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Feeling nicely relaxed and chilled after a week in Tuscany with Grace, Oliver and Abi, so before Real Life intrudes again on Monday I thought I’d do an old-fashioned “here look I went on holiday look at me!” photo post:

Florence

Witches’ Brew, (Mint Based) Poker Chips and Cards

We’ll always have gelato

So this was weird…

Hot tub

The final ingredient to any holiday, not pictured above, is obviously reading. I’ve been back in a good reading groove of late, and this holiday managed Zadie Smith’s new novel NW, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Life Of Pi. A word about this last one. I vaguely remember when everyone was reading it, roughly a decade ago, so was slightly disappointed all these years later to discover that the world had not in fact been gripped by a mathematical treatise. Disappointment hardened into disdain for the first section, set in India, which is a tedious ode to religion interspersed by the kind of ‘wonderings’ worthy of Elizabeth Gilbert. Thankfully, the bulk of the novel is a great yarn, including plenty of tense moments, a genuinely creepy episode on an island and a deft ending, so after a while I was actually a happy and captivated reader again.

But, Yann Martel, please: you don’t understand agnosticism. Really, really, not at all. And if people were so blown away by the philosophy of Life Of Pi, then it strikes me that they don’t either. Which is a shame, is all.

I was totally expecting to love Berlin as a city, so thankfully I did! We crammed in a lot of touristy sights and museums, fell in love with Ampelmann, ate a healthy amount of currywurst and schnitzel, had a slight overdose of Nazis\Communist history (there comes a point…) and also went out to Potsdam for the day on trains with absurdly upbeat jingles. (Seriously, watch it: why is it so happy?)

All tourists fall in love with Ampelmann

Little bits of remaining wall

Die kleine Raupe Nimmersatt. Obviously.

Beer tasting with friends from Groupon in Germany

I seem to remember it was pretty cold by this point!

Ah, Paris. In the endless internal debate over whether I feel more American or European, there’s nothing like a quick trip to Paris to remind me that actually I mostly feel like a Londoner: a big city lover who respects anywhere else that has a kick-ass underground system. And really, there is something truly magical about walking to Willesden Green station and then not leaving either a train or a station building until you emerge in the middle of another country. Of course, not speaking the language might have been a bit of an issue – scroll to around 2.27 for more – but luckily I was expertly guided around by Tash and Beth (thanks guys). And speaking of Tash – it was just really, really nice to hang out with her again – and I’m totally looking forward to visiting Manchester already

More photos on Facebook, but here’s a taster:

Hitting the art (before Disneyland…)

Enjoying cocktails

(I love the fact that there’s an actual man or woman here we’ll never see)

Yeah. We totally met him.

At the top of the rollercoaster, just before the plunge

One final thing about Paris: as much as the ‘world city culture’ was very much in evidence – albeit with admittedly more beautiful surroundings – one thing that really struck me as different from Britain was the presence of the army. I’m sure it’s just what you grow up with, but as a Brit, I still find it a little odd when you see our own police officers armed with guns. Much as it may be sometimes necessary, I can’t help but feel glad that we still don’t consider it necessary for our police to be armed as a matter of course. Yet in France, not only were the police armed but so too were on-duty soldiers: most incongruously, just outside Disneyland, where they could so easily have been costumes and props but were, of course, real soldiers with real weapons. I’m not saying any of this really matters much: obviously, the British state could call in the army to its own streets if it wanted to, and has done so in the past. It’s just a feeling, and maybe a romantic one, that most of the time we don’t want or need such an obvious show of force to live in peace.

On a more prosaic note, yesterday was dad’s birthday and so – back in London – the family went out for a really nice dinner and then, as a surprise, News Revue. (See, told you I’d mention it again…) Which now means their song parodies are ever more firmly lodged in my head!

And finally – you might want to check out Regimented, a new site set up by Alex Trafford to host a series of debates on a variety of topics. I’ve kicked off the proposition for the opening debate on digital piracy, which – I should point out – is a position that was arbitrarily assigned, as it will be for everyone. Nothing on the site necessarily represents what any of us actually personally believe. But if you are interested, give it a read…