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I thought I would add some detail for my last brief entry.
Weekend with the kids
We had a great time overall. No upsets or anything silly happened, as we all just carried on from where we left off several months ago. Chandlers speech is coming on in leaps and bounds - we only had a couple of problems, but these were quickly and easily sorted out, generally by him repeating himself a couple of times by which point I picked up what he was saying. He is now fully toilet trained (including the nights) and gets himself up to use his potty if he needs to. We went out and bought a potty, step-up and kiddy-loo-seat-thingy for him so that he can use the family bathroom without any problems. Saturday saw us all in town doing some shopping, buying them both some clothes, pyjamas, underwear, etc as my Nan had given me some money to help out, as all the stuff I had for them was too small of course :) Cooking for them was as per normal and we all ate well over the weekend. Rhiannon was pestering to go and visit people/friends we haven't seen for some time, so I think we will start that this weekend. I had thought this would be a slower process, but I will take it at their pace and they are pretty relaxed about the situation.
Paris
I didn't have the kids on the Wednesday evening, as Shell and I flew out to Paris on Monday afternoon from Heathrow andn didn't get back until Thursday afternoon. We had a great time - mainly shopping.
The Case of the Missing Hotel Room
The one mishap occurred on the evening we arrived at the hotel. We booked in and were given the pass to room 406, so we merrily made our way up to the 4th floor to find out. We stepped out of the lift (a very small lift we could just fit in with our bags) and found rooms 401-405 and then 408-412, but not 406 and 407. We tried every door that wasnt a hotel room but there was no room 406 to be found. We went back down to the foyer and explained the problem to the night porter, who obviously thought we were slightly mad. He told us the room was behind another door, so we went back up to try again. We tried every door (including several other hotel rooms) but still couldnt find our room! So I went back down and after a bit of huffing, he handed me the pass to room 404 - which we had found.
Next morning, I walked around the corner from our room and found rooms 406 and 407 - indeed they were behind a door - but the previous night, that door had been locked shut! We went downstairs, chatted to the receptionist (who spoke far more English) and transferred to room 406. It was a little larger and had a double bed instead of 2 singles which we had pushed together the previous night.
Shopping In Paris
10am found us up and out of the hotel - and we started shopping. On Shell's previous visits to Paris, she had found a shop she loved, so I had looked up all of them on the net and we steadily made our way round all of them. There are 8 Pimkie's in Paris (although 1 of them I didnt know about) and we managed to visit 6 of them. Along with all the other shops in the street, of course. Shell bought a couple of outfits, a coat, a couple of pairs of shoes and some presents. Me - I bought absolutely nothing apart from Golden Virginia. Even the bottle of Rum I brought back, was bought by Shell! Thursday saw us getting up with aching feet and legs and lugging the now much heavier luggage to the airport.
Travelling
I found travelling around Paris on the Metro and RER much easier than navigating around the London Underground. We had bought 2 Paris Visite tickets from Allo France (the cheapest place to get them in the UK incidentally) and these allowed us to travel on all public transport in and around Paris, including to/from the airports. They were possibly the best thing we bought for the holiday, as we zipped around the Metro like crazy over the 4 days.
The flights with Air France were quite "interesting". We were offered a snack and drinks on both flights - outbound we had biscuits and inbound we had salmon sandwiches!
Massage
While we were waiting for our flight at CdG airport, we spotted a little cordoned off area where they were offering a massage to travellers, so we booked Shell in for a 10minutes Japanese Accupressure massage. Apparently, it hurt quite a bit but did free up her back and shoulders. The following morning when we got home, she got out of bed with no creaking or cracking of her back and not hunched over, so it did her pretty good. The fact that Shell felt so good after her massage got me thinking that maybe we should get one on a regular basis. However, all the massage parlours I have ever seen in my local area are pretty seedy and generally offer "extra services" - which isn't quite what we are after. I think we might have to join a local gym, although a search on google revealed an old school friend of mine in the local area who does massage at her salon in Locking Village!
Peace and Quiet
We stayed in a holiday mood up until Sunday evening. Up to that point, my mobile had been turned on once since the Monday that we went away. We lazed, we visited the ducks, we played board games, we saw Fat Cat playing at Back Bar on Friday night, we ate at Subway - ie we relaxed and enjoyed ourselves.
Unfortunately, Monday meant coming back to work and for me - a night working late upgrading and enhancing some security systems for internet access.
We are already thinking of going away somewhere else, in maybe November - either Amsterdam or Copenhagen - not for the shopping but for the getting away. I already have some free flights to Paris to use at the beginning of next year, so we will probably go back again :)
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