this trip, and it looks like we will be getting wet.

All part of the fun!!