There I was, relaxing around the beautiful swimming pool of the 5* hotel Wendy and I were staying in on Rhodes, when I saw a comment someone had made on a flying forum I follow about a business class flight offering from Paris to Melbourne for an amazing €2,200pp or thereabouts. I was really excited as I'd not seen flights so cheap post-pandemic and actually it wasn't that much more than we'd paid in January 2020 (although to be fair it was with Sri Lankan Airlines and not Qatar!) Ian and I had talked about visiting again now that grandson E is getting a little older, but to be honest the prices had been a little prohibitive. When I spoke to Ian that evening I mentioned the deal, never imagining for one moment that he'd be up for it, but he jumped at the idea and made immediate contact with T&J to see if it might all work. Fast forward only a week or so and everything was mainly sorted - it'll be Easter holidays so we'll be able to enjoy E's 7th birthday and then we'll have a 4 day mini break with T/J&E at a holiday park they enjoy along the coast.
The only slight downside was the 19 hour layover in Colombo on the outbound leg but I'd read that the airline provided a transit hotel and food so we figured we'd give it a go. We added in a visit to Cairns to finally experience snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef and then 4 days in Sydney before flying back to Paris, again via Colombo but only 2 hour layover this time.
As soon as the flights were booked I contacted Sri Lankan Airlines about the layover accommodation and was told that it had been requested and confirmation would be sent 48 hours before the flight. That worried me a bit as what would we do if we weren't allocated a room but we decided it was unlikely as we were Business Class passengers. I researched a little about the available hotels at the airport and whilst they would be adequate for the 19 hours we'd be there, they were relatively basic. Then a couple of weeks before we were due to leave I found an Australian blogger’s post where he’d actually done the same layover and he gave a list of the 6 or so hotels used - all of which were 4* or 5* and very nice indeed so I felt a little easier and in fact we got our confirmation a week before flying and we were going to the Vivanta by Taj Hotel about 15 mins from the airport and it looked fabulous.
Although the flight from CDG wasn't until the Wednesday afternoon we decided to go to Paris the night before just in case anything happened with our flight there as it wasn't all booked on a through ticket. We caught the 1630 BA flight which was just the normal quick hop over the channel and checked into a room at the Ibis Airport Hotel which was conveniently accessible via the free airport shuttle. Having eaten our fill in the BA lounge we decided against any dinner and settled for a glass of wine and a few crisps. After a decent night's sleep I nipped to the hotel's coffee shop to get us wake-up drinks and as we didn't need to check out until 1200 we had a leisurely morning.
Our flight to Colombo was at 1505 and we presumed we wouldn't be able to check-in until 3 hours before, although in fact check-in had already started by the time we arrived at the desk. There weren't many business class passengers checking in at the same time, but the poor chap on the adjacent counter either lost or had his passport stolen. He'd been faffing around a bit, putting various bags on the scales and there was a smaller one he'd kept on his trolley most of the time we were looking (which wasn't often) but he suddenly exclaimed that the bag was gone; he had turned his back on the trolley so someone could have snuck up but I have a sneaking suspicion that it somehow got put on the conveyor belt and was carried off although the check-in girl was adamant she hadn't bag tagged it. No idea what will happen, he did at least speak fluent French so hopefully the situation will be resolved and we'll see him on the flight.