The Last Several Months

Ok, it has been quite a long time between posts to say the least. However it has been a busy and challenging six months. Here are some highlights.

We went to Catherine's friends' wedding in Bath (UK) in April which was lovely

The wedding was just outside of Bath in this cute old church.

Catherine with her old Oxford friends Paul (Posh) & Catherine

Beautiful reception venue in the centre of Bath.

A little pic of us

The newly weds Jim & Cally in the Roman Baths.

Then in May it was the arrival of the outlaws, I mean in-laws. Elizabeth & Carl arrived for a two and a half month tour of Europe, with headquarters being our place in Paris :)

We had a little day trip to a nearby town in Burgandy called Auxerre with Elizabeth & Carl.

Typical view of a French town.

In June we flew down to Nice (South of France) and stayed in Villefranche, where we did our language training when we first arrived in France. We hired a car and drove around the Mediterranean coast and stayed a couple nights in Tuscany. The trip ended in Pisa, where we flew back to Paris from.

On the balcony in Villefranche

Florence. Beautiful Florence!

Pisa

We had a quick stop in Pisa to take a few snaps, as there's not much else in Pisa to see besides the tower :)

More photos coming soon of our 2 week summer holiday with Elizabeth & Carl. So I'll keep you posted :)

Christmas & Corsica

Bonjour,

We had a quiet Christmas here in Paris last month, although we helped out with a meal (at our church) on Christmas eve for those without much family to celebrate with (which included us!). There are many lonely people in this big city. As one of my favourite song writer's puts it (which I think explains many peoples feelings in this city):

nowhere feels safe to me
nowhere feels home
even in crowds I'm alone

Ok, that is rather solemn. Although it was a privilege to be apart of those people's Christmas, and after the meal we had a midnight service in the church.

On Boxing Day we flew to Corsica! We had booked a week in one of the main cities called Ajaccio, which is on the south west coast of Corsica. It reminded us so much of NZ with it's slow pace of life (as it was the low-season) and surrounded by nature.

The view from our apartment in looking over the harbour of Ajaccio (me playing with our new camera)

The view looking back to Ajaccio (which reminded us of Wellington)

We had a little hire car which allowed us to explore the island. It took about 2 hours to get to the southern tip of the island, and if we had time it would of taken us about 2.5 hours to get to the Northern tip of the island.

These are the cliffs at Bonifacio, the most southern town of Corsica


A romantic couple we saw in Bonifacio :)



As you can see, Corsica is not just full of coastal roads. There were some mountains with snow on in the middle of the island.

With the temperature being around 15 degrees, it felt quite tropical in comparison to the snowed covered city of Paris that we left behind. So with this new found freedom we went for a few walks.

This is looking down onto Ajaccio from one of the walks up in the bush



You can still find some typical French villages in Corsica