Christmas in Paris - oops, in the Paris Region

There were no direct flights to Bordeaux from a convenient English Airport, so we rented an apartment in the Paris region from Monday to Saturday. Catrin, Froim and Dorothea stayed overnight on Sunday evening and on Monday morning we sneaked off to get the 840 train to Montparnasse. Then we had a metro and a train journey to get to the apartment.

Well, travelling by metro and train in Paris with a pram is all kinds of dreadful. Lifts that don't work, or will only go to the floor you don't need. Trains that you have to climb into or jump down from. Hordes of people everywhere. Long queues of able bodied people who could have taken the escalators but instead are waiting for the small lift that anyway takes you to the wrong floor. Tickets that will randomly refuse to work. (a railway worker told me that they demagnetise. I told her that I wait for someone else to go through then run behind them and she laughed.)

But the apartment was great. We managed to eat nice meals in Paris for reasonable prices. We saw more or less what we wanted to see, though Build-a-Bear and Notre Dame will have to wait. Armed with our knowledge of the horrors of the Paris metro for prams, on the way home we walked through the glacial streets of Paris instead, with stops for hot drinks, snacks and meals, and so the journey home was much better than the journey there - proof positive that despair is much easier to live with than constantly-dashed hope.

And a shout out to the Ouigo low-cost trains to Paris Montparnasse. We booked our tickets early and ended up right at the end fo the carriage in a little area with lots of room for our copious baggage and a niche of four seats with a table, easy for dealing with the baby.

The star of the week was Thea, who really is a most agreeable baby. She still has not entirely worked out the diurnal cycle, but at ten weeks, who has? 

We played rather silly games - Uno No Mercy (currently on order from Amazon) and Cards Against Humanity Humanity Family Edition. We'd happily order this but we can't think of anyone in Bordeaux who would find any of it funny. C'est de l'humour anglaise.

We forgot the Christmas pudding, but found a good sized turkey in the local supermarket for a good price, too, and helped by a copious application of butter and a whole pack of bacon managed to produce a tasty and succulent Christmas meal. Stollen for pud.

Oh, and one among us brought the plague with them, so I am currently gargling with TCP. Nice. We're hoping Thea doesn't succumb.

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