Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 13:51
To: hstevens@noos.fr
From: Bob Thomson <bthomson@web.ca>
Subject: Christmas greetings from Paris

It's hard to believe it's Christmas Eve, although we've got Susan Aglukark's Christmas CD on the player and Paris all around us is proving true to its reputation as the City of Lights.

We send our holiday greetings to all of you and hope this finds you well and enjoying or looking forward to the holidays. We promise a more complete version of our newsletter early in January. And they'll be coming for the next year we hope, as Bob's contract with Friends of the Earth France has just been extended to December 2006.

Last night we walked from Trocadero to the Eiffel Tower and the Ecole Militaire, and then watched the Tower sparkle and glitter for 10 minutes every hour from the living room of a friend's apartment for several hours. We ended up having to take a taxi home as we missed the last train on our metro line by one minute at 1 am and almost got locked in the station for the night! Today we'll visit 3 quaint little streets at La Campagne à Paris, a 1911-1926 social housing project Heather discovered a week ago while out and about ticking off pages from our "Unexplored Paris" guidebook. We've had coffee (VERY expensive) on the brightly lit Champs Elysee, marveled at the animated childrens' fantasy windows at Galleries Layfayette and celebrated our 5th anniversary at a nice little French restaurant in the Quartier Latin. Still to come are visits to see the skaters and a photographic exhibit at the Hotel de Ville (City Hall), 300 creches from all over the world at the Eglise Saint-Joseph Artisan, a ride on the giant ferris wheel at Place de la Concorde and an Isle de France walk around Fontainbleu next Wednesday.

We're going to have Christmas dinner at home with a couple of our neighbours. Turkey legs - there's no way a whole turkey or even a big chicken can fit into our tiny convection oven. Heather's also got a rack of lamb, fish and Mexican dinners planned, and we had a fantastic seafood platter the other night prepared by our local supermarket's deli counter. We have a little "cave" of champagne and nice wines collected over the past month as well.

There may be some time for a couple of movies - King Kong, Harry Potter?? - as Bob plans to take the week off between Christmas and New Years, with the exception of one day to finish off the second draft of an important letter on export credit environmental policies, which has to be ready for the first week of January. Heather will be working at the food bank (Resto du Coeur) on Tuesday and Thursday mornings - poverty doesn't take a holiday unfortunately.

Bob's family, including Boyd and Pam, will all be in Calgary for Christmas and we hope to talk to everyone by phone. His Uncle Bob passed away at age 89 yesterday morning, so it will be a sad Christmas for that side of the family in Toronto. Heather's family will be Ottawa and we'll talk to them by phone, and to James and Zaheela and Alexis in Orlando.

Love to all

Heather and Bob