First stop - Paris. And on Valentine´s Day too! So for all those of you who think romance is dead, read this...

Woke up tired after 8 hours of Shameless the night before (well worth it). K & N were running around trying to cram the last bits of stuff into their 150 quid, 32 kilo box of stuff (who needs that much stuff?) and everything else into their packs.

Left the house at around 10am for the obligatory two hour tube trip to Heathrow. Arrive at Terminal four to a long line of fat English tourists and screaming English children.... you guessed it, school holidays (are these kids ever at school?).

Check in, have another queue to get through security (we were leaving England after all - could be our last decent queue for awhile), then right past the duty free zone without stopping to buy Nato any smokes at all..

Flight delayed for an hour, which is longer than the actual flight itself. Once on it though, the flight provided a good contrast of cultures. In one seat, an English child. The seat behind, a French child of about the same age. The English child wailed for the whole 45 minutes, and proceeded to throw all of it´s possessions from it´s chair and into the ailse. The French child amused itself for 45 minutes before waking it´s sleeping parents with a gentle`Mama? Papa? Shall I go and pick up the bags and get the car?`. At least that´s what I think it said. My French is a little rusty.

Not as rusty as Nato and Kato´s though, which was evident when we arrived at Charles De Galle. We were greeted by a nice French police man who told us to proceed to exit 2. We lined up for 15 minutes or so only to be told we were in the wrong line, we wanted the OTHER exit 2. Of course. So we proceeded down the concourse...

Only to be stopped by three more nice French police man and a line of red tape that was strecteched across the concourse. Apparently there was a suspicious piece of luggage that was being cordoned off. Fortunately for us of course, we were had a line of red tape and three French police man protecting us from any potential explosions, 50 metres down the concourse.

Eventually the owner of the suspicious baggage finished his turtle and collected his bag. And we went through immigration with barley a glance, let alone a stamp on the passport.

By now it was about 5.30pm and it took the hobbits another 2 hours to navigate their way to their hotel, thanks to their aforementioned terrible French. My French is of course much better, but I chose not to help.. that will teach them for locking me up for six months.

Anyway, we finally arrived at our 3 star hotel room (3 star hotel?? I´m going to have to toughen these two up....), which was about half the size of the lounge I had just spent the last six months in... By now it was about 7pm...

What happened after that you ask?

As usual, the fat hobbits went out and left me locked in our hotel room...

Romantic, no.....?

A Bientot
Ziggy