2012/04/23

the green green grass of home

 If you need pictures, stop reading now. No pictures for this post.

We all know that everyone thinks of Ireland as the emerald isle with it's rolling green hills. We are here to tell you that hills are somewhat jaundiced these days and it's not due to lack of rain. In Australia we call it canola, over here they call it rape. Settle, that's its proper name, I've been feeding rape seed to my birds for years, but I assume the politically correct police decided we couldn't have margarine made from rape. How would those ads go? That'd be a challenge even for Gruen Transfer.

So, canola/rape has a lovely yellow flower and Ireland was ablaze with it, as was France as we flew in today.

It is interesting the little idiosyncrasies that belong to each country. In France there are toilet attendants and it costs 50 Euro cents to use the facilities. Jayne forgot and walked in followed by, execuse moi, excuse moi. She then came back for money. I have all the money. Muhahahahahahaha!

The train trip from the airport to Lille was only an hour. Love these fast trains. And we travelled 1st class because I booked ages ago, but no-one, anywhere, checked to see if we had a ticket. You could see all of Europe for free, 1st class. Thinking about this for later in the trip.

The hotel is OK. Not what we would have chosen, but it is a part of the Western Front tour package. Since we got in so late we thought we eat at the hotel bar. We ordered a bottle of wine, one of two whites on offer. Sorry, out of stock, you can have the other one. We looked at the waiter, well, it's still white - and he shrugged. No, we'll have the champagne, it is our first night in France. Then we ordered dinner. Hmmm. Airline food, microwaved, but we're on the ground. Too tired and too lazy to care. It was edible, mine more so than Jayne's, and it didn't detract from the bubbles. For a nightcap I thought zambucca - sorry, never heard of it. How far away is Italy????

We have tomorrow at our leisure. That means a sleep in and a wander around Lille before hooking up with the Fanatics for our Western Front tour.

Till then ... a bientot

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