A honeymoon story - part two

Arriving in Paris we found our way to our hotel, which had been booked by a work colleague who worked for Kodak in Paris (Hugh and I both worked for Kodak in the UK). We walked up to reception and using my best schoolgirl French I tried to book in. The receptionist, a myopic middle aged French man, looked in the reservations book, looked at me, looked back at the book again and said ‘NON’. I explained that it had been booked by someone else and gave their name – ‘Non’. By this time I was starting to panic a little. I asked him if he was sure – we had booked the room for 3 nights – he picked up the book, held it to within 3 inches of his face, put it back on the desk, took an eraser, rubbed someone’s name out and put our name in! We had a room! Pity the poor people who came after us!

 Look carefully and you can see me on the balcony!

We spent a nice time in Paris, although it was not very warm! We had taken very summery clothes with us to wear in the South, but hadn’t really thought that Paris might not be warm. Consequently I ended up wearing the same clothes for all three days and looking pinched and cold in the photos! After all, you expect Paris to be warm and sunny at the beginning of June.

See the theme? Same blue skirt in most photos teamed with the same yellow jacket! The skirt is one I made for my honeymoon, but that is another story!

We had decided to end our honeymoon by taking a couple of days to drive back to Calais from Paris and visiting St Paer – a tiny village in northern France where Hugh’s family had originated from and where the surname had come from. Hugh’s ancestor had been the Comte de St Paer (the Gotch part is English and Hugh’s grandparent’s put the names together). We drove up to the village which turned out to be a mill and about three other buildings! There was no big manor house where the Comte might have lived, so it was a bit of a letdown! However, I did take a photo of Hugh standing by the road sign showing the name of the village.

We then drove on to Gisores to have a look in the cemetery to see if we could find any ancestors. The answer to that was no! There were so many graves it would have taken forever to search and there didn’t seem to be any sort of caretaker to ask. We did visit the church though which was beautiful. This had only taken a day and as the weather wasn’t great and we were very close to Calais we decided to go home! We drove to Calais and managed to get our reservation moved and managed to return home on my parents’ silver wedding anniversary, which was nice as otherwise we would have missed it.

 Us on the ferry - 'should have gone to Spec Savers'?!

I can’t believe that next year Hugh and I will be celebrating our silver wedding anniversary. Where has the time gone! We may have had an eventful honeymoon, but it was lovely and one that we still talk about and remember well.

 And a layout to finish with! Another 8 x 11.5, using a Sarah's Cards Kit and a Page Maps Sketch.

This story is brought to you as part of Sian's Storytelling Sunday. Please pop over here to see some more.