A lovely woman we sat for in Paris in April (in the 3rd arrondissement!) asked us if we wanted to come back for a month in Sept/Oct. We had been looking to book our annual trip north, but until this came along we really didn't have a destination, so we almost took her hand off at the wrist at the chance to return. Lovely dog called Willie (though he's enormous and somewhat terrifying to look at). We also call him "Hey get off my foot" and more commonly...

We were glad we had the chance to visit Ljubljana and happy to leave as the warm weather crept in and Spring arrived along with blossoms in Slovenia. It certainly felt like we'd been there for longer than 3 odd weeks - aside from anything else there was snow on the mountains when we flew in and certainly no sign of it on our way out. The flight to Paris was our first experience of LOT Polish airlines with a quick stop in Warsaw en route. Wow! We definitely enj...

A month in Paris. A month in Paris. A month in Paris… so sayeth the wheels of the train wending its way through verdant (overgrown?) French countryside from Caen to the Gare St Lazare. Finally. On our way. The plan? A month of enjoying Paris, then training to Barcelona for a month before jumping on the cruise to South America on 22 November. The forthcoming period is actually how housesitters spend their holidays - ie, no housesitting in our immediate fu...

Saturday 8 January - Well here we are - unexpectedly back in Paris for a week. Never a hardship. We found an absolutely outstanding apartment on AirBnB. Our pre-Christmas stay was out in the 19th and whilst a wonderful apartment - a fairly dire location. This time around we paid (a bit) more and stayed in the 8th. Much better pricing than usual, probably due to the soaring Omicron numbers. We left Amsterdam with the sun rising over windmills on our left and ...

So. Paris. Finally. Short version? We came, we saw, we walked about 200km (at least), we dined out on luscious lunches and expanded our portfolio of lunch destinations substantially (Julien, Pharamond, Republique, Leon with more still to try). We got Covid booster shots, visited museums and indulged in Picard's best gourmet frozen food. We walked some more. We tried to go to a show, but were foiled by Covid. We enjoyed the Christmas decorations and lights and ...