We're back.

Alison, the kids, and I returned to small-town France on Friday. But it wasn't easy. The weather in France decided  to suck late Thursday, and didn't get any better on Friday morning.

During breakfast, Amber got a call from a friend who was spending the holidays in France. They were supposed to return to Brussels on Friday, but were stranded by the bad weather, which ranged from snow to sleet and freezing rain.

I was hoping that the trains would not be affected, but as luck would have it, they were.

We made it to Paris without any trouble, but found that all trains inbound from the north and west, and outbound were delayed. The station at Montparnasse was packed with people, and we had to wait in line for almost an hour to pick up and pay for the tickets for the last leg of the trip. The clerk told us that our train was delayed along with all others, and that it might not run at all. She suggested that if any earlier trains to our destination managed to make it in that we should get on one.

So we waited. And waited some more. Finally a train heading our way came in, and we boarded it around 6 p.m. But it didn't leave for another half hour. We managed to find 4 seats in a first class car. Unfortunately I had to sit apart from the others. The train was packed. Apparently a lot of other passengers had done the same thing we did.

The train finally left Paris and brought us back. But it took forever. The train, which normally goes 150 miles per hour, was slowed by the horrible weather and every stop it made took longer than normal as they took on more stranded passengers. At one point our car was standing room only.

We finally made it back to Angoulême a bit after 10 p.m. Luckily it was just raining there. But it made for a long ride back to Ali's place. It was after 11 p.m. when we got back.

The kids went straight to bed and Ali and I just had a midnight dinner of leftover chili.

I'll tell you more about our visit to Brussels later. But I do want to thank Amber and Len for welcoming us into their home. It was really fun to visit them and their lovely kids. We really had a blast and were sad that we had to leave.

Comments

[Mike]

You continue to amaze Bro. :-)