THE NOT SO BLONDE TRAVEL

Since I have been a little girl, I have been a night packer. Not that I was traveling to China or Alaska at age 5, I was just going to pre-school. Regardless, I was ready, like really super ready.  I would have my entire outfit ready to go, and I am talking socks and underwear too, all folded neatly in a pile. And no I don't have OCD.  Fast forward almost 25 years later, and I am a flight attendant, constantly packing and unpacking  and sure enough, my entire suitcase is packed and ready to go the night before my flight. Even if my flight is at 8 pm, and I am free all day, I pack before going to sleep. You just never know when your alarm won't work, or when the subway will break down, or when happy hour makes you really happy and you find yourself waking up at 5 pm with your head pounding. It's not a proud moment, but it happens. So why chance it? Why wait until morning to pack?  This is what happens in the morning: stuff just gets thrown into a sui...

Passengers never cease to surprise me. That's what makes my job interesting. Sometimes the surprises are not the most pleasant. Getting peanuts thrown at my face or my hand broken were not exactly fun, but thankfully with enough humor, most of the situations are manageable.  However I am not sure this passenger's wife will ever think that her husband taking off to Punta Cana without her and their three kids was funny, no matter how cool she is. We, the crew, on the other hand, could not contain our laughter. And of course me being extra curious, I had to find out how someone could ever leave for a family vacation ... without his family.  So as tactfully as possible, I asked the passenger what happened.  "I am not exactly sure, I lost them at security," he said, as if he was talking about an IPad or a toiletry bag and not his three kids and wife.  He probably saw my eyes pop out of their socket and quickly added: "She left me and took off ...

Being a flight attendant, I spend a lot of time on planes, and very few things still surprise me. Strange behaviors sometimes develop  at 30 000 feet. But we are kimd of used to it, we love our jobs nonetheless and it usually makes really good cocktail stories.  But every time I stand outside the lavatory for over 20 minutes, I can't help but be surprised and wonder if I am missing out on something in there, something only passengers know about and don't want to share with us flight attendants. Maybe a secret button to access a bathtub spa, or perhaps a yoga room, or maybe even an exclusive speakeasy bar. You might think I am losing it, but I am very serious. I just can't see any other "reasonable" explanation to what people are doing in a  3x3-foot-dimension toilet for over 20 minutes or so.  Where is the button?  I know it's not super ladylike to talk about what is happening in a toilet, but I am just too curious not to ask for yo...

Being a flight attendant means we meet a lot of people from different cultures with very different personalities on a daily basis.  Some are very sweet. They say Please and Thank you, and even bring us chocolate and Starbucks gift cards.  Some are a little less sweet. They seem to think that shoving us during boarding is ok, as if it were a job related hazard we should be ready for. Others seem to think that snapping their fingers at us to order a drink instead of ringing their call button is not condescending at all and the list goes on and on ... We are kind of used to it - unfortunately.  However some things still surprise us: finding dirty underwear on the floor for example. Yes it happened, and trust me I didn't believe it at first either.  See when my girlfriend sent me this picture of a woman's underwear lying on the airplane's floor, I thought it might be a joke she was playing on me and that she had planted it on the floor. Yes I know...

I am only 27 and have been to more countries than I can sometimes remember. I guess deciding to be a flight attendant after graduating college was not such a bad decision after all :-)  Argentina  Hong Kong Turkey Russia Peru                          Iceland   Australia Mexico  India  Most of these trips were barely planned and sometimes just because there were no seats left in Business class, a last minute decision to change destination would be made. That is how I ended up in Korea instead of Tokyo once, and in Indonesia instead of Philippines another time, and I am glad I did. Seoul, Bali and the Gili islands were just wonderful. Gili Islands  But here is something I have never done yet and I am dying to do: close my eyes, pick a country on the globe and go. I know this is more of what you see done in movies, but I do have almost fre...

For all my followers out there, I apologize. I know I said I would post about an amazing dessert a few days ago and didn't, but I have a good reason for disappearing. One of my best friends got married this weekend and without exaggerating only got about 10 hours of sleep in 4 days.  what I call a blurry weekend                                      But now I am back. And here is all you need to know about Mesdemoiselles Madeleines: it is even better than a La Durée  macaroon. If you appreciate fine things in life and have a sweet tooth, you probably ate a La Durée macaroon while in Paris. Well now you have to add to your to do list a madeleine from  Mesdemoiselles Madeleines. These  small rich cakes, baked in a shell-shaped mold  are already delicious "nature," but add some raspberry or some caramel or some black olives ... yes I said black olives ... a...

When people told me I would love Prague, I believed them without really believing them. Let me explain.  Being a flight attendant, I had already seen many countries all over the world. I wasn't blasé, but it did take a lot to impress me, so when I say that for every step I took forward, I wanted to take two steps back because it was so beautiful, trust me Prague is something else.  I only had 24 hours to discover Prague, but us flight attendants can do more in 24 hours than some people will do in a week.  I walked for hours and remembered to have lunch only because I walked through a market and couldn't resist the smell of roasted meat. Plus those swirly potatoes in the picture below looked to yummy to pass up. It was already 4 o'clock.   the market But let's start at the beginning. I started out my own made up tour walking towards the Old Town Square and truly every little street was pretty and every building was beautiful. Once at th...