Girona

If we're in Girona then it must be nearly Christmas.

This is only my second season with the company and already our visit to Girona makes me feel all Christmassy. I think it is the combination of the lights all over the city, the crisp air and blue skies, the market and a slight end of term vibe from the boys (enjoying being away from home but knowing we head home to the hard work of rehearsing our second play).

Girona is such a beautiful and compact city to walk around, there are various routes to the theatre each requiring you to cross the river and affording views of the houses crammed against the river bank and the churches and cathedrals rising over the top of the city.

There are lots of great food shops and it was fun to rediscover those we bought presents in last year as well as seeking out new ones. Laura spotted a bag in a shop closed for siesta and it took repeated visits through out the week to finally find it open. I found a wool shop that has opened since last year, and miraculously managed to avoid stepping over the threshold - despite it always seeming to be open, unlike Laura's bag shop!

This year I walked along the city walls and got a different view of this lovely city.

Nanterre

In December we caught the Eurostar to Paris for a 10 day stay. We were performing Twelfth Night at Theatre Amandiers in Nanterre.

We had a fantastic run there with good houses and nice responsive audiences and managed to cram a lot into a short time. Including celebrating a couple of birthdays complete with homemade birthday cake smuggled into the country (well not strictly speaking smuggled as you're allowed to take fruitcake to France. But if you make a cake and then wrap it in tin foil and put it in your suitcase it feels like smuggling, especially when they stop the suitcase for ages on the x ray machine at St Pancreas. Although that may have been the quantity of cold and flu tablets and cough sweets I'd stocked up on after having to buy them in Girona last year!) 

The theatre was a 10 minute walk from our hotel through a park, and the hotel was right by the RER station Nanterre Prefecture and just 2 stops - about 8 minutes - from Charles de Gaulle Etoile for the Arc de Triomphe.. 

Our favourite station as we usually made the interchange from RER to metro here.

This meant that it was very easy to get into Paris to explore which everyone took full advantage off. Some people even just popped into 'town' for coffee. Every morning at breakfast people were discussing the plans for the day, who was heading to which museum, gallery or area of the city and as we arrived in the theatre each evening we could here people sharing tales of that day's adventures.

Notre Dame

Over looking the fountains at the Centre Pompidou

Entrance to the Metro at Pigalle

Sacre-Coeur

Louvre

Eiffel Tower from the top of Galeries Lafayette

Arc de Triomphe

Arc de Triomphe from the top of the Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower

Next stop - Girona!