Paul and Lucas visiting

Barely had we seen Phil off back to England, when the next visitors were already knocking on the door - this time we had a visit from Paris, in the form of Mathilde's nephews Paul and Lucas. We were very much looking forward to the visit, but our enthusiasm was somewhat tempered by the knowledge that the boys are very energetic indeed!

After picking them up at the airport, and after a rather filling hamburger lunch at Chez Hollandaise (apparently there is no limit to how many layers you can ask for in your burger - I went triple...), we headed off to Parc Phoenix. Parc Phoenix is a nice little zoo/botanical garden near Nice airport, perfect for a sunny Sunday afternoon with kids. We had a rather nice time checking out the emus, Tasmanian devils, snakes, aquariums, botanical gardens, musical fountains and so forth. You get the idea - if you ever come to the Cote d'Azur with your kids - take them to Parc Phoenix!

The rest of the week unfolded at rather leisurely pace - for me at least, since I was working. I guess Mathilde had a busier time at it, trying to contain the energy of the dynamic duo ;-). I was happy enough to join them at the swimming pool after a hard day of work!

We did pop over to Maite's place on Monday evening, for one of those teachers' soiree (plenty of those, now that the school holidays have started). It was good fun to meet up with some of Mathilde's colleagues that we've not seen so much of over the last year; such as Marie, Chris, Guillaume, not forgetting Maite herself! The boyz seemed to be having a good time as well, playing outside and watching movies.

Wednesday night we were invited to another soiree, this time at Sarah's place in Nice. I popped in just to get a few munchies into my stomach, after which I whisked off Paul and Lucas to the movies, to leave the prof's to their gossip. We saw Despicable Me 2 - brilliant animated feature - it's a long time since I laughed that hard in the cinema!

All in all, it was a pretty pleasant week with the boys - but we were still rather looking forward to have a rest afterwards - good thing we had a week's holiday in Corsica for that ;-)