We are back!

We're back from our whistle-stop tour of Northern France, Paris, Turin, and although we had a great time, I am glad to be back home in Beijing, where ayi cooks, cleans and put our kid to bed so that we can unpack, distribute gifts and catch up on email.

We took a 10am Turin-Paris flight and then 7pm Paris-Beijing, and originally we wanted to spend the transit at an airport hotel but when we arrived (with our 70 kg of luggage - I couldn't resist the wooden Noah's Ark!!) there was absolutely no room at all - 2 planes for Bucharest were grounded for tecnhical problems.

It was actually better that Sophie couldn't nap in the hotel as originally intended because she then managed to sleep 7 hours on a 10 hour flight, and the rest of the time, played quietly watched Harry Potter on the inflight movie, and ignore the cute blond boy one row behind us who (unfortunately) screamed for most of the trip. I don't know whether it is mere coincidence or not, but our Turin-Paris flight also contained a baby boy who screamed for most of the 90 minute flight. There were 4 other girls and 4 other boys (quite a representative sample from Narnia) between 0 to 2 years old on both flights (airlines tend to group all the lap-children together) and only the boys were really difficult to handle (struggling, kicking, crying, refusing to be soothed... there but for the grace of God go I!!)

If there can be any link established between being male and being a lousy traveller (apart from being allergic to asking for directions!), then if I want a second child, we need to find some way of ensuring that it is female - adoption seems a good idea...