Pix

My brother Rob's village in Burgundy.

Mum's house in France.

Esther relaxing in mum's pool.

Julia fixing her hair.

The family walking in the Cevennes.

Winter approaches

Winter is apparently bearing down fast on Voorburg, so I thought it was about time to post the second half of my holiday blog while I can still sit at the computer in a t-shirt and with the back doors open.

Since returning from France, we also have visited again. We spent a very nice weekend in Paris meeting former colleague Meraiah and her family for lunch in the Luxembourg gardens, climbing the Eiffel Tower and generally behaving like the tourists we were.

The trip over on the train was very easy. Problem was we were on seats facing back toward where we'd come from rather than forward to where we were going. 

My heart sank when I saw them. If anything is guaranteed to make Irmie sick it is not being able to see where she is going on any mode of transport faster than a bicycle. I haven't tested the theory, but I suspect walking backwards around our block could make her throw up. 

And throw up she did. To Irmie's credit she waited until we actually drew into Gare du Nord before losing her lunch on the platform - while walking with the crowd of passengers who had also just disembarked. 

And when Irmie vomits, Julia goes out in sympathy, so I had two puking girls walking down the platform and Esther going eeeeeuuuuwww and trying to get as far away from us all as possible.

We couldn't find a hotel room for all four of us so we rented an apartment from what turned out to be Paris' premier gay rental agency. Which meant that we got a beautiful place with a view of the Pompidou Center and a poster of a muscular black man wearing a grass skirt on our bedroom wall.

Lunch with Meraiah, Tim and Morgan was great. Meraiah nearly managed to tell Esther and Julia that Dingo is a pigeon killer, but luckily they weren't listening when she brought it up. This problem was created by the fact that Meraiah is one of only two regular reader of this blog not actually related to me.