Our hotel is over 100 years old and has been run by the same family for the last three generations. They are warm and gracious hosts, and have rooms that are dated but clean. They also serve breakfast for over three hours every morning, which was a welcome change to not have to source that meal ourselves for a few days.

After we all met for breakfast at 9.30am, Zac who is still not well went back to bed, Luke took the rest of the troops into the Old Town, while Ross, Beck and I trekked to a laundromat a few blocks away with our several bags of dirty clothes. (Okay, we Uber’ed there because I didn’t want to carry dirty clothes for blocks and blocks, but they made me walk the clean clothes back!)

It was the best laundromat I have ever used – so clean, so many machines, choices of machine size (I know, only I could get excited by a laundromat….). While waiting for our washing, we explored the local area a little bit, then returned it to our hotel and bussed in to meet the others at a restaurant they had found for lunch. Following on from the best laundromat ever, at the Metzgersteig restaurant I had the best Wiener schnitzel ever! (And am looking forward to seeing if Munich can beat that).

We had intended to be at the stage near the Christmas markets, set up in Chapter Square, at 2pm. Salzburg start their NYE festivities by showing fireworks from places around the world, starting at 2pm with Sydney! But everyone was more interested in their lunch by then.

We then walked around to the Catacombs, which were closed, so took the funicular to the Fortress Hohensalzburg to explore, where the views were spectacular.

Many stairs were climbed (and my lung capacity ain’t what it was a few days ago with this chest infection!), so while the boys and Belle decided to walk down from the fortress, Abi, Jess, Beck and I caught the funicular back down (the others beat us to the bottom!).

I did want to be at Salzburg Cathedral by 5pm because the NYE activities Beck had listed included the live broadcast of the annual financial statements in the cathedral (picture attached to prove I am not making this up), but it was a whole church service. Belle and I could sight sing along with the hymns, but couldn’t understand what they were saying, so we didn’t stay for the reading of the financials. I do like its inclusion as a NYE activity though!

Those at the laundromat had missed exploring the Christmas markets, so we still need to do that, but decided to go back to the hotel with the others and revisit the markets tomorrow.

Our hotel has a happy hour in their Baroque room from 5-7pm each day, and the owner kindly let us all congregate in there for the evening. We had such a late lunch and main meal that most weren’t hungry, so they left in small groups to get a light meal from nearby shops (we are a block from the main train station, so have cafes and Subway and McDonalds close by), and we enjoyed being able to eat together instead of in our five separate rooms.

Subway was the most popular choice for dinner, which is a healthy option until Sam and Cooper find a side quest. They discovered they could order a foot long cookie!!

The Baroque room had a selection of games to play, and a guitar in the corner, so of course Jarrod spent some time playing and Belle singing. Even Uncle Luke joined in for one song – music really is in the air in Mozart’s birthplace!

I flicked through the guest book and came across a letter from the White House – it appears President Ford and his wife stayed here in 1975!

Most of us decided to turn in for the night (this is the first NYE in many decades I haven’t seen the new year in!), but Luke, Cooper, Jarrod, Tom, Abi and Sam decided to walk back to the Old Town to watch the fireworks. And so ends 2024.

Today’s roll call identified Beck feeling a little worse, Zac no better than yesterday, all others slightly improved? And I couldn’t stop coughing all night.

We took advantage of the late check out of 12pm to enjoy a sleep in, leisurely breakfast and suitcase pack, and met in the lobby at 12pm on the dot. By that time Ross and I had already decided we would go to the airport early and find somewhere for Zac to just lie and rest (ok, maybe me too) while we waited for our 6.55pm flight. Tim decided to join us, and I was very thankful he did. There were many stairs and levels to climb or descend to get the right train to the airport, and Tim swapped suitcases with me to make it easier for me. Paris stations do not seem to have lifts!

The other 10 left their bags with reception and caught the metro back into the centre of Paris. The cousins walked the length of the Champs-Elysees and had Burger King for lunch, and our family started at the Louvre for a quick look and then moved on to the Champs-Elysees for lunch.

We warned them all about the time we took getting to the airport (all stations train took an hour and a half), and my mistake taking us to the wrong terminal, so once they had enjoyed lunch and had a last look around, they returned to the hotel to get their suitcases and started the trek to the airport.

There was difficulty actually fitting on the same train, so Jarrod with Sam and Belle followed on the train behind – which was a bit stressful because Jarrod had all our flight information, and he also had responsibility for my two babies! We all met up in plenty of time for our 6.55pm flight to Frankfurt.

A layover there of an hour was followed by another flight to Salzburg at 9.30pm, also with Lufthansa. Both flights on paper were 1 hour 20 minute flights, and both took 50 minutes each. Baggage claim was extremely quick, so we were at the bus stop to catch the bus into the city to our hotel in plenty of time before the last bus for the night ran. It was 0 degrees when we arrived with a light covering of snow.

Remember me thinking the residents of Westminster would be happy to see us go after we click clacked our bags noisily at a very early hour to the station? Well we were click clacking our bags along the streets to the hotel here noisily at midnight! The boys did a Maccas run as we hadn’t had dinner, while everyone else unpacked and Zac and I drugged up yet again.

Supportive messages from home are appreciated. As are your ideas! Remind me to pack the three V’s next time I go away: Vegemite, Vicks Vaporub and Ventolin!

Everyone is now at least halfway through their holiday today. Unfortunately everyone is still not healthy…..

Ross bounced out of bed feeling much better this morning, so decided to go to Villers-Bretonneux with Jarrod. Jarrod has been keen on reaching that destination since his ancestry research, and decided last night even if everyone was too unwell to join him, he was going to head out there alone.

He told everyone he would be in the lobby ready to leave at 8.30am, and was probably surprised when Tim, Cooper and Ross all joined him. Luke had gone to bed early feeling unwell and missed the message, but after sleeping 15 hours he felt better and caught a later train out to Amiens to join them.

I felt worse, so stayed in bed and texted everyone for roll call. We are in rooms of two, so I had to wait a while to get all replies! Jess wasn’t feeling great so decided to stay in, and Zac was worse than yesterday, so he stayed in bed. Abi and Belle went to get us breakfast (after 11am by the time we all got organised!), and brought me a coffee.

Beck felt very sorry for Ollie missing Disneyland – he and Belle have both expressed they were most looking forward on this trip to Disneyland Paris and climbing the Eiffel Tower. So she decided to brave the trains, the masses, the crowds, the lines, the people (all of which she LOVES….) to climb the Eiffel Tower, and was even braver to do it alone with Ollie and Belle!

Once Zac and I had eaten something and drugged up again, I checked on Jess by text, and told Abi, Tom and Sam they should get out and do something rather than just sit at the hotel to keep me company. So they ventured off on their own quest, and Zac, Jess and I slept.

All of that to say……today’s diary entry needs to be written by others because all I did was rest! So today there are guest spots from Beck, Abi and Jarrod about their day, which will be as informative for me as everyone else reading this!

From Beck:

After a well earned sleep in, Belle, Ollie and I hit the streets of Paris (on our own) for what we thought might be a shortish visit to the Eiffel Tower followed by another shortish trip to the apartment and restaurant that doubled as film sets for the TV show Emily in Paris. Well we were wrong about anything being shortish! There was nothing short about our adventures today!
We left the hotel about midday and stopped quickly for a chocolate pastry for Belle as she hadn’t had any breakfast yet.
We travelled the 22 stops from Nation train station to Bir-Hakeim station, where the Eiffel Tower is a 700 metre walk away. We bypassed all of the men trying to sell us light up Eiffel Towers and Berets on the street and passed through our first security checkpoint.
Once inside the gardens and esplanade we had to decide whether to join the line for tickets using the elevator up or the line for tickets to walk up. The kids were keen to walk up to the second level as they said it would “enhance their experience “. We swapped lines from the elevator one to the walking one until Aunty Nik text me and said the walk included 600 steps. I pulled rank on the kids and moved us back into the elevator line!!
We were in line for so long that I had to leave the kids in the line and go and get them some lunch (Belle had Nutella crepes and Ollie had a sugar crepe and I had a bag of crisps).
Once I rejoined the kids in line with their food, we waited for just over two hours to get to the front of the line to buy tickets. We decided to again “enhance our experience” and get the tickets that took us all the way to the top of the tower (280 metres up of the 330 metre tower). We rejoined another line to get through our second security checkpoint, where we rejoined another line to get the elevator to the second floor. Once we finally got to the second floor, we rejoined yet another line to get the elevator to the top level. All in all it took us close to three hours from the time we arrived there to the time we got to the top of the tower.
Once up the top we took lots of photos and decided the wait was worth it. Albeit really cold, we had great visibility and because we had taken so long to get to the top, by the time we got down to the bottom (after doing all of the lines for elevators in reverse) the tower was lit up and beautiful.
The rest of the family had decided to meet up at 6:30pm for dinner close to home, so the three of us finished up and walked back to the station where we began the 22 stop trek back to Nation.
We arrived back at the hotel at about 6:20pm, so our shortish trip to the Tower was much longer than anticipated and we never even got close to the Emily in Paris sets. Maybe that can be on tomorrow’s todo list…

From Jarrod:

Leading with a bit of context: Each ANZAC Day of late, I’ve spent a couple hours researching the military connections of our family history. This year I was fascinated to find two distinct strong connections to Villers-Bretonneux, a small commune on the Western Front that was the scene of many Australian involvements in crucial Allied victories of the First World War.

On Mum’s side, Nicole’s great-grandfather William “Bertie” Lidgard served in the 36th Battalion, which was involved in defending both Villers-Bretonneux and the main nearby town of Amiens from the German offensive in 1918. Upon returning to Bankstown and marrying his wife, he named the family home “Villers-Bret” after the town, and it remained as such for decades afterwards.

On Dad’s side, Ross and Luke’s great-grandfather Richard Jones served in the war, following the footsteps of his older brother Harry Jones, who had enlisted at the outbreak of WWI. Harry survived the Gallipoli landings as Wounded in Action, ascended to the rank of Corporal, but then was Killed in Action on the Western Front in France in July 1916. At the conclusion of the war, an Australian National Memorial was established at Villers-Bretonneux, and the names of all diggers who had perished nearby without a marked grave during the war were inscribed on the stone walls. Harry Jones was one of those thousands of names.

With connections on both sides, it was an honour to visit the main town of Amiens, and the memorial itself at Villers-Bretonneux, with Dad, Tim, Cooper and Luke.

Amiens was convenient to get to by train from Paris – we arrived at 10:30am, had breakfast at a cafe, then explored the Amiens Cathedral. We were blown away by the cathedral – an architectural marvel (taller than Westminster Abbey), very ornate (including Australian memorabilia), and incredibly impressive for the time, having been completed in 1270. Lines for the recently reopened Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris were quoted by Beck yesterday as the longest queue she’d ever seen for anything, and yet here only an hour’s train away stood a building not at all dissimilar in age and magnificence.

Travelling to the Australian National Memorial was trickier than anticipated (to our surprise, despite being only two train stops over on the regional line, this service was only operating every 3-4 hours, so we had to settle for two taxis), and sadly the two museums out there were both closed over the Christmas break. Nonetheless it was a privilege to visit, especially when on reflection, we may have been the first visitors to ever seek the name of Harry Jones (which we located on the wall), or perhaps even as descendants of William Lidgard. We also enjoyed that the very few people we encountered were also mostly Aussies (hearing “g’day mate” is refreshing after weeks away!).

From there, we walked through the town of Villers-Bretonneux itself, which was very quiet with almost nothing open (Sunday + Christmas break, we suspect). A pair of Ubers took us back to Amiens, and we rejoined the rest of the family in time for dinner back near our accommodation in Paris. All in all, a day we felt privileged to share 🙂

From Abi:

Sam and I began the day at 11:45am by touring the shops near the hotel for supplies. These consisted of fruit and Gatorade for Zac (which also turned into extra snacks and water for everyone else) from two different supermarkets, croissants for five of us from a nearby patisserie and a coffee for Mum. Once we had bought everything we went back up to our rooms to eat and formulate a plan for the afternoon, when we decided that Sam, Tom and I were really the only ones healthy enough to go exploring.

Just after 2pm we set out for the train station and travelled to Anvers before climbing a steep hill and a number of stairs to reach the Sacre-Coeur Basilica. At this point we were glad Mum hadn’t come with us, for fear her ankle would not have coped! Although we had great views of the city at the top, the crowds were huge and there was a long line snaking around the Basilica to enter it so we soon left in search of a souvenir shop for me to buy a postcard from. (Abi is collecting a postcard a day from every destination for every day of our trip).

Sam was intent on visiting the ‘Miraculous’ bakery, a small patisserie that inspired the design of a key location in the show Miraculous. Thankfully, it wasn’t too far from the Sacre-Coeur, so once we managed to escape the crowds we headed there to take some photos and buy some pastries. The three of us ended up sharing a small moelleux chocolate cake and a hazelnut cinnamon scroll, both of which were delicious!

From the patisserie Tom walked us to the hostel he stayed at last year when he visited Paris with friends, and we were then able to walk to the Moulin Rouge. Sam got a bit of a shock from all of the storefronts we walked past on the way, but everyone was happy to take some photos of the front of the Moulin Rouge and leave it at that. By this point it was 4pm and we had achieved everything we set out to see, so the three of us got on the metro and headed back to the hotel to help figure out dinner plans.

[Thankyou for your contributions, you three who are my GOATs today! I couldn’t have got through today without them!]

Everyone was home from their quests by soon after 6pm, so we looked for a local restaurant to have dinner together. Across the large roundabout from our hotel was one called Le Dalou that was willing to take a table of 14 without a reservation. We all enjoyed hearty healthy meals, and even better, they had an entree of 12 l’escargots which I ordered because one thing I wanted to do in France was make everyone eat a snail!

We then returned to our hotel to have a glass of champagne on the rooftop. Ross and Luke bought a bottle of French champagne at Aldi when we were in Bordeaux, and everyone has been too sick since to try it. So tonight was our opportunity, and the general consensus was that we do not like it as much as the choices in Australia! The view from the hotel rooftop is spectacular though. And now it is time to drug up and head back to bed!

We THOUGHT we had our planning locked down……today we learned we were very wrong! Everything we had read suggested because this was not a busy time of year, it would not be difficult to line up for tourist attractions. And for some attractions, like the Notre Dame, tickets are only released the day before.

The cousins made an early start to fit in as much as possible and hit LONG queues everywhere they went. Online tickets for the Louvre were sold out, and the stand by queue was a very long line, so they moved on to Notre Dame where they found the same. They were able to enjoy a sit-down breakfast at a cafe they came across along the way, which was helpful because when they left the hotel it was zero degrees!

Ross and I both had really bad nights so decided not to push for such an early start. This was a good decision when we met our family for breakfast – Sam and Belle had both had horrible nights with sickness too. Abi and Ollie appear to be the only ones who haven’t had the flu we’ve been sharing, and I hope it stays that way for them because we have been quite unwell.

The healthier ones (Jarrod, Abi, Tom and Zac) went to find breakfast for all of us and returned with a selection of croissants and coffee. We then headed in with Jess to meet the others at the Arc de Triomphe. They had arrived first so Luke queued for tickets and the wait was not too long for us all. We all climbed the 272 steps and enjoyed some time in and on top of the monument.

After watching a presentation on the history of it, what impressed me most was that German troops as they marched through the city during WW2 did not march through it but around it, because they did not want to walk over the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

From there we wandered down the Champs-Elysees for a while, and split up for lunch, some to fast food like Burger King or Five Guys, and some to Korean street food. Most of the cafes on the main strip had no seats inside, and it was too cold to sit outside – by 2pm it had reached the maximum for today of 2 degrees!

The wind was so biting that it freshened up the colds of those who were starting to recover, so most of us headed back to the hotel while Luke, Jarrod, Tim and Sam continued to explore. They continued on to Napoleon’s tomb and arrived at the Eiffel Tower in time to see its lights come on, and still made it back to the hotel before dark.

Being frozen to the bone, we were not keen to go out again, so ordered in some Dominos pizzas and planned our next move. Everyone ate in our room and Jarrod put up on the projector screen photos of the exploring they did after we returned to the hotel.

For the first time ever, there is a lot of pizza left over, which shows how many are unwell here! Zac being one of the ones who had recovered earlier on then went off to bed early, which is such a shame because I was hoping we could avoid reinfection.

We are horrified to find we can’t get Disneyland Paris tickets, nor Notre Dame tickets, nor Louvre tickets, and Jarrod’s plan to visit Villers-Bretonneux had the shine taken off a little when he discovered one of the museums is closed between Christmas and new year, and the other is closed on weekends!

He will still make the trek out there tomorrow though, but with a smaller crowd than initially planned because Luke is now feeling worse and Ross doesn’t think he will be up to it, even though they had planned to go with Jarrod. I will choose to believe it is a good thing that we haven’t been able to jam-pack bookings in so that we have some rest time…..because I don’t want to dwell on the devastating reality that we can’t get to Paris Disney!

We left the beautiful Maison Borgeat at 9am sharp. Estelle came to check the rooms and see us off, but most of us feel so poorly we said a quick goodbye and didn’t really thank her properly for the week we’ve had. Luckily Jarrod is over the flu he had earlier in the trip so he could talk to her on our behalf.

Ross and Luke dropped us at the train station, Saint Jean, and left us all there with all the luggage while they returned the cars we had hired to the airport.

We purchased coffee and snacks and sat around waiting for an hour. We then encouraged the kids to buy lunch for the 11.58am train and headed to the platform. We went to the wrong end of the platform to board (not that there is any way to know that until you are ON the platform), and then had to make a mad dash at 11.50am down the long platform to find our carriage and seats and get the 14 people and suitcases on the train.

Meanwhile, Ross and Luke had been waiting at the correct end accidentally but couldn’t get up to the platform because Jarrod had all the tickets, so had to make a mad dash to the other end to enter the platform, and then a mad dash with Jarrod to meet the rest of us at the other end where our carriage was! We all collapsed in our seats for the three hour ride after all that excitement.

Once in Paris, Jarrod led us to the metro line to get to the Nation stop, close to which our hotel is located. We arrived right at check in time and dumped our bags and were able to sit down for a whole hour! Then it was back on the metro to then swap to the N Line to get to Versailles.

In our planning for this trip, we had realised we didn’t have a whole day to visit the Palace of Versailles but found a night tour that took us through some of the main rooms with a finale of fireworks and meeting Baroque Santa. We thought this was a good option to still see the Palace, and booked a 7.15pm session. We ate a quick dinner at the KFC around the corner to make sure we were there in time for our tour.

The tour was interesting but did not provide much historical information like an audio guide would during the day – it employed actors, dancers and musicians to give us an idea of what life was like in the palace, but everyone spoke only in French which made it difficult to understand.

The palace was beautiful, and the kids decided to do their own research on Marie Antoinette, the Treaty of Versailles, Napoleon and other other historical moments related to the palace.

We then returned to our hotel rooms, making tentative plans for tomorrow with the rider of we need to see if the unwell are well enough to join in or not…….we have seven double rooms here which means plans have to be made in the group chat rather than in person.

Ever since our first big trip to the US in 2013, I have carried a letter from my doctor and several medicines made up ready to administer. When 6 year old Sam wouldn’t stop vomiting in the Grand Canyon, I had to beg a pharmacist to give me Zofran without a prescription – he gave me 10 for US$110! (And Sam promptly vomited one up as I gave it to him – which I haven’t let him forget since!)

Since then I have taken supplies from home on every holiday and not needed much of them. I think last year in Japan I might have handed bandaids to Tom and Jess, and our kids never needed anything. Bordeaux has produced a different story! As of tonight, I think Beck and Ollie are the only ones who are still healthy. Several of us woke with a temperature and chesty cough (I didn’t bring any suppressant, just antibiotics).

Belle is also still unwell but we convinced her to take the short drive with us to the citadel in Blaye City Centre down the road. She didn’t feel well enough to climb it, so stayed in the car while we explored.

Built in the 16th century, it is an amazing structure that has accompanying citadels in Medoc and a man-made island in between; the three citadels meant to protect the French from Vikings, the Spanish and the British over time. Most surprisingly, once we entered the arch in the wall, we found a small village operating – a hotel, camping ground, restaurants and shops!

We explored it for about an hour and then returned to the boulangerie outside the citadel where we had lunch on the first day here to get today’s lunch. Ross looked worse than Belle by then, so we returned to the chateau and I put them both to bed with more Panadol (which I may run out of by the time our holiday is over!).

The chateau is excellent, but the only bathrooms are in each bedroom, and there are so many other rooms it is easy not to know where everyone is. Cooper and Sam had talked about having a quick dip in the pool, but I did not encourage that today as Sam is another one that has fallen sick. He was well enough to walk home with Jarrod from the city centre though – they wanted to explore along the way, and walked through some vineyards and a graveyard on their walk back.

(Update: Sam did jump in the pool after all…..at 8.30pm 🙄)

I think the kids this afternoon have been resting, sleeping, scrolling and playing games together, but as I now have a high temp and have slept the afternoon away, I haven’t checked 😬

Ross and Luke were not as keen to cook up a storm in the kitchen after all their efforts over the last few nights, so took the kids to McDonalds 2km away to supplement the bacon and eggs they haven’t used yet.

We are very sad we have to check out tomorrow! The Bordeaux region, Blaye, and our chateau Maison Borgeat, have all exceeded our expectations. Despite the fact we now seem to be dropping like flies, we have had a beautiful few days here and have made some beautiful memories.

1am: I finished yesterday’s blog post.

2.15am: a phone call woke me. It was a neighbour in Oyster Bay who found our dog wandering down to the oval. I explained to her how to get into the house and she returned Millie inside for us. (Our dog sitter was at church and then at family Christmas lunch, and thought Millie had been so good for the last few days, she gave her access to the backyard while she was gone….clearly the weak point has not been strengthened well enough!)

4am: Belle appeared in our room to tell us she had vomited in her bed (to her right and her left 😩).

…..Joyeux Noel to us! After that interrupted night, we slept in and were all eating breakfast around 10am. Poor Belle spent the day drugging up on Panadol, sleeping and waking only to drink some water to avoid dehydration and then sleep again.

After breakfast, Ross and Luke started cooking our Christmas lunch. While they were cooking, we all rang our families and friends at home to wish them a merry Christmas. Our Christmas lunch was delicious!

On our way back to the car yesterday after visiting Bordeaux Christmas markets, we walked past a shop where the lines were out the door and down the street. The store was selling Christmas cakes, but Ross couldn’t bring himself to pay for one. So Beck and I did some girl maths and bought two!!!!! We rationalised that the boys have not been turning down beers or wine on offer for themselves, so we should not have to give up an expensive, local dessert we want to try!

We watched the cake being made through the street window while waiting in line – it was layers of meringue and cream, covered in chocolate flakes. We bought one white chocolate and one dark chocolate dessert, and as we divvied it up between everyone for our Christmas lunch dessert, each person’s serve was a cost of 4 euro…..surely less than a beer!

After lunch we had some rest time – the kids played games and the adults rested and took walks around the property. It is an impressive place, but the amount of maintenance required looks expensive!

Estelle had left the chapel open for us to use, and we had hoped to have our own little Christmas service in there, but the piano was in the main house and the day as it unfolded unfortunately didn’t lend itself to it. Jarrod played carols on the piano inside instead.

Belle woke about 3pm after a very deep sleep, and felt well enough to sit up long enough for us to open presents. We had bought everyone a “tour shirt”and card game wrapped up from home so they had one present to open on Christmas Day. As Belle had designed the shirt and planned the secret Santa, we all waited until she was ready to open those presents and the Secret Santa presents.

Ross cooked a pasta dish for dinner, which he felt was missing ingredients (they didn’t sell cream in Aldi here, so we couldn’t have carbonara for example), but Ollie said it was the best pasta he’d ever had! After dinner the kids watched a movie on the projector downstairs while the adults and Jarrod and Tim tried more of the Maison Borgeat wines.

Poor Belle has not eaten all day and was only up for long enough to participate in the present opening, so hopefully she will sleep this off and be ready to go again tomorrow. This has not been a normal Christmas for us, but with less materiality about it and more rest time and family time – and in such an amazing location! – it has been a lovely and memorable Christmas.

Yesterday’s blog post was deliberately delayed to give Abi and Tom time to ring grandparents and message other family and friends about their exciting news. It means this post is being recorded after midnight (Merry Christmas!), so I apologise in advance for any typos as I am in bed in the dark and sans spectacles!

I have enjoyed revisiting my high school French today. We had a relaxed start to the day and headed in to the Bordeaux Christmas markets just after 11am. I could communicate with stall holders to some extent. I can also announce where the exit is/say please and thankyou etc/tell everyone that some shops are closed on Saturday and only open by appointment, but I suspect they are not as impressed as my parents would be!

Belle had the excellent idea to do Secret Santa and provided us with a website that randomly generated a gift recipient for each of us. We arrived at the market and decided everyone had 1.5 hours to explore and get their lunch, and buy a gift to the value of 25 euros.

By the regrouping time of 2.30pm, everyone had achieved their goal. We then explored the city centre before heading back. Bordeaux is such a pretty place, and very photogenic. We wandered through beautiful streets set up with Christmas lights that will look wonderful lit up, and we also visited the Bordeaux Cathedral before leaving.

Once back at the chateau we returned to our stations of Beck and I in the laundry, Ross and Luke organising dinner, and the kids spending time together. They did enjoy wrapping their Secret Santa gifts, which are now under the tree ready for tomorrow.

Poor Belle, after all her efforts, started to not feel the best as we explored the town. I got her to eat a small dinner when we got home but soon after she was shaking with cold even though her head was very warm. I sent her to bed with Panadol, and am hoping after all her efforts today she will be ok to celebrate tomorrow. Unbeknownst to most of the others, she has carried in her suitcase all the way from Australia a small present from us to them to be handed out tomorrow as well, a present she designed and is looking forward to finally revealing.

At 4am our alarm went off to get ready, pack our suitcases and meet in the hotel foyer at 5am. We then rolled our luggage up the dark streets to Victoria Station, a 10 minute walk, to ensure we were there in time for our 5.29am Gatwick Express train. Picture 14 people rolling noisy suitcases down the street outside your window at 5am on a Monday morning and chatting (some more quietly than others)…..the neighbours were probably glad we were leaving!

The queues at check in, as well as Jess not being able to get the self check-in to work, meant while we made it in plenty of time to board, we didn’t have time for breakfast or coffee. We were shuttled out to our British Airways plane and takeoff was delayed by over half an hour, but we still landed in Bordeaux an hour later at the original scheduled time.

Our cars were waiting ready for us at Bordeaux Airport. We picked out which ones were for us straight away!

We drove the hour trip to Blaye from there. We were so hungry and it was 12.30pm by then, so we stopped at a boulangerie for some lunch. Everyone selected a range of pastries, croissants, baguettes, and pizzas, and we ate them in a gazebo next to the Blaye Citadel. We might explore that later, but we were keen to get to our castle once we had eaten!

Not far from the centre of Blaye, we turned through the iron gates to this…..

Our host was waiting for us, and took us on a tour of the chateau, giving us a history lesson along the way. The house dates back to the 19th century, and there is a fountain in the backyard that dates back to the 18th century.

There is also a chapel next door that Estelle said she would leave open for us to use for Christmas. She had also offered to set up a large pine Christmas tree for us, but we turned that down at 400 Euro, so she set up a small tree and some lights and a nativity scene anyway.

Estelle has a degree in wine, and she and her brother run the vineyard attached to the chateau, producing and selling wines under their name Maison Borgeat. She offered to do a wine tasting class after we unpacked, and put out a sample of wines for us to try and a selection in the wine cellar to help ourselves if we wished to purchase them.

Belle and Ollie sat in on the wine class as well, and because of her interest in art and colours, Belle could answer more of the questions Estelle asked us than the rest of us! (Questions like whether the wine colour was a ruby red or purple; and whether the smell was woody, fruity etc.).

The only one who couldn’t relax and enjoy the wine tasting was Tom. After Estelle left us, Tim corralled the kids to take a stroll around the backyard to explore our surrounds, and Jarrod and Zac grabbed cameras to record the following events. Luke, Beck, Ross and I watched them from the balcony, knowing what was coming next, and giggling to ourselves as we saw Abi stop to explore things in a different direction to the others.

She finally caught up with them and got quite a surprise when Tom got on one knee and proposed!! (She did say later she was suspicious when he couldn’t sit still and enjoy the wine tasting, but thought she must have been mistaken during their stroll as she didn’t believe he would get on one knee on the wet grass and dirty his pants!).

So Tom proposed and Abi said yes. After all the excitement and some happy tears (even Uncle Luke who does not get too emotional had “something in his eye”), I did take them aside and said while an engagement there was beautiful, please don’t plan a wedding there – we can’t afford it! 😂

We then returned to the necessary mundane tasks – Ross and Luke went in search of a supermarket, Beck and I caught up on our washing, and the kids explored further and played games.

Ross and Luke went to both Aldi and its German competitor Lidl, but didn’t find a range as extensive as we have in Australia. Dinner was an antipasto platter and pizzas, at the end of a very memorable day!

We had a family meeting in the foyer last night before going our separate ways (we are in four different rooms – three along the fourth floor and Ross, Zac, Sam and I on the lower ground floor). We gave the kids (and young adults) two options for today: the Imperial War Museum or Madame Tussaud’s and shopping.

By the time we met at breakfast, the options had doubled! Abi and Tom decided to do a tour of Wimbledon; Jarrod went to meet his school friends for brunch and then met up with Ross’ group; Beck and I took Jess, Belle and Ollie to Madame Tussaud’s; Ross and Luke took Tim and Zac to the Imperial War Museum; and Sam and Cooper decided they were old enough and independent enough to choose their own adventure 😬 so went to Shoreditch to play mini golf.

Beck navigated us easily on the tube system to Baker St and we spent two hours in Madame Tussaud’s.

I had carried three Oyster cards all the way from Sydney for the kids to use on the underground from our trip nine years ago, and topped up two cards for Belle and Ollie for today. Belle discovered not long into our tour of the wax museum that as she had pulled her phone out of her pocket to take photos, she must have dropped the plastic sleeve holding her Oyster card and room keycard. We did check with security before we left, but it was not handed in.

Our next stop was Covent Garden for lunch, and chocolate covered strawberries, which had been on Belle’s bucket list since a school friend was here earlier this year and posted them on Instagram. Covent Garden was PACKED with people! We found it difficult to find somewhere for lunch, even though it was 2pm, so waited in line for Shake Shack as that allowed us to sit at their tables undercover and protected from the chilling wind whipping up outside.

Over lunch, Belle showed us the Instagram posts of the rows of strawberries – and the location said Borough Markets! But they are everywhere, so she was able to buy some to share while I checked out the souvenirs and Beck bought some chocolate-dipped churros to share. The melted chocolate was delicious and well advertised…..what was not mentioned was how quickly the chocolate hardens in this cold weather – we broke two of the wooden forks provided trying to pry the strawberries from the hardened chocolate!

As Knightsbridge was on the same line, I had considered going home via Harrod’s, but Beck advised me the queues there were even more than at our current location, so we decided to give it a miss and head back to our hotel.

Meanwhile Jarrod had met the rest of the boys over at Brick Lane for lunch, famous for its Indian food. The boys then continued on to a pub near London Bridge to watch the EPL. They watched Liverpool v Tottenham as they ate and drank.

Ross rang me to assure me they were full and wouldn’t need dinner, so Beck, Ollie, Belle and Abi (who had rejoined us when Tom went to meet the boys to watch the game) went to a focaccia bar around the corner from our hotel to get dinner for us. On Sam’s bucket list had been to see a game live and also to watch a game in a pub with locals, so he has now achieved both goals!

The focaccia bar had a generous variety of focaccias, laid out on display in slabs. When choosing one, you say what size you would like and then it is weighed and charged for according to the weight. We ate delicious slices in the girls’ room (Abi, Belle and Jess are sharing a room here and they have the most spacious room and the best view out their window!), and then returned to our rooms to pack, as we are leaving at 5am tomorrow.

Some of the boys were hungry again (!) so went to Nando’s up the road for another meal, and Ross had to call them to come home, reminding them about our early start! At 5am we need to check out and walk all our suitcases 10 minutes up the road to Victoria Station to get the Gatwick Express. From there we fly to Bordeaux. I do love London and never have enough time here, but am already planning my next visit.