The sun is shining. What a beautiful morning. This has not happened for a while. England has had the gloomiest summer since 1993. Our wonderful Adriatic tan is disappearing. All good things do come to an end. But today we are going to enjoy the moment. Our first task is to take a bus into Watford Town for tour members to prepare for a wedding on Saturday. The bus driver was very helpful sorting out the cheapest deal for us. As it turned out it was cheaper to get a return ticket for two adults and three children than a return for two adults. We are not into child minding on this trip so we agreed to have three imaginary children with us. It was supposed to be two haircuts but the Hungarian haircut one member ... read more

Today we are off on a mystery tour with our comfortable shoes and passports. Who knows where we are going? Certainly not us. Our daughter and her husband have planned an outing as part of our wedding anniversary celebrations and we are quite excited and full of eager anticipation. We are certainly not going to the beach because the weather has not been suitable for seaside excursions, and why would you need a passport at the beach. Once in the car we headed off on a drive towards Heathrow but soon the signs were saying Gatwick, then Richmond. We didn’t have a clue. After about 50 minutes of driving we were parking the car at Hampton Court Palace. What a wonderful surprise. On our last trip we had hoped to get there and never did and ... read more

Somehow this morning we managed to squeeze our possessions into two large bags and two back packs. During the past four months we had the luxury of being able to spread our belongings throughout the car. Anything that wouldn’t fit in our bags we had to leave behind. The hotel cleaning staff may be fighting over who was going to have the clothes pegs or plastic crockery or plastic cutlery or the cheap chilly bin. Today we took a taxi to the station with our bags instead of trundling through the residential area with the early autumn leaf fall covering the pavement and at Gard du Nord we were able to enjoy our last French breakfast before the journey. Then it was time to check in for our Eurostar trip to London. We seem to have ... read more

It is six years since we last visited Paris. At that time it was the middle of winter. Today it was supposed to be the end of summer. Paris has had a miserable summer this year and locals are already booking their winter holidays in tropical destinations. Pulling the curtains back we were met by rain running down the windows, a typical 2011 Paris summer day. So, with all the necessary wet weather gear we headed for the RER train to take us into the centre of Paris. Having already seen some of the familiar sights on previous visits and since it was raining we chose the Musée de l’Orangerie gallery by the Jardin des Tuileries for our first stop. As we entered the first exhibition spaces we were greeted by Monet’s large panel paintings, inspired ... read more

Today we visited Chartres, a city about 20 kilometres from where we are staying. Our hotel is in Illiers-Combray a small rural town that has become quite famous thanks to the writings of the French essayist, Marcel Proust. The town, Illiers, was the setting for the town Combray in Proust’s book “À la recherche du temps perdu” (Remembrance of Things Past) and so the locals added Combray to the name Illiers, so we have the name Illiers-Combray. Our drive into Chartres took us to the town centre and we disappeared underground into an enormous car park that seemed to run the length of the boulevard above and two levels deep. Emerging into the square, it was quite enjoyable to sit and be entertained by two children frolicking in the fountain sculpture while we indulged in pastries. ... read more