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We arrived in Paris on Thursday evening, and after a somewhat convoluted trip on the RER and Metro we arrived at La Defense. It should have been straight forward, but unfortunately one of the RER lines was closed, so we had to swap onto the Metro instead. By the time we arrived at La Defense it was 22:30, and finding the hotel proved difficult too, especially as the temperature was still over 30c and I had my heavy LowePro photo rucksack!

Anyway, the hotel (Sofitel La Defense) is excellent. It’s clean, modern, spacious and the staff are really helpful. The bed is super-comfortable too. There’s even media centre hookups for the TV and USB charging outlets. However, with a rack rate of €550 per night, you would expect something good. Fortunately having booked the trip with LastMinute.com our total daily rate including flights was substantially less!

On Friday it was an early start (05:45 UK Time) to head out to Disneyland Paris. There were clear blue skies all morning, right through to 16:00 when we had some thunderstorms. Peak temperature was 39c which is incredibly hot! The park was relatively quiet, with the longest queue being around 55min. We also went to Disney Studios in the afternoon before returning to the main park at 19:00. Unfortunately the thunder meant that Big Thunder Mountain had to close (ironic really) whilst we were in the queue. However, we got to all the attractions we wanted to.

Friday evening we wandered around La Defense trying to get some nice images for HDR processing. To that end the GorillaPod is excellent, though one gets funny looks wandering around with it! My EOS450D, Battery Grip and 28-135IS USM Lens are probably a touch heavy for the version of GorillaPod I have, but the results look fine on the camera screen – my camera kit for the iPad didn’t turn up before we left so no photo uploads yet either

On Saturday morning we went to the Louvre. We had pre purchased tickets and a tour through Expedia, which was just as well as the queues were ridiculous. To be honest the Louvre is not really my sort of thing, I’m more a 20th Century history person rather than ancient arty stuff. However, Catherine enjoyed it, and it’s her birthday, so I didn’t complain!

The Louvre did however have an Apple Store, so I was able to get a cover for my iPad!

We then went to try and do some designer shopping for Catherine’s birthday, but being a Saturday afternoon the shops were packed and we both had sore feet after all the walking anyway, so it wasn’t much fun. We’ll try again first thing Monday.

We’re about to head out the the Champs Elysees to get some dinner, then down to Notre Dame for this evenings Ghost Tour.

Yesterday I got back from a week long trip to Deeside Gliding Club at Aboyne, Aberdeenshire. Unlike last year, the forecast weather for the week was excellent, so we were able to escape the Steam Packet racket and take the Auster.

We still didn’t manage to find any wave lift, where gliders can climb to very high altitudes on the lee side of hills, but at least I had the chance to convert onto the ASW19, which is a step up for me. I flew about 9 hours in total, including 7 in the ASW19. The weather during the first half of the trip was excellent, though there was some thunderstorm activity on Friday.

The trip back from Aboyne to Andreas took 2hrs 20mins, and thanks to the Auster’s new auxiliary fuel tank was done non-stop. Total cost for the there and back element of the trip was just under £300 including landing fees, and was far cheaper than we could have done with the car and boat, and about 10 hours quicker too…

Some of our holiday pictures from the past two weeks.

For our last day in Banff we went on the Discover Lake Louise tour.

We had some time at the actual lake and were able to go snowshoeing out on to it. Snow shoes really weren’t neccessary, but good fun nonetheless. Even with the snowshoes I still managed to sink 8 inches into the snow, and Catherine ended up on her backside – though it was probably my fault!

Our trip home is still looking a bit iffy, but now we’ve got upgraded seats and priority unloading, so there’s a small chance we’ll make the connection.

It’s been a great holiday – we’ve made some real progress skiing, had fantastic weather and good snow conditions. We’ve done far more black runs than either of us anticipated, and the non-ski days were good fun too. We even visited a ski centre we didn’t know about until we got here, and it turned out to be a hidden gem.

Sunshine Village is probably still our favourite, but in the right weather the other resorts are excellent too. We made great progress at Norquay, where three years ago some of the runs looked impossible.

The “Inns of Banff” turned out fine as well. We don’t normally do budget hotels, but the rooms are clean, warm and spacious. There is ski hire on site, and hassle free overnight ski servicing. Free wireless internet in room, great views of the mountains from the hot tub, free town bus pass, friendly staff and good food in the restaurant all make the difference. It’s first stop on the ski bus route too. OK, it’s not the Fairmont, but it’s still the same snow.

I’ll post some more pictures from the real camera when we’re back home.

Today was our last ski day here in Canada, and we decided to go to the Nakiska ski centre, constructed for the alpine ski events of the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics.

The weather forecast was not great, but it turned out much better than forecast and we had excellent snow conditions on the upper mountain, though soaring temperatures lower down made it heavy going.

There was a ski race event on, featuring some of the Canadian olympic squad – unfortunately they had reserved all the blue runs on the upper mountain, leaving Catherine and I with no choice other than the much steeper black runs!

It was an excellent day, and we’re now quite confident on black runs where there are few bumps – the bumpy blues are still a challenge that Catherine doesn’t particulary enjoy so we’ve been sticking to the groomed runs, of which Nakiska has loads. All in all an excellent last ski day.

Tomorrow we’re going on a tour to Lake Louise including some snowshoeing.

The good news about the travel difficulties is the dog kennels are able to look after the dogs for the extra time should it be neccessary, though we’ve still not head from the rep at 22:00 local time.