We hurried up after work today, picking up our son at school. The secretary of aéro-sport, nicky, perfectly arranged that our plane got a 50 hours maintenance, which was finalised this morning. Very nice. By 5pm we arrived fully packed at the airport. We loaded the plane, taking some extra oil with us and took the maximum of fuel ( avgas) with us. By 6.30 pm we took off heading south.

The weather was nice, but the visibility at 4500 feet was very average.

After some 1 hour and 20 minutes, our first destination got in sight, the airport of Troyes. The Champagne region. Nobody there at this time of the day, the whole airport was abandoned. We landed at sunset and parked the plane.

The Troyes airport is fully fenced. Some years ago, whilst we were here together with my niece, Sylviane Friart, we couldn’t get out of the airport and we had to climb over the fence. Not this time. This time, I ensured that I reveived the security code in advance to get out of the airport.

We did not make hotel reservations in advance, but after a short walk, we arrived at the Golden Tulip hotel and asked for a “table and a bed”. We were lucky, one room for three was available and the restaurant was still open.
What a marvellous start of our holidays.