Paris

I know, I know, we went to Paris almost a month ago, and now only do I post the photos - pathetic blogger.
Better late than never!

Tamara and I took the trip across, or should i say underneath, the English Channel to France. We went on the new, and apparantly improved, Eurostar, which now, after a couple of billion Pounds reach Paris 15 minutes quicker than the old Eurostar.
This all happened around Valentines Day, and we stayed with old family friends of the McFarlanes the Frayssineau, better known as the 'Froggies'. Tamara also spent 3 months with the family back in 2005 as an au-pair.
We did all the usual stuff any respectfull tourist would have done, you can see some of the cliché photos we took everywhere. One thing that did catch us by surprise was the temperature. On our first day there it was absolutely freezing. We had to buy hats from one of the local street venders. We didn't paint Paris red, but we walked it flat!





We joined the Frayssineau kids, Marie and Constance, on a day at Euro Disney. You be the judge looking at the photos - was it warm,cold or bloody freezing? It was awesome though! We ended up really having a great time, doing all the major rides and waiting in all the major qeues.





Tamara and I took on Paris at night by doing one of the river cruiser, finding out exactly why Paris is called "The City of Lights". I do believe that this is the best way to do it.

On the Sunday we went to the Gardens of Versailles nad Marie Antoinette's farm. It was very cool and we even did some Geocaching there, picking up a cache in the gardens in front of the chateau.

Thank you to the 'Froggies' - Herve, Fred, Constance and Marie - for putting up with us and entertaining us for the weekend!

a quest for a white christmas

With our first ever Christmas away from home and family, we gathered 4 other 'orphans', Duncan, Alderet, Simon and Nadine, and headed up to the Scottish Highlands. After a approximate 12 hour drive through rain and ice, we finally reached our destination - Big Sky Lodges, just north of Inverness. Just to put into perspective, we were just over 57 degrees North Latitude, which is pretty far. We had about 5 hours of light every day, which didn't give us much time to explore, but did however give us more of enough time enjoying the locally brewed whiskey, beer and the home made mulled wine. The lodge we rented was more comfortable and beautiful than we imagined, a beautiful wooden cabin with three bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a reasonable kitchen, wood burning fireplace, loft area and a nice living room. Fantastic! To our delight the farm also housed four 'Heilan' coo', or Highland cows. We always refer to them as "Buffy Koeie", referring to my mom's hairy pooch named Buffy.





The days before Christmas we spent exploring the country side, and took a drive down to the famous Loch Ness. No Nessie, but we did visit Urquhart castle on the banks of Loch Ness. This castle is estimated to date back to the sixth century, and we couldn't help but wonder if any Macfarlanes where involved in it's destruction a couple of hundred years later.


We went that far north with one main objective in mind - a white Christmas. This was unfortunately not to be, not with snow in any case. We awoke on a very chilly Christmas morning, with everything covered in a considerable amount of frost...close enough, we considered it to be our first white Christmas. The roads were all nice and white and I even got a chance to stand a frozen solid water pond.




We had an absolute feast for Christmas, in fact we had two. Tamara and the girls slaved away in the kitchen to prepare two of the best meals we've had in a long time. The first one on Christmas eve, and then of course Christmas lunch. Well done Tamara and her little helpers!

To our great disappointment the distilleries and castles in the area were closed between Christmas and New Year, but we still had a drive out to the country side. One thing about the roads in the UK is that they don't all have hard shoulders, and we can't just pull off the road to take a photo, which often has you hanging out a window in a moving vehicle to try and take a snap shot, and of course just as you press the button a car or a tree will jump into your shot. We did get a couple of nice photos on our little missions, but not nearly enough! These photos were taken around the lodge, Inverness and Brodie castle.






We also took the orphans on a day of Geocaching, which was very cool. We were kind of looking forward to moving on towards the end of the trip, and changed our plans a little bit to stop over at Nadine's sister's place in Falkirk, a short drive from Edinburgh, in order to visit the beautiful city of Edinburgh. The trip to Edinburgh was great, but more on that in another chapter.