take me away from all this

I'm going to Paris!!!
Again :-)
I know it's my 3rd time but I really do love the place, and this time I'm taking young Cinderella with me.
Perhaps it'll make her feel better after some @*#%! assholes went and stole her scooter yesterday, poor thing.
She loved that scooter. It didn't go very fast - just a little 50cc effort that sounded like a sewing machine on steroids - but it was her very own motorised transport. And now it's gone.
I got the call from Hubby when I was on the train yesterday, that he was on his way to fetch her from where she'd parked it - chained to a gate, nogal - only to find it gone when she wanted to come home after school. I thought she was actually at the school. But lo and behold, there I was sitting on the train when it stopped at the station near her school - two stops before my own - absentmindedly staring out of the window and cursing the bastards who would steal from a 16-year-old girl, when something bright yellow caught my eye. It was a police vest. Standing next to my girl-child, who was in tears. I virtually climbed over the woman seated next to me to get off the train, and dashed down the platform and over the bridge to where she was standing in the parking lot. Poor thing, she was trying to be strong and give the cops all the info she had, in between racking sobs. It wass enough to tickle anyone's maternal instinct! Hubby arrived shortly afterwards and by the look on his face I'd say the robbers are lucky they hadn't been caught because he looked ready to murder.
So sadly, our little motorcycle gang has been reduced from 3 to 2 again.
And I'm left marvelling yet again at how we left crime-ridden South Africa for a better life here in Ireland. Did I ever mention that the house we were staying at our first week in this country was robbed while we slept upstairs? And then there were my precious wind-chimes that were stolen but weeks after we moved into our new house last year. And my canvas bike-cover that mysteriously disappeared earlier this year.
And now this.
Anyway, it's done now; nothing more to do but hope the cops find it. I suppose that's the difference - at least here they make an effort to try and recover stolen goods, unlike South Africa where they just provide you with a case number so you can claim from insurance.

But back to the Paris trip. We're going for 3 days at the beginning of June and it's all booked. I can't wait! Now it's just the simple (?) task of getting Cindarella's visa sorted...