Back from Paris!

hello friends! six days away from my blog! i missed you all! hope you missed me, just a little? and now to catch you up with me... i have taken far too many photos and just spent ages up loading about a 100 i think onto my facebook! and it will take a couple of months if i want to bring on to here to share, so i will do my best to bring the best, but give me time with five at a time!

above is a little cat i spotted in a flower shop window near our hotel in Paris... but first i need to bring the story up to date!

i forgot up loading they come up back to front but never mind... my and i left from Berkhamsted station on the sunday 27th september, and into London, we walked on the Euston Road to our hotel just a few minutes up the road and close to St Pancras station.

we could see it easily from our window... the hotel was clean and tidy, and did what it said on the box so to speak, two beds and an en suite in miniature... but none the less was fine... in the evening we went to St Pancras and had dinner! sounds strange yes? but the station is wonderful and we had a great meal, sussed out where we would be going to get the train to Nottingham on our return from Paris, and got the tickets ahead of time too...

we went for coffee before returning to our hotel and the coffee shop was just on the Pentonville road and above a building opposite awaiting renovation work was this amazing look out tower! looks like a light house!

this is Berkhamsted station.... where Mom and i set off from!

so our journey began... we boarded the Eurostar before 11am and were off on our way to Paris, France! we were told ahead of time that it would take half hour longer due to a broken down train in the tunnel... but the journey still went fast enough and before long we were in Paris!

we had good seats with a table between us and a couple next to each of us, a father and son team in fact having a one night trip in Paris, after a two night visit in London before going back home to southern Ireland....

we came out into good weather, again, and into a cab to the hotel Grand Nuvel Opera! i had already checked it out on Google map and looked the place up and down as you can on there, it looked good, and was in a nice location, not in the middle of the city and fairly quiet... we had a couple of *things* Mom wanted an extra pillow, as she had asked for in London, where at the Crestfield hotel, her wish was granted with a smile, but in Paris, he was a bit put out, and wondered where on earth he would get another pillow! er hello! surely a hotel would have one spare pillow? NO! one on each bed and thats your quoto there... but he found one, in a room not being used that night! then the tv remote wouldn't work... well the tv really and he was all set to move us into another room the next day when i found a switch on the wall near the bed that did the trick! and when he realised his mistake he smacked himself round the face in feigned amazement!!!

that afternoon, we ate an early dinner in a great restaurant down the road a way, sat out in the street and enjoyed people watching... lots of people on bicycles, and in line skates, and strangely on scooters.... the sort i had as a kid, you know one foot on the plate, hands on the handle bar and the other foot pushing you along the pavement... but its a thing for full grown men there! very strange...

lots more smokers too i think, looked like everyone was smoking!

we had quite an early night, BBC world news is ok for a while, but it puts you to sleep eventually!

Tuesday and we were off...

but will have to wait, i am too tired for more this evening, i helped Tony and Kate move into their new house in St Albans, Tonys dad and a friend helped too, i was the *truck* person, we should have had a van, two trips move, but that company let us down and we had to go to another pretty pronto, and the only thing they had was a 7.5 tonne truck! so it was one trip... the others brought it to me and i arranged things in side, used my old van driver loading techniques back to me again!!!!

i thought it was going to rain, but it passed over thank goodness and hopefully right now theyre settling in...

ok amigos...

TTFN
Marian