The Diary - She Continues... Wednesday, 1 Jan 2019 - The sales cometh. In a completely unspontaneous fashion, France goes on sale on 8 January - not the 7th, not the 9th, but the 8th. The other day, whilst buying that entirely unneccessary €1 coat in the Marais, we took a look in another vintage shop and saw a pair of sheepskin boots and a very cute 'hat with the flaps' - but at €25 and €15 respectively - they seemed a bit rich. Today, with almo...

We are undoubtedly very lucky and happy to be a world away from the bushfire disaster, extreme heat and smoke of Australia (and now, the extreme rain, storm and flooding). At this point in time, November in Ireland seems so far away, as does the long weekend in Brussels when we kicked off our festive season at their superb advent markets. Dare we say it, after 2 months in Paris, it seemed like home. We arrived in Paris on 2 December and 'home' is massive. Our Ha...

We have been blessed in many, many ways over our years of travelling. Rescheduled flights, technical issues, late departures and overnight delays - could be counted on the fingers of one hand (ferries... that's a different matter entirely). But when it comes to French trains, we are often cursed. In fact if we have a booking... it almost certainly predicts a train strike that day. But today everything went 100% smoothly. Left Gare St Lazare in Paris on the butt...

Paris - Yay! Our fifth visit to this fine city and we really did think we'd be scrabbling for things to do. Hah! Never! The train from Brussels was a breeze and we were reminded of the ever present security threat as soon as we jumped off the train in the Gare du Nord and a young male of middle Eastern appearance with a small suitcase was immediately pulled aside for a 'random' check. We considered treating ourselves to a taxi to the hotel, only 1.5 km (thankfull...