First of all, Merry Christmas to all. Hope you are all having a great day with family and friends. Being so far from home at this time of the year makes you realize how important family and friends are. Anyway, cheers to all. So, Paris. This is our third visit to this great city. And it never ceases to amaze us. The sights, the people, the food, the wine, the shopping (especially perfumeries). We've decided to forgo most of the attractions this time (The Louvre,...

After a decent night's sleep, we were ready to do a bit of exploring in Grenoble. First up though, find a place for a coffee fix. Bearing in mind our past experiences with the quality of coffee in France, we approached this quest with some trepidation - do the French still make the worst coffee in Europe? Or have they finally learnt the art of espressing coffee? Sadly it is the former. We were loathe to leave the spoon in the mixture in case it dissolved. Ah well...

Flew into Paris yesterday from Dublin. We've booked into the Novotel hotel which is located right at the airport, with a Paris train station right below. Unfortunately the train wasn't in operation due to terminal renovations going on. so after we checked into the hotel, we caught the Roissy Bus into Paris. What a horrible bus trip. Took well over an hour. If you think driving a car in Paris is frustrating, imagine trying to negotiate a 40ft bus through the...

Well, we made it to Paris in one piece (7 hour drive). Even negotiated the craziness of driving around the Arc de Triomphe (12 lanes, 12 exits, nil lanes marked) to our hotel for the night. Ahhhhhh, Paris. What can you say? Ropme was great. Florence was magnificent. Milan was wonderful. But Paris, well, Paris is Paris. It's like no other city. In the evening we caught the Metro to the Saint Germaine area for supper. On the way we passed the Louvre and Notre D...

And so on to Chamonix and Mont Blanc. Landed in Lyon ok. In fact we were 20 minutes early. Collected our luggage (more on luggage later), and found our way to the Hertz car rental office to pick up our car. They gave us a Peugeot 5008, the same one we had last year, so we were familiar with how it worked, especially the navigation system. By the time we got on the road, it was late afternoon and getting dark. Raining as well. Looked up BBC weather before we l...