Viva la France!

We began our trip with 3 nights in Paris. This was the first time in this wonderful city for Joel and Ryan, Sally’s 3rd visit and my 2nd, although none of us had visited in winter. We spent a couple of days touring the sites and enjoying lots of beautiful french food and wine in all the restaurants. We were staying in a hostel called Mijet which was excellent, the location in the Marais quarter was fabulous.

Some miscellaneous pics, including Sal and I enjoying Fondue

Some of these were taken on the open top bus, it was freezing, but a great way to see the city.

Joel with the famous lady, Mona. She's smiling just for him!

Highlights included:

Notre Dame Cathedral, you can never get sick of this magnificent sight

The view from the top of the Arc de Triumph

Ryan scrambling along the Champs Elysee trying to retrieve a cobble stone. He was successful eventually! (big fan of the tour de france, you will know who to blame when you see Robbie McEwan hit a pot hole and take a tumble seconds from the finish line)

The boys eating snails and more snails

Walking around and eating in the Latin quarter

Shopping at Zara near Gallerie La Fayette

Musee D’erotique (it was that or Muse D’Orsay, we decided to go low-brow!). No pictures allowed - for obvious reasons.

Sacre Coeur, stunning.

Chocolate croissants and coffee for breakfast every day.

Berets

The Eiffel Tour

Joel's 'lonely planet' guided tour of Montmarte.

On the down side (this is inevitable really on any trip) Paris was a little quiet after Christmas (26-29th) as we guess most Parisiens were off visiting family during the break. Also Joel wasn’t feeling 100% for a couple of days so was sticking to Baguettes and Evian.

We then took a train and a bus to the snow, a resort called Les Deux Alpes in the French Alps for 7 days. What a beautiful place. We were welcomed with stunning sunshine and blue skies.

We had a fantastic time, loads and loads of skiing, in fact we were pretty quiet during the evening and didn’t join the crazy Italians partying and setting off firecrackers all night.

What a spectacular panorama, taken from the mountain behind our apartment building.

The view from our apartment window.

Taken from the glacier, 3600m.

Our plan for a great meal and some drinks at the pub for New Years Eve didn’t go exactly to plan as Emma caught Joel’s stomach bug and spent the night from 6pm NYE until 6am on New Years Day getting well acquainted with our small bathroom. Never mind, we postponed New Years Eve until the next night and enjoyed a meal in town together.

The snow conditions were excellent and we had great weather most of the time. Sal and Em took a break from the slopes for a massage we felt was well earned!

We returned to Paris for a night before returning home and found the city had come to life again with most of the shops open and loads more people, so that was fun to see the Paris that Sal and I are more accustomed to.

We were so sad for our holiday to end, mostly because it meant saying goodbye to Sally who flew home the following morning. But we really loved having Sally visiting us, and felt her trip was extra special as it’s not exactly the most enticing time to visit Stavanger. It is truly a loving and generous sister who books a ticket almost immediately upon hearing we wouldn’t be back during summer 07/08, despite the small hurdle of having next to no money in the bank. So we really take our hats off to wonderful Sal and thank her so much for coming to stay with us.

My gorgeous sister.