New Year;s Day, 1 January 2010

Our last day in Parisand the last of these blogs.

We spent most of the day cleaning and saying our goodbyes to people in the flats, at the cafe where we go almost every day and in the shops where we have become known (probably as those crazy Australians). We were very touched by several of the people who expressed shock that we were leaving. One of the lasses who works at the cafe said, "not forever" and when we told her we would be back briefly in April she said it was OK for us to go as long as we would be back before too long. At the Alimentation, one of the men who works there said to Virginia, "How can it be that you are going. You are the quintessential Parisian housewife with your baguette, doing the daily shopping." Of course, Virginia's response was "no, not me, my husband's at home cooking the lunch and cleaning the bathroom!" Hardly French, that.

We went to lunch at the Cafe Franceour and while it was tinged with sadness, we are now looking forward to being back in Australia with our family and friends and the promise of a new grandchild in less than three months. We are not, however, looking forward to getting up at 5.00am tomorrow morning with the temperature well below zero and waiting for a cab to take us to the airport. That's always one of the worst things about travelling, but, if you want to travel you have to, as a young woman once advised us, "put on your 'patience' hat."

So, we leave Paris for now (... but we'll be back on the 31st of March. Only 90 days, but who's counting?). But before returning to Paris we will have a week in London and two weeks in Venice where we are going to study that greatest of all maritime cities. We haven't decided yet whether we are going to blog this next trip, but it is likely we will do so, so, head for the website,
http://www.venice.blogspot.com.