Northern Irish Blogs.com

When visiting Paris, it's hard to resist the draw of another visit to the Eiffel Tower. Play word association with any child that's into their books and "Paris?" will get a response of "Eiffel Tour", much as "Dinosaur?" would get "Barney". Littl'un recognised the towering iron structure without any prompting as it appeared out of nowhere between a couple of trees. But to my surprise - and slight relief - she had no desire to go up to the top. Sitting in her push chair, she leant back and took in the view from the ground. And then scoffed a strawberry-flavoured ice cream while hundreds of tourists and school groups milled around the base. But while the shape of the tower is instantly recognisable, for me its beauty and fascination is in the detail of the iron work, the girders and...

Driving back home from the Belfast International yesterday afternoon, we were pottering through Templepatrick when I noticed lots of brands (marks?) of cars that I hadn’t seen all week in France.The French are probably a combination of practical and parochial. They like small cars, and they like French cars (extending the cheque book of friendship across to the odd Italian import). No SUVs. No Land Rovers. No big jeeps. Can’t remember seeing a 4x4 all week.Plenty of Espace-type people carriers, but nothing outrageously oversized.Instead lots of Twingos (old and new models), Peugeot 107s, Citron C1 and C2s, a surprising number of Minis, and quite a few Smart cars around Paris.The only Ford models on the road were the odd Fiesta, Ka and a single Focus.Very few Mercedes or BMW - though...