Paris

We've just spent three days in Paris, as an early celebration of our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary in July. We had a great time and are already talking about when we return!

Good basic hotel in Montmatre; plenty of relaxed walking, soaking up the ambiance; excellent food, including lunch at Amelie's Café, which is now pink for those who've seen the film; and superb art at Musée d'Orsay, and at the Musée de l'Orangerie. The enormous canvasses - eight in all, housed in two oval rooms - of Monet's Waterlillies, were something else. And the experience was not dissimilar to viewing Rothkos in the Rothko Room at the Tate - there was a sense of reverence and contemplation, which was maintained by the attendants who shushed when the noise level rose. These pictures drench the retina with colour, and draw you in.

With a train at 13.00, we managed to fit in a to visit Père Lachaise, which is one of the most famous cemetries in the world. Among others, we saw the graves of Rossini, Cherubini, Chopin, Bellini, Francis Poulenc, Edith Piaf, Georges Bizet, and Oscar Wilde. A strange but highly satisfying pastime!