Simon says

  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...

 Book, sofa, cup of tea, silence.  Those moments have been more frequent this year.  Here are some books I have been reading. Where's the f-ing milk?! Courtesy someone on Pinterest. I don't know who because Pinterest is so darn impenetrable. Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart This was given to us by our visitor from Scotland, Lorna the polymath.  Well educated, well read, well spoken and, well, always interesting, a gift from Lorna was bound to be special.  And if that wasn't enough recommendation, Shuggie Bain had won the Booker prize, despite being a debut novel.  Like many Booker winners, it took a while to get into.  But this is an exquisite book.  Exquisitely written, exquisitely painful. Shuggie Bain is a young boy growing up in 1980s Glasgow, cowed by poverty and the collapse of industry in Thatcherite Britain.  Shuggie is the titular character but this story is as much about his mother, Agnes, a vivacious, beautiful soul, wracked by alcoh...

 After the excitement of the camper van trip to Italy, it's been a couple of weeks of routine and admin interspersed with a trip to Geneva to drop off the van, a quest for a sub-$50 haircut (I ended up buying a clipper set), Armistice day, a few local adventures and another big weekend trip.  This time the hockey did not come to us, so we went to it.   First a word about Armistice day.  France was deeply traumatised by the wars, with so much of the fighting and loss of life happening on its soil.  November 11th is a public holiday, which we don't have in Canada (except for the federal government). This means the kids are in school in Canada, which I think actually makes for a more meaningful experience every year as the schools do a lot of teaching around it. Vaujany hockey tournament. Toby's orange laces make it easy to pick him out Armistice day ceremony Specifically we went to Vaujany for Toby to represent Chamonix in a smaller tournament of five teams....

The first three days of this trip included rather too much driving and not so much leisure time.  This was partly because of the weather and partly because of our poor planning.  But we were to make amends.  From our uninspiring overnight stop in the parking lot in Livorno, we headed north to Pisa to see a leaning tower.  We stopped at the Lidl supermarket on the way for a small cultural experience and we bought a Pomelo which is a giant citrus fruit and which was imported from China.  After lunch in the van we headed off to the tower. Surprising serenity at tourism central Oh the fun that can be had with a leaning tower and a little perspective... We decided to pay to walk to the top of the tower and I have to say that this was money well spent.  The leaning tower of Pisa must be one of the most recognisible images in the world but up close it is peacefully serene, set as it is in a complex that includes the Pisa Cathedral and surrounded by the expansive ...