Breakfast, we're coming back and home.

This week Christine over at Really Bad Cleveland Accent is painting 100-word pictures of her much-loved home city. Go and take a look.

1. Freshly baked croissants and baguette for breakfast.

2. Monmatre in the haze as we come back into Paris by train.

3. Pulling my suitcase through our own front door.

Garden, the promises and people in the picture.

1. I like to come into the gardens of the Tuileries Palace from the Place de Concorde. We went from bright white pavement, to bright white sand to an idealised forest. Arrow-straight rows of chestnut trees shade pocket handkerchief lawns on which stylised bronze sculptures desport. Runners crunched past us, shifted into their own world by the rhythm of their steps.

2a. Before the wedding, in the carpark catching sight of a familiar dark-haired figure re-arranging an unfamilar white dress.

2. Sarah reads her vows in French, and Matthieu reads his in English -- what a wonderful way to affirm the cultural duality of their marriage.

2b. I like to see the groom looking at the bride and smiling to himself.

3. A charismatic preacher talks about the beauty of The Song of Songs. Its central theme is romantic love, so I am surprised to learn that it's not very often used in marriage ceremonies.

4. The bride and groom come round to our table and Sarah tells us that we're the only bilingual table. We'd been getting on all right -- questions and translations washed round and round and faces lit up as jokes arrived their destinations.

5. A long time ago, Katie painted a picture of me, her and Sarah. It seems Sarah still has it on display -- "Ah, you are in le tableau... the picture?".

5. The bride's father gave a speech in French -- first explaining that he hadn't spoken it for 50 years.

Supplies, language and sparkle.

1. Buying round crusty rolls for a picnic.

2. A phrase book brings all my GCSE French flooding back.

3. We cross the Champs-Élysées twice so we can look up the ribbons of sparkling head and tail lights to the Arc de Triomph.

4. "Look!" says Nick, and I turn to see the Eiffel Tower sparking and glittering with bright white lights.

Furniture, communication and dancing feet.

1. Standing outside the loos in the restaurant where we had lunch was a wardrobe painted with the four seasons. Each one featured a mother and a child. In spring, summer and autumn the fat child is doing not much, but in winter it is poking wood into the stove.

2. Lou and I got back to the table to find that Rob had made friends with an English man who now lived in Austria. We chatted away for a bit about languages and he told us how he had once left his non-German speaking mother in his Vienna apartment. 'The cleaning lady's coming, but she doesn't speak English. You'll be all right won't you?' And off he went to work. When he returned that night, he asked his mother how her day had been. 'What a nice cleaning lady you have. But what a pity about her brother and his lung cancer.' So they had found a way to communicate after all.

3. The feeling of relief when you take off your stiff, too hot, too cold, rubby, achy ski boots for the very last time and slip your feet into walking boots that seem so light you could dance.

Weather eye, trance and dress sense.

1. I slept with the window a little open and the first breath I drew smelt familiar. Cold but not too cold... Staticky... FALLING SNOW!

2. Trying to focus on falling flakes at different distances.

3. Realising you have set out for a day's skiing wearing exactly the right number of layers.

Phenomenon, pears and stories.

1. Strange rainbow rings around the sun.

2. Drinking William Schnapps - first the alcohol scalds your mouth and you think you've been poisoned; and then suddenly you are flooded with the nailpolishy taste of very soft, ripe pears.

3. Hearing stories about Tunbridge Wells from Lou's grandfather - he told us about bunking off school to go to the cinema and about watching iron tyres being put on cart wheels.

Embrace, nutrition and spill.

1. The colour of top of the sky over the ski slopes on a fine day. 'It's like it's wrapped around you,' said Lou.

2. Goulashesuppe because it's thick and tomatoey and full of meat and potatoes.

3. Watching really good falls on the slopes - the skiier slid for about 100m in a cloud of snow powder, a goofy grin on his face.

Tweet, solvent and night.

1. Little birds flying in and out of the trees alongside the ski lift. They might have been crested tits from their agility and their silly twitterings. Higher up, we watched choughs mobbing a bird of prey and saw ravens swooping above us with their wing tip feathers all splayed out.

2. I've been having a few problems with my debit card - shops in Austria won't take it and the cash point keeps making excuses. Finally I find one willing to take my card. I walk away from the hole in the wall so happy that we have to find a bar so I can buy a round of drinks.

3. Walking in the dark with people who don't make a big deal of it. Even on snow, Rob and Lou don't squeal and scramble and cling and they don't insist on shining a torch out in front to spoil our night eyes.

Financial security, dress sense and peaks.

1. Having a friend who trusts you enough to put your ski hire and lift pass on her card because yours won't work.

2. On the first run I get all wobbly because I remember my grandfather teaching me to ski.

3. The first sight of mountains at the very top of the resort. They stretch out for miles and mile before us, clear and untrodden.

Reading matter, awakening and blush.

1. Buying a pile of magazines for a journey - I had The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Take a Break.

2. Dozing off while floodplain fields go past and waking up in the mountains among snow-dusted pine trees with a blue meltwater river running alongside the railway.

3. The mountains turning pink as the sun goes down. And then watching the dirty pink colour moving up the sky.

Yes Rose, breakfast and green.

1. In the middle of the night Rosey shouts 'Help' in her sleep. I give her a cuddle and tell her to go back to sleep. She mutters something about being chased. At breakfast, I complain about having to share a tent with certain people who can't keep their dreams to themselves. 'Well I was woken up twice,' says Robert virtuously. 'Once by Rose and once by you shouting that we couldn't leave yet because we weren't ready.'

2. We drink tiny cups of coffee in the airport at Alghero.

3. England’s greenness.

Witch, fallen civilisation and moonrise.

1. Fuili Gorge is full of oleander – Sardinia’s version of Britain’s rhododendron problem. The long snakey branches twist across the path, barring our way at every turn. Where they collapse under their own weight they throw up vertical stems like fences. Nothing else grows in the half light. A white fungus like disembodied paws groped its way along dead branches. Someone had marked the path in strange and subtle ways – here a white pebble pushed into a forked branch; there a little cairn. ‘It’s a witch’s wood. Don’t eat anything you find.’ ‘Not even figs?’ ‘Especially not figs.’ Then we heard goat bells clonking, and suddenly we were out in the sunshine again.

2. We drove out into the country to visit a nuraghic ruin. The tower is built of huge basalt blocks – no mortar – and stood two storeys tall, watching the coast. We realised that we were directly above the beach where we had left Robert and Rose climbing – when the sea level was higher, this bay would have been an important strategic landing place. Apart from the tower, no other structure stands more than four courses tall. Much of the site is overgrown with tough bushes and olive trees block the tower’s view. It is strange to think that 3,500 years ago the surrounding hectares were covered in a village of little round houses full of people who didn’t know about writing. Then 2,000 years ago the Romans chased them out and took down some of the beehive houses to put up a few square buildings of their own.

3. ‘Where’s the moon?’ Each evening so far, we had been treated to a fat full moon rolling out a silvery path over the sea. But it was a little cloudy and we were eating early, and it hadn’t risen. Just as the waitress took our order, the moon appeared bright red through the clouds above the harbour bar. ‘The hunters’ moon,’ I commented darkly. ‘You’re just making that up. It’s an omen of doom.’ But by the time our pasta arrived, the moon was well away across the vault of the heavens and a friendly silver once again.

Figs, hovering and grapes.

1. We walked up the gorge behind the beach to see how far it went. After half an hour of pushing aside bushes covered in unfamiliar berries and trees decorated with flowers that looked like bog brushes and smelt of bleach, we came across a fig tree covered in ripe fruit. We ate a sun-warm windfall and then threw sticks up to knock down a couple more.

2. A tiny sage grows among the shattered limestone. Hummingbird hawk moths bob like boats at anchor, their tongues deep in the tiny mauve flowers and their wings a blur. When the flower is empty, they move on so fast you can’t see where they’ve gone.

3. In a shingly cove, one hour’s walk and one hour’s boat ride from civilisation, two middle-aged men share some grapes. The older man wallows in the water while the younger man washes the bunches in the sea. The older man holds out his hand and is given a sprig. They spit the pips into the water, not saying much.

Herbs, bathing and in the sand.

1. In the hills, away from the moisture-bearing sea winds, the vegetation changes to low prickly bushes that are all elbows and knees. Leaves tend to be small and sometimes slightly sticky. Everything smells wonderful – partly the heat and partly to discourage grazers. One minute you brush against rosemary, the next against cistus and then against something sagey.

2. We drove across the mountains, zigzagging round hairpin bends and then along narrow, unshaded roads to a flat, sandy bay. It was our first properly hot day and we changed into our bathers and swam to cool off.

3. Sea holly pokes out of the sand. It doesn’t look like holly much, apart from the spikiness of its leaves. It’s an annual growing not much higher than a wine bottle and it has bluish, chalky leaves. I believe it’s a sort of eryngium. We also saw sea daffodils growing directly in the sand. They crouch right down and their lily-like trumpets seem too big for their height.

Morning coats, fluttering and caerulean.

1. Crickets. Their sober grey coats are perfectly camouflaged against the limestoney soil. When you step near them, they fly up in a surprising direction, showing off their electric blue waistcoats. We also found a mole cricket dressed in baggy brown velvet. He is rather large – as long as my thumb – and he doesn’t jump, preferring to burrow.

2. I like fig trees – apart from the amusingly-shaped leaves and the figs, there is also the smell. But this particular tree offered something else. Its splitting fruit was a feast for ginormous butterflies. Their plain-chocolate-brown wings were the width of my two palms and were decorated with a flashing purple and white pattern. They were so numerous that the tree rustled with their wingbeats.

3. The colour of the sea. I grew up playing on a muddy shore lapped by soupy brown waves. I thought pictures of blue water were all lies until I first visited the Mediterranean. The sea is so blue that I wonder how it can make white foam and I am mesmerised by the waves.

Sweet winds, exotic groceries and stones.

The beautiful things for the next five days come from Sardinia.

1. Each place in the Mediterranean smells different. Coming off the plane, we snuff nosefuls of Sardinian air, guessing the scents. The first one I recognise is cistus, mossy and medicinal but warm and sweet. We grow this crinkly, papery, shocking pink rock rose in the garden. If you put your nose right up close to the tiny leaves on a really hot, still English summer day, you can smell it. We were given its resin, labdanum, to sniff at an incence workshop I went to recently. It is harvested using goats. They drive flock through the bushes and then comb the resin out of their coats.

2. Foreign supermarkets. We raced round looking for familiar food in unfamiliar packaging: 'They've got Nutella in JUGS!' Treaty foods like grapes and Parma ham were very cheap, while breakfast cereals were rather expensive. And other things were just scary: 'Can we get some frozen octopus?' 'Time to leave...'

3. We scrambled down to a white beach in a rocky cove. On a rock just out to sea, someone had made three neat stacks of rounded pebbles.