|•••peachyhollow•••|

Southern California was a lot of fun, but it’s nice to be able to sleep in my own bed again. Pics and details to follow shortly….. that aforementioned bed is calling my name *yawn*. It was a long drive and I spent the entire day doing laundry.

Today is the last day of the conference and I’m making the most of it by relaxing on a big cosy sunlounger with a glass of iced tea in one hand and a good book in the other. In front of me is the bright blue temptation of the spa pool, behind me is the bright blue sky and the Pacific Ocean. What with it being November, neither is actually tempting enough to make me want to strip down to my itsy bitsy and dive in, but I can live with that. The fact that it’s November and I’m lying by a pool in the sunshine is more than enough. And the hummingbirds dancing around the bright orange Bird of Paradise flowers next to me are just the icing on the cake. Ahh, this is the life! I could get used to this.

Tomorrow we’re jumping in the car again and heading north to Los Angeles to stay with some favourite friends of ours and I can’t wait.

PS Happy Birthday Mummy! I hope you had a lovely day in London and sorry I couldn’t hear you very well on the phone earlier xxx

Ahh the life of a trailing spouse/conference wife, it’s definitely a tough one… hours spent lounging around with my girls in a posh, all expenses paid beachfront hotel, making the occasional appearance downstairs to get some free conference food, or taking the all expenses paid rental car to the local swanky shopping mall to fill some time… Believe me, it’s SUCH hard work, hehehe.

Actually the only thing that’s missing from this lovely little ‘holiday’ is an Internet connection so I can upload some pictures (I’m phoning this one in) but rumour has it that there’s free wireless in the poster display area so I might see if I can do some investigating (gatecrashing) tomorrow, tee hee! If not, there’ll just be wordy posts until we’re back in the Bay Area next weekend.

…than be stuck in Paris because of a fire in the Eurotunnel *sigh*

After five happy days in the French Capital we were due to return to England on Friday but obviously that didn’t happen and we ended up having to extend our trip. Damn shame, eh? I mean of all the places to be stuck

Anyway, we’re safely back now and actually managed to return on the first Eurostar out of Gare du Nord this morning. All praise to Eurostar at the French end- the whole operation was super efficient, we were extremely well informed throughout and we even got a free breakfast before we boarded. And we had absolutely no trouble getting refunds on the emergency train tickets to Calais and the Sea France ferry to Dover that we’d booked the day before (and making those alternative arrangements was super easy too). Even getting the new Eurostar tickets was a cinch- we turned up at the station this morning and within minutes had new boarding cards in our hands for a train that was due to depart 20 minutes after that. That’s even faster than a regular day!

The journey back took a little longer than scheduled- there was a 30 minute wait on the tracks to enter the tunnel at Calais and the train went through it at half speed through- and there was a smell of burning and chemicals when we entered the tunnel, but that was kind of to be expected and made the journey all the more interesting. Apart from that it was business as usual.

So what did we do with ourselves on our extra day? Well, we got to see the Pope which doesn’t happen every day. Like I said, there were a lot worse things that could have happened….

And Amélie Chocolat got to see him too