Time for a recap from the time when I wasn’t blogging last year, starting with a bunch of random pix from France. For the last couple of summers we’ve taken the train down to the south, to spend time with my sister and her family at their house there. It’s not the most straight forward of journeys, but I like to think that if we can opt to go somewhere by train rather than fly, then that is what we do. This has usually worked out well, but last year we were unlucky in that our onward train from Paris got cancelled, as did all trains heading south that day - a mini tornado (climate change much?) had knocked down trees onto the tracks. So not only were we then stuck, but we were stuck in Paris, during the Olympics. Anyway, after standing in Gare du Nord for 5 hours in +35c degree heat (with armed police doing the rounds of the station because of heightened security measures - très relaxing), we got allocated a hotel room by the train company, ironically by CDG airport, and continued our onward journey the day after. I took this picture as we had to sit in the café carriage, waiting to be allocated seats on the train, and as I did a guy walked past and asked “Did you get a good picture?”, and you know what? I think I did.