Didn't go to the U.K.

Last month, on the spur of the moment, we decided to go to visit the family in England the following weekend. Last minute trips are always expensive, but we decided that we hadn't seen them, in person, in a long time. Well, Paul saw them at Christmas, but for me, it was already 6 months!
I went online, got our train tickets, including the tickets for the onward journey to Northampton. All was set. However, the French customs agents have been carrying on a work-to-rule strike, so I was wary of delays. We planned to get to the station extra early. Then, three days before departure, I got a text message from Eurostar that our train was canceled and I could reschedule or get a refund. So I went back online to see what time we could reschedule for and found there were no trains available on Friday and the first option on Saturday was late in the afternoon, which would have left us with only Sunday to visit. I also checked Thursday departures. I asked for a refund. I got an email confirming my message had been received but nothing else for days.
Since then, I received an email that instructed me to get the refund from the vendor (OuiSNCF, in my case). It took a while to navigate the OuiSNCF site to figure out how to make a claim. Once I found it, the links led me back to the Eurostar site. I tried calling to no avail. I had to be in Paris for a meeting so I stopped at the most convenient train station and went to the information counter, where I was instructed to contact Eurostar or write a letter to the SNCF Relations Clients office. The next day, I managed to get someone on the phone who consulted with her supervisor and told me to write to SNCF. She also told me it would take about a week for an answer. Well, I wrote and sent the letter on March 26. Even if it only went out on Wednesday, that is still more than a week ago.
Lessons learned? Do not bother with the claims departments of the vendors or service providers; go straight to the card company. Let them fight it out. And, do not use OuiSNCF for any international train travel; use Thalys or Eurostar or whatever other services, directly.
A few weeks ago, instead of having family lunch at home, we went to a restaurant at Bercy, where L. and S. have their winter baseball practice every Saturday morning in a nearby gym. We ate at the Showtime, which is actually part of the sports arena, itself. It was an early lunch because A had to leave at 1:00 to go to the Fémis for an afternoon master class with Joel Coen and Wes Andersen. The restaurant was empty, but the waiter did not ignore us or keep us waiting. He was great with the kids and with us and the food was quite good -- better than we expected, I think. It was a few weeks ago, but I didn't want to forget mentioning it.
After lunch, S came back home with us. The highlight of the trip was "driving" the metro for one station to the Gare de Lyon, where we transferred to the RER A.
Today, we are expecting E for a short visit; she's got a conference on Monday. The kids, who have simple U.S. tax returns, have done theirs and mine is only waiting for some more information, but most of it it is ready. Overseas filers have an automatic extension until June and I even sent in the form for the extension until October, but I won't have to wait that long. I like getting it done as soon as I can. I did the FBAR last month.
And I'm trying to finish knitting a tunic. The actual knitting only took two sessions over two days, but the trim is boring and slow. I get a backache after about an hour and avoid going back for several days. Maybe today I'll finish the front trim.