1 Sleep to Paris

One bag, one sleep, one trip to the airport and we're goneski.
How can we be away for one month and only take one bag? you ask. Good question, the answer is simple viz "shopping". The truth is we actually have a second bag and inside that is another bag and inside that bag are two pillows we plan to "donate" to the apartment on departure.
Last night on our way to Bianca's engagement party (Bianca is Brian Armstrong's daughter, should be a bit of fun calling Brian "Gramps" sometime in the next few years) as we crossed the Sydney Harbour Bridge I rang Bertrand and arranged to meet him at our apartment in Paris (he has the key) and spoke most of the time in French - it worked! It was such a thrill to be talking to a Parisian. To be honest at the end of the conversation I asked him "Parlez-vous Anglais?" and he said "Yes" so, in English, I double checked that we had truly understood each other (didn't want an ego-driven, epic fail).
It was through Jenni's sister (Lorraine) that we knew about this apartment. Lorraine and family had been to France last year as part of school trip (some field day !). So we learned about some of the local boulangeries, wine bars (bars à vin), the Bon Marché (whilst it is a famous place it actually means "cheap" in French). Lorraine's and Stuart's descriptions made it almost feel as if we were already there. Can't wait to buy a baguette and a bucket of foie gras (Jenni's misplaced 2 kilos in the last couple of months so a bucket of foie gras should help replace it). We also learned about the Metro, le Château de Versailles. So we're now planning to take the Metro from Charles de Gaulle Aéroport to St Germain. Which goes to show we humans are not entirely rational since we definitely are NOT taking the train from home to Sydney airport.
We've packed Telfast as we're going from Sydney winter to Europe summer and in the past we have found that we get terrible hay fever due to the big change in atmospheric pollen and Telfast is (or it was last time we were there) a prescription-only medicine in France.
We've turned on our Outlook "out of office" notifications and plan to stay way from work email completely. If you want to email us, use gavinpdixon@gmail.com as I will monitor this inbox. We'll get a local SIM (I'll post this number when I get it) and have Skype logged in (Skype id is gavin.dixon69 - stop smirking, it's just a number). You can also post comments on this blog as I will try to keep it up to date as a "travel" diary.