It’s kind of a pain to sit in the window seat during an international flight.
There are pros and cons to having an aisle seat, the most important being that you don’t have to wake up your seatmate or crawl over someone to get up to use the necessary. The negative, of course, of the aisle seat is that one is constantly being bumped all night — by other passengers and by the well-meaning flight attendants.
The window seat, on the other hand, has a little more room. It also tends to be cold and unless you’ve got your pillow configuration just right, it can be difficult to actually sleep. And then there’s the noise of the engines…
But if I didn’t sit in the window seat during all these years of flying, I would have missed many beautiful sights. There’s something magical about looking out the window while landing and imagining the new place you are about to encounter. That was the case this year as I encountered Nice through the window of the airplane.
Aerial view of a neighborhood in Nice, France.
The perfectly manicured and planned neighborhood. The foothills coming practically up next to the water. The majestic mountains in the background. And to think I would have missed this if I had been sitting in the aisle seat.
Of course, I owe it all to my traveling partner of thirty-some years. He lets me have the window and I love him for it.
Love the photo! I’m entirely way to tall to be comfortable anywhere but the aisle seat, but you are absolutely correct about people bumping into you. Sometimes flight attendants are super rude about it and just ram into you with the drink cart (but most aren’t).
I was thinking about not-so-well-meaning flight attendants when I wrote that, but as you say they are mostly polite and have a job to do. There are many rude flyers as well, but today’s not about that rant. 🙂
What a nice traveling partner/husband you have!!! My husband always offers me the window seat, too, so that I’ll feel a little more comfortable about flying. I’m usually drugged up, so he should just take the scenic route seat and let me sleep it off on the aisle! 🙂 (I am just terrified of flying!!!)
That is a gorgeous photograph! The earth really does look like a quilt!!! It’a amazing how different it looks from way up high! It’s weird, too, because you caught just a teensy bit of the aircraft in your photo. Wow!!!!!!!!!!
Funny you mentioned the airplane pieces in my photo. I decided to keep them in rather than crop them out — it was an intentional decision because I liked the perspective.
For me, the worst part of flying is the cramped seats and rude people who fling back their seats. Other than that, the benefits vastly outweigh the negatives.