Simon says

 My annual electronic Christmas letter (in case you haven’t had enough exposure to the Fergusons): This year the Christmas break comes partway through our year off. If you want to skip this relatively brief update and go straight for the meat and potatoes, or the nuts and bolts, head on … Go to this Sway

Swiss air brought us to England (Apologies for the formatting issues). My six oldest friends live in England, within around 20 miles of each other, along with their six partners and 14 children.  We haven't been to England in the winter in nearly a decade. It was unsurpsingly grey and somewhat surprisingly very dark, very early.  Ottawa is on the same latitude as Rome.  Our "true North" is suprisingly far south.  All of this English gloom was no equal to the congenial cheer that was in full flow in the run up to Christmas - the sunshine of friendship radiating through the pale fog.  We had a very smooth taxi-bus-plane-taxi trip from Chamonix back to Woking and were settled just in time to wave our generous hosts, Nick and Agnes, off to London for their Van Gogh and Shard dinner engagements to celebrate the anniversary of their first date.  We were comfortably house bound for the first couple of days awaiting what else but a covid test result.  When it...

No sooner back from Paris than attentions turned to taking advantage of the snow and making the most of our final few days in Chamonix.  Sadly, none of the ski areas in the valley are to open before we leave so we went to Verbier in Switzerland instead.  This required hiring a car, renting some skis (we live on top of the shop and they gave us a ridiculous rate 🙂), buying some snow pants (we will always make good use of snow pants in Canada! ☃), and driving 1.5 hours through some deep snow and an ongoing blizzard.  But the kids have now skied in the big mountains!    Owing to my chairlift phobia I reluctantly stayed on the ground, went for a hike, and met these charming folks. Check out Crystal's FB for rad shots of the slopes... The Swiss village of Serryer Hot chocolate with Toby in Verbier Driving to Verbier was snowy We kept the car for Sunday, and Crystal and Toby headed down to St Gervais for his final hockey tournament.  He really loves this sport....

We celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary on November 28th, waking up in Paris no less. Romantic it was not really.  It was Sunday, we were tired from a late night in Montmatre, we had a train to catch, it was 5 degrees and rainy, and our hotel was utilitarian at best.  I had managed to cobble together my traditional home made card and presented this to the lucky bride along with the free square of chocolate that I got with my coffee in the buffet car.  As if this onslaught of anniversary indulgence was not enough, we had been saving a visit to Chamonix's QC Therme spa for this very occasion. Just to round out the Paris trip first, after some decent sushi in an underwhelming restaurant across from the station in Annecy, we waited in the sleet and snow for our bus replacement back to Chamonix.  As we climbed up the valley it was clear to see that our adopted home had been transformed into a winter wonderland while we were away for the weekend.  A beautiful ...

  Sacre Coeur One of Toby's big wishlist items for this year was the bullet train in Japan or the TGV in France.  I will admit to a little mental resistance against a trip to Paris in November.  Expensive, a hassle to plan, potentially cold and wet, and the kids don't love trapsing around a big city.  Fortunately Crystal has a more positive outlook and she spearheaded this grand adventure, which I think I can say we all thoroughly enjoyed. A word before we get started.  I tend to steer clear of too much detail of the nuts and bolts in favour of readability (I know, can you imagine?!).  Here, I'm going a bit more detail, partly in case anyone wants to follow in our footsteps and partly for us, if we come back to Paris sometime. Enjoy. Having grabbed the kids from school on Thursday lunchtime, we headed to the grandiose train station in Chamonix and took the train, very much sans grands vitesse, down the valley to St Gervais. We crossed the platform and 9 min...