Steps

Catching up.... Saturday .... Well, I woke up feeling a wee bit 'heady', which was no surprise as a fair amount of red wine had been consumed. I vowed never to touch alcohol again.

Despite that, we had a nice chat with JS over breakfast. Lovely to catch up with her after her wedding and recent move to NZ. After packing up, we had time for a good wander around the city centre before our train. Our wanders took us through the Piazza della Santissima Annunziata, the Sant'Ambrogio market and the Piazza Santo Spirito. As we ambled through the streets, I was delighted to get a text from A letting me know that her baby had safely arrived. Another wedding we've been to in recent years. And Florence was somewhere we enjoyed visiting together, a few years ago.

After that, it was onto the fast train to Turin, during which time the weather deteriorated. By the time we reached Turin, where we were supposed to be getting some lunch, it was absolutely pouring down (and apparently there were quite a few floods there on Saturday). We were denied the lunch we wanted as it was raining too hard to leave the station and the in-station facilities were pretty awful. We managed a sandwich, but got frozen sitting waiting for the train to Paris. Once on that train, we finally warmed up, and had to make do with more crappy food for dinner, as we didn't get to the Gare de Lyon until nearly 10.45. Just time to check into the hotel (the same one we used on the way out) and collapse into bed. Unfortunately, not to sleep - or not in my case. I had twitchy legs and didn't manage to drop off until the wee small hours.