France and Frankfurt

A few more photos

One more week back in the real world

One more week back in the real world and we are all slowly getting over our bugs and back to real life.  I thought I would finally get around to looking through the digital camera photos and upload some.  In this post I have uploaded some photos from England.  I will create another post of photos from France and Germany.  I hope you like 🙂

Gold Hill, Shaftesbury

The Cerne Giant

Dartmouth

Shame I couldn’t leave them down there 🙂

Home

Well we have been home for one week now and Alek and I have been house bound with a horrible virus for the whole time.  They joys of travelling to a winter destination I suppose.  Mind you iit was likely to happen no matter what season as we were coming into contact with so many people.

Anyway, our flight home went relatively well once we got off the ground.  Unfortunately we hand to sit on the ground for 1.5 hours while they took a passenger from the plane who had been enjoying himself a little too much in the bar.  The A380 is so big I didn’t see the guy so spent a while wondering what was going on.

Once we took off the flight was pretty smooth with only a little turbulence.  Sadly with the flight being in the day time it was hard to sleep any of the time away so I think we all gained square eyes from the amount of movies we watched.

I was very impressed with Brisbane airport on landing.  We had such a smooth run through immigration and a nice customs man prestamped our cards before we lined up to go through customs so that we just sailed through there too.

A quick taxi ride later and we were finally home sweet home.  It was so nice to be back.  Toby and the house sitters greeted us at the door.  They had looked after the house so well that it looked cleaner than when we left it 😃  I would definitely recommend them as house sitters!!!!  In fact I was a bit worried that Toby had enjoyed their company so much that he would want to leave with them 😳

Apart fro the bug that has gotten to us all it has been nice to get back to normal and cuddle with Toby on the couch.  Now to get better and go back to work next week …….

The other thing on my to do list is to sort through the digital camera photos and post some of them online.  I promise to try and whittle it down from the 600 we took 😃

Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year from Dubai!!!

Well what an adventure the last couple if days have been.

The train trip from Paris to Frankfurt was great.  First class train travel is the way to go in Europe :).  Watching the snowy scenery go by without have to drive was absolutely fabulous.

When we arrived in Frankfurt we decided to catch a taxi to the hotel.  The first taxi wouldn’t take us because we didn’t have a car seat for Breanna.  Oh well, luckily for us a sane taxi driver came by and we were off to the hotel.

After settling in to our room we went outside so the kids could make snow men and have snow ball fights.  They had do Mach fun they went back out after we had dinner. Tommy and I sensibly watched from the hotel room window 🙂

The flight from Frankfurt to Dubai was good so we decided to venture out for some dinner before the New Year’s madness.  We were so naive!!!! The crowds were already crazy and we got stuck on traffic for forever before the taxi could let us out near the Dubai Mall.  We then got stuck in a horrible crush trying to get into the mall only to find out they had closed it as all of Dubai and surrounds has has the same idea.  So, all we could do was try to fight our way back out and try to find a taxi home.  Luckily our luck started to turn around after a while – we found a Gloria Jeans to grab some food that wasn’t too crowded, found an Atm to get taxi fare and then the best luck was to find a taxi.  We hopped into try to get home but got stuck in traffic right near the Burj Khalifa.  An hour and a half later we were still stuck there so we got to enjoy the fireworks after all!  Eventually we did make it home and believe it or not we payed less than $25 for the taxi!!!!!

Paris and Provins

We have had a lovely last 2 days in France.  Yesterday we caught a train from Fontainbleau to Paris.  While we were waiting at the train station it even tried to snow.  Sadly it only managed the tiniest of flakes but at least we saw some snow in France 😄

It was great to show the kids some of the sights – we managed to fit in Notre Dame, the Jardin de Luxembourg, the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower.  Sadly we couldn’t fit more in to the day.  Hot tip – if you want to see the sites of Paris have a few days in the capital.  Another hot tip – don’t go in the middle of winter – it was so cold It was much harder to enjoy than my previous visits.  Will just have to plan another trip 😃

Tommy has taken some great photos but they are all stuck on the digital camera.  We will have to make some albums when we get home.

Today we went to a little medieval town called Provins.  It was absolutely beautiful.  Another place to put on your “must do” list.  I already can’t wait to come back.  I bet it will be even more amazing in a warmer season when it is more open to tourists.  Luckily you could wander the beautiful streets and climb the medieval walls and ramparts.  The kids could imagine they were archers searching for the enemy.  Luckily all they found today was some poor unsuspecting black cats that promptly ran away when they went up to it.

On the other hand, I successfully found another creperie to add to my tour of French creperies.  This time I had the very French Crepe Suzette.  Yum! Yum!

My hot tip for Provins is to head straight for the tourist information centre and pick up a map.  Make navigating the town much easier!

Anyway, we are off on the train back to Frankfurt tomorrow and then on to Dubai Wednesday.

Crazy Aussies in their short sleeves.

He train home was pretty comfy.

Family selfie time

Relaxing on the way home

Another picture of the beautiful (but somewhat spooky) church next to our house in Sergines, France.

Troyes

Had the most lovely day in the beautiful city of Troyes.  I think it was the most picturesque city I have ever been to.  Full of the most beautiful 1/2 timbered houses.

When we arrived in Troyes we stopped at a lovely little cafe for savoury crepes for lunch and then explored the city.  Wherever you wandered the views were just delightful – gorgeous little houses and shops everywhere.  The only problem we had was that it was FREEZING.  I think it might have been the coldest we have been with the wind whistling away.  Poor Breanna, no matter how much we wrapped her up she was still cold.  She is really looking forward to getting back to the warmth of Dubai.

It was so windy Alek even got the kite out for a few minutes outside the cathedral 😄

Another stop for warming hot chocolate and sweet crepes to defrost and we were off to find Ruelle des Chats.  A street where the roofs are so close together that the cats can jump from roof to roof.

Sadly we then had to head home.  I am already trying to think when we can come back 😛

Christmas Day

Hoping you all had a wonderful Christmas Day.  We spent a lovely festive day at Disneyland Paris.

The day started with us opening a few little presents in our lovely French house.  The kids were very pleased that Santa was able to find us.

The drive to Disneyland was very pleasant with clear roads.  The thing that was really obvious was how flat this part of France is flat – so, so flat.

Disneyland was great fun.  The kids crammed in as many rides as they could with Tommy being drag along for the ride 😄 I generously held the bags 😜

Oh boy was that place crowded. I thought it might be a little less busy as it was Christmas Day but it seems that all of Europe had the same idea.

Anyway, after a day of fun we eventually headed for home.  On the drive home Breanna confessed she didn’t want to sleep in the attic anymore.  I am amazed she lasted 2 nights up there.  This morning she had thought that someone or “something” was opening and closing her door so I knew that it was likely that she wouldn’t make another night.  So now she has moved down to a bedroom on our floor 😃

Photos from the last few days

Sens

Today was our first full day in France. Most of us had a lovely sleep in even though we are next door to a church who’s bells ring on the hour.  Poor Tommy wasn’t so lucky and found it hard to sleep in.  Luckily that meant he went for a walk and found the bakery.

We drove to a local town of Sens.  It was a gorgeous old town with lots of shops for us to explore 🙂

Ordering lunch was a challenge but with the help of a lovely patient waitress we managed to order what we wanted.

We have found that people really are great at trying to speak English.  Makes me wish I could speak more French and German.

let’s see how much we can practice over the next few days.