Parlez-vous Anglais?

As you probably know, we (that's me and Tina) went to France to see the branch of Knowles family stationed there. They live in a village called Eymet, which is kind of near Bordeaux, however the nearest airport is Bergerac. This was probably the smallest airport I have ever been to (which seeing as there are only two flights a day isn't surprising), but I was a bit taken aback by the fact the arrivals, er, department, appeared to be a tent, and the luggage carousel was more of a slightly sloped series of rollers, on which the people closest to the top had to push the bags down until they reached the owner....very strange, I should have taken a picture really, maybe next time.

Obviously we didn't plan this trip at the best time year, as it was pretty foggy for the whole of our holiday, but at least it was a break. Unfortunately, and not for the first time, Tina got ill whilst we were on holiday (she reckons it's because she relaxes and the germs get a way in to attack). We stayed in a really nice (not yet opened) bed and breakfast there, the room was huge and it wasn't that expensive and the people were really nice. One thing about the area is that is about 35% English, so lazy people like me don't have to know much French.

So being foggy and cold and January, this actually meant there wasn't much for us to do, wine tasting not really being a winter past-time and the village being quiet, but with Tina being ill it didn't really matter. I did play a game of football (training, not a real match) with David though, I thought I did quite well, but seeing as it was a veterans team maybe that's nothing to be proud of. So we mostly just chilled around David and Cathy's rented house (whilst the new one is being built), and ate traditional French food, like curry, pasta and paella.

We split the holiday in two by going to Paris for three days, here are some pictures we took from there....

Tina by the marvellous glass pyramid at the Louvre (as made famous by the Da Vinci code)


Tina by the Venus 'gummi' de Milo



Tina by the Arc de Triomphe



Tina by the Eiffel Tower



Tina by the Moulin Rouge (note she was pretty tired by now)



And, er, me in a wig in some pub



Tina being ill meant the first two nights in Paris consisted of her going to bed about 7 and me going to the pub to watch football (not too dissimilar to every evening here I guess)...

One last thing, all the talk I'd heard about the trains running on time was nonsense, the train home was at least 5 minutes late (so what if that was over a 4 hour journey)....we got in trouble with the ticket guy for not getting our ticket stamped in Paris or something, oh well.