Paris 1

Sorry about the long radio silence. Hope to be back up to speed now, the 20 year blog anniversary is in two months time, so I can't stop now.

Thursday last week. I deliver the dog to Louise who is looking after her for a week whilst we go to Paris. Then Danielle and I get on the train for London where we are meeting Rowan and (for the first time) her boyfriend Jamie, then we are all going to see the Richard Hawley musical in town. At least that was the plan. Our train stops at Peterborough "I didn't think we stopped here?", "We don't". Someone has killed themselves on the track at Stevenage, leading to our train being cancelled, a long wait at Peterborough and our therefore missing both the meal and show. Three hours late we get to our B&B in Russell Square, get some food from Waitrose and have a somewhat different meal to the one we expected.

Thursday we all meet up at St Pancras to get the Eurostar to Paris for the Olympics - we even get to see Jamie who has come to try and say hello across the anxious Eurostar crowd. Why anxious? because we all have the information that our train will be heavily delayed and run on a "classic" line to Paris because of protest sabotage of the track at Lille. We get to our flat in Paris two hours late, where our host could not be more helpful as she shows us to a really nice flat in Groslay. On the train we hear of people who have had their Air B&B cancelled as they are en-route to Paris for the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Not good.

Our apartment is on the 5th floor (no lift) which is fine when the staircase is as beautiful as this.