Visitors and more

On the 26th, we picked up the travelling trio from San Antonio, two of Kaye's sisters, Jacky and Chris, and Chris' daughter Brette, from the train station in Angoulême. There's a TGV directly from Charles de Gaulle, but unfortunately they had to wait 8 hours to get to a train -- a hard wait after a long trans-Atlantic flight. We brought them home, fed them soup, and tucked them into bed. In the following days, we visited Oradour-sur-Glane, a village that was destroyed by the Germans in WWII after murdering more than 600 inhabitants. A very moving experience.

Ed and the girls visited the chateau at La Rochefoucauld while Kaye prepared a belated Christmas dinner. There is a room, Le Chambre des Oiseaux (named for the prints of birds on many of the walls), where you can dress up in medieval costume:

This merriment was followed by a wine-tasting trip to St Sornin.

On the 30th the five of us piled in the car and drove to Barbizon, south of Paris, where we visited an old family friend. The next morning we scattered some of Kaye's father's ashes in the forêt nearby. We left the travelling trio at the Fontainbleau train station, clutching their tickets for Paris, and drove ourselves home.

In the night we had a phone call that Kaye's younger brother had died, very unexpectedly and quickly, of a heart attack at 54. Needless to say, this has put a damper on our new year's celebrations. Kaye will travel to California next week for the (Buddhist) memorial ceremony. Things will be quiet on the blog for a while.