Camille, Kathy and Dyan visit

The highight of Fina's year in France so far was Camille's visit. Here she is at Gare du Nord in Paris meeting the Eurostar (the train from London to Paris). Camille, Kathy and Dylan came through the channel tunnel from London. We started the week in Paris and ended in Nice.

Where's Waldo? Emer's waving at the camera.

While Rob and Kathy took the kids up the Eifel tower, Emer ran the Paris marathon with 34,999 of her new closest friends.

We hopped on a plane to Nice the next day and spent the week hiking, swimming, going to

see the new lion cubs at the zoo in Cap Ferat, walking on the prom and drinking the odd glass of wine.

It was a over too soon as the expressions here show. But as Camille headed back to school we still had 10 days holidays left, so the original Legoland in Denmark was next...

March and April ...not quite a blog

It's March in Nice and the pool is cold, so Rob decides he's going to install a heat pump. It's a brilliant idea. We'll be able to use the pool from April instead of June or July.

So he orders a heat pump off the web and all 300lbs of it arrive when he's in Ireland. The UPS guy asks Emer to help him haul it off the truck up the hill to the house. ...

After building a cement foundation Rob learnt a few things:
Either

a) Rent a cement mixer

OR

b) Hire someone who knows what they're doing.

OR

c) Hire someone.....anyone

However, Rob's not an engineer (on sabbatical or not) for nothing. The pool is now a balmy 24C and rising. We're swimming in April!!!

Also in April Dad and Gerry came to visit. We went to old Nice drank Wine, listened to music, toured some hill towns and celebrated Gerry's birthday.

Dad and Gerry at Eze, at the Rotschild mansion and where they treated us to dinner at "Canaille Hit", overlooking the port in Nice.