Conversations from the Haut-Savoire, France

Conversation 1: We had walked around the beautiful Lac e Montriond till we reached a bustling restaurant populated by way too many blonde children wearing pink.

Adam: I don’t think I’ll drink. I’ll just have a beer.

Me: You’re becoming French, Adam.

Conversation 2: Emma, having once again managed to smear her face, up to her eyebrows with pain au chocolate.

Leah: Adam, do you think our children eat too much chocolate? Are we bad parents?

Adam: Leah, they live in France.

Another aside: when I first arrived in Milano it was grey, raining and I was lost. Well, it’s raining in Milano and nobody speaks English. I couldn't even begin to think in Italian, my head was full of Arabic.

So when I was looking for the hotel this afternoon, I asked a man from Fayoum, south of Cairo. We had a very nice chat (aiwa, bil Araby) but he didn’t know where the hotel was. But the girl from my own suburb of Misr el Gedida did... So in the first day in Italy, I spoke more Arabic than Italian.

The trip ended in a multi-country hop from the Haut-Savoire (France) by car to Geneva (Switzerland) by train to Milano (Italy) and finally by the bumpiest flight to Cairo (Egypt) where the naughtiest boy alive, four-year-old Ahmed slowly spat on my laptop bag during the flight. All done avec grand bagages. My arms are considerably longer as a result.