J'aime France

Well, here I am in Paris, watching the rain gently falling from the window of my hotel room on the rue Thenard in the Latin Quarter. I've been in France now for over a week, having left Sydney on Easter Saturday. I'm conscious that I've been remiss in my blogging, so those of you who aren't my friends on Facebook won't have a clue what I've been up to. Sorry for that, and now that I have a bit of time, I'll try to bring things up to date. (I should warn you that I'm typing on an iPad, which isn't as easy as a regular computer, so please excuse any typos I might miss).

Mum's house was sold at auction on March 23, and after some mad packing up and clearing out activity, (and huge thanks to friends and neighbours who helped so much with it all) I was ready to leave the country the following Saturday.

Because this is the 'grande vaconce' that will be a kind of once in a lifetime thing, to help me recover, refresh and recuperate from the long and hard slog of caring for Mum through her illness and coping with the emotional and administrative effects of her death; and to reorient my head, to become ready to go back home and to work. Because of this, (and the fact that I now have access to all of Mum's assets, which is m ore than I have ever had in my life) I have made some deliberate choices about the level of comfort, luxury and indulgence I am prepared to allow myself, and I am trying hard not to feel guilty or uncomfortable about that.

So, my flights from Sydney to Paris (and the future return flights) are business class. I had a wonderful time being spoilt by the lovely Etihad crew, and enjoying a very comfortable seat, that reclined all the way back into a flat bed (so that I even managed to get around 6-7 hours of sleep on the first, long leg, from Sydney to Abu Dhabi).

The overall outline for the trip is as follows:
* Fly Sydney to Paris via Abu Dhabi (arrive Easter Sunday). Stay overnight in airport hotel near CDG.
* Fly Paris to Nice, where I met the liaison person for transfer to Tarascon (on the Rhone river) to commence a 9 day river cruise on the MS Scenic Emerald from Tarascon to Chalon sur Saone, finishing up with a transfer to Paris and overnight in a very flash hotel in the centre of Paris.
* spend the following 6 nights in Paris, at a cute little hotel in the Latin Quarter.
* train (TGV) to Nimes, to stay for three nights with friends in Gaian, just out of Nimes.
* train back to Paris, and stay one last night in Paris (in the same hotel I stayed in last trip, for old time's sake)
* train (Eurostar) to London- to spend some time catching up with various friends in London, Oxford, Thame and elsewhere, before heading back to Sydney from Heathrow
* arrive Sydney (hopefully not too savagely jet-lagged) on Sat 27 April, and stay in a nice hotel in North Ryde for 4 nights or so to tie up any loose ends, say goodbyes etc and then fly home, and re-enter my 'normal' life, after being away for 10 months.

So, that's it in a nutshell. I'm thinking that rather than writing a huge long post to give all the details of all my adventures so far, I'll break it up into a number of smaller travelogue-y blog posts, hopefully with links to some pretty pictures.