Things I'll Forget

Felix had a haircut this week, because he couldn't see past his bangs. I won't remember about it at all unless I write it down, as is evidenced by my look past through blogs from two or three years ago. All the little details of the kids changing and growing up get swallowed up in an exhausted haze of daily commutes, laundry-folding, dish-washing, practicing in the basement, and trying to tick through long to-do lists.

As is apparently my tradition this time of year, I want to do a better job blogging. Not just because it's good for me to write, or because it stokes my vanity to know that people are reading and enjoying my writing, but because I am in very real danger of completely forgetting huge stretches of the kids' growing up if I don't make some kind of record of it.

For example, Owen broke James' glasses twice. (Both times on purpose) Last week we ran them back up to the eye place (which we love) and they straightened some bent plastic. Last night he snapped the other side clean off, so they are currently taped together. We need to get it done before the 31st, or else the new insurance won't cover it.

Felix is doing what James used to do when it was time for a bottle. ("Ba-ba," in his own words.) He camps out by the oven (where we set a five minute timer) swaying and sucking his fingers and making counting motions, and then when the timer sound goes off he FREAKS OUT. He jumps up and down in your arms or dances around, and then points wildly at the bottle with jabbing motions, just in case there is any chance that you'll forget about it.

Owen has turned everything into gymnastics. Jumping down from the minivan into a parking lot or garage? And opportunity to practice straddle jumps. Looking at someone's putt-putt golf set? It's a balance beam and a chance to practice a handstand. On the couch? Get upside down and get his feet up. The child has to move harder and faster every day than our space and pace allow, so we've even taken to letting him run on the treadmill. (And amazingly, once he's done so, he's much less likely to hurdle his baby brother or break James' glasses.)

This was the year of the strangely decorated tree. Our tree never looks picturesque--we make no effort at coordinating our ornaments, and even the tree shape itself is sometimes odd. (I always let the boys pick it out from the Agway at the bottom of bay on Empire Blvd.) Then, of course, James and Owen tend to cluster their ornaments together in places that they can reach conveniently as we decorate. This year, though, Felix was mobile. And that meant that each ornament that was within his reaching distance eventually made its way onto the floor or into his mouth, and then was retrieved and migrated to a much higher and safer spot somewhere near the top of the tree. By the second week of December the bottom two feet of the tree were bare and the top branches were completely packed with ornaments doubled and tripled up per space.

Owen is having toilet accidents regularly...because if he's doing anything even remotely interesting he waits until he is in a state of absolute can't-hold-it-any-longer crisis until he finally gets up to run to the bathroom. Unless it is naptime. When he's bored and stuck in his room, he needs to go to the bathroom about once every fifteen minutes. (Slamming the door to his room and the bathroom each time.)

James doesn't want me to look at him or smile at him or listen to him while he's singing in junior choir. And he doesn't want to see his junior choir director (who he admits he likes) in any context except for immediately after church while I am not there. I remember very strongly (and J says she does as well) being a kid and feeling like there were some things that I enjoyed doing and I knew my parents wanted me to do, but that I DID NOT want them to know I actually liked. I have no idea why he feels that way, but junior choir is apparently forbidden for any involvement from us.

Final shameless self-interested bit--if you've read this far you were probably at Smithmas at the Lake House and are directly related to me. We apparently came back without my favorite sweater. (Gray and black, J Crew, size S) If anyone happens to know where it is, I would love to have it back.

Last of all, the thing that I can't wait to forget--the stuffed animal dogs that all three boys found in their stocking that sing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas."

Music Sunday

J: “How’d the big Music Sunday service go at your church?”
R: “Very well. The choir sang great, the Vivaldi went fine, all the music was well-received.”
J: “Good! I’m glad it went well!”
R: “Someone did run out into the middle of the sanctuary during the call to worship, though, and pulled their pants off.”
J: “Are you serious? That actually happened?!”
R: “Yup.”
J: “Was it an older person?”
R: “It wasn’t an adult.”
J: <moment of dawning comprehension> “Oh, OWEN!!!”

From Harwick Road to Chestnut Street

Dear Silas,

Hi. I think you are Lightning McQueen. What is your favorite movie? We are watching Cars 3, but we are not yet done. I had a bath last night, and not all the soap got out of my hair. My hair is thick right now. I hope you are having a very good time at your house. How is Aunt Martha doing? Are you having fun over the last few days? I love you. Owen likes you too. Love, James

Dear Roland,

Owen and me like you. So does Felix. What do you want to be when you grow up? You are Percy. Just so you know, you are a dump truck. How many times have you watched Cars? I am guessing a lot of times. What are you going to watch next? I hope you are so having a good time. Love, James

Dear Aunt Martha,

How are Silas and Roland doing? Tell them they are both cows. Owen and me would love to visit you. You are the best drawer in the world. Just so you know, we got a new palm tree because our old one is dead. We also have another tree back in the other room that is not far away. Owen had a great birthday party. He got two lego sets and a bike! Tell Silas and Roland! Love, James

Dear Silas,

What is your favorite Magic Tree House book? Mine favorite is Jack and Annie and That Volcano. Vacation Under the Volcano is mine favorite. I got a LEGO set for mine birthday. And I have a good cake that was really tall. I didn't like Halloween because I had to get in bed. I opened the door. I didn't like going to bed that early. Love, Owen

Dear Roland,

What is your favorite Magic Tree House? Mine favorite is Vacation Under the Volcano. Love, Owen

Recently Reading

Behave (Robert Sapolsky)-An academic book by a primatologist/neuroendocrinologist about the causes and explanations of human aggression. Thoroughly researched, cleverly explained, and tying into lots of other social research (Haidt, Pinker) that I've recently read and enjoyed.

Orchard and Vineyard (Victoria Sackville-West) Downloaded via Gutenberg because of a note I'd made years ago about C.S. Lewis enjoying the poetry. Apparently she was Virginia Woolf's first lover? Lush language, lots of damp leaves and fragrant soil.

Notes From a Small Island (Bill Bryson) A very funny travel journal of an American preparing to leave Britain after living there for twenty years. Lots of great anecdotes about British quirks, slang, and culture. Occasionally crass, but would probably be very entertaining for people (Mom and Martha) who have been there.

A Column of Fire (Ken Follett) Last book in the Kingsbridge series, and not as strong as the other two. A bit soapy, and somehow turning into a spy novel (with the Gunpowder Plot) at the end?

Breakfast of Champions (Kurt Vonnegut) Caustic and funny, and probably even better if you'd recently read and liked Slaughterhouse-Five. (One of the central characters is Kilgore Trout)

World Without End (Ken Follett) Second book in the Kingsbridge Series, centered around a nun during the Black Plague and an innovative architect. Long, but a good yarn with a couple of good villains.

Player Piano (Kurt Vonnegut) His first book, a satirical complaint against an automatized dystopia. Meh. Not as funny as Cat's Cradle, and the whole secondary plot was bizarre.

Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) A lush (overrich?) love story or tongue in cheek parody of a love story that takes place over decades and spins out masterfully slowly.

Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston) The marriages and travails of an African American woman in the early 20th century, ending with a catastrophic hurricane. (I read this during a week I was playing Porgy and Bess somewhere or another, and the parallels are striking.)

Blood in the Water (Heather Ann Thompson) A disturbing (Pulitzer Prize winning) account of the Attica Prison Riot and its ridiculously long aftermath. A subject that I apparently knew nothing about, despite it taking place in our backyard.

Hidden Figures (Margot Lee Shetterly) The story of black female mathematicians in the early days of NASA which became a movie that lots of people have recommended but I've never gotten around to watching.

The Martian (Andy Weir) Originally published serially on the internet (?), I did watch the movie version of this book, and loved it. Book is even better.

Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut) The book with Bokonism, Felix Hoenikker (what a great name), and ice-nine. Immediately after finishing this book I ordered some of James' school books on Amazon, and one of the sellers was a bookshop named Cat's Cradle that stamped their package with a Cat's Cradle design and a quote from the book. So it goes.

The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck) The ascent out of poverty and life of a Chinese man in the 19th century. There are several sequels, not sure if/when I'll get to them.

The Seven Storey Mountain (Thomas Merton) Merton's autobiography up to the time he entered the monastery. Moving, poetic, worth the re-read.

The Billion Dollar Spy- The story of Adolf Tolkachev, a soviet scientist who passed information to the CIA for years in the late 70s/early 80s and was eventually discovered and killed for his work.

The Man in the High Castle- (Philip K. Dick) Trippy alternate history tale where the Nazis and Japanese won WWII and everyone on the West Coast consults a horoscope book to make decisions.

Jurassic Park (Michael Crichton) God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs. Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth.

From Harwick Road to Chestnut Street

Dear Silas,
Volcanoes only explode, and Pompeii was a good town. It had a volcano, and it exploded on the town! And now it is dead. You are very kind, and Pompeii was buried before it was even volcanoed.
<James: Owen, let me tell you something. Mt. Vesuvius erupted on August 24th, AD 79.>
That was a good Pompeii story.
Gymnastics is very fun. I like presents on mine birthday. I'm a good sport guy by doing both of them.
I love you, Silas. Owen

Dear Roland,
Mine favorite Jack and Annie book was Volcano in Pompeii. Sometimes we don't go in carwashes. I'm sorry I'm faster than you. Football is fun. We watched the Buffalo Bills play the Colts, and the Colts were winning. I love you, Roland. Owen

Dear Aunt Martha,
You are a kind guy. We like you. We like the Titanic, and it was a BIG ship.
<James: It sank in the year 1912.>
Yeah, on August 49th.
<James: No, it sank on April 15th. It hit the iceberg on April 14th at 11:40>
The Titanic sunk hitting a iceberg. The Bismarck sunk by a lot of other ships and torpee-toes.
<James: It sank by airplanes that dropped the torpedoes.>
I love you, Aunt Martha. Owen

Dear Silas,
Volcanoes do nothing but erupt and sleep. Just so you know, you are a sponge. Well, I hope you are excited for Halloween, because Owen calls a dragon that we walk to see "The Scary Dragon" and two things that Owen calls "Stacked Pumpkins" and the "Scary Cat" in the neighbor's yard that he likes to see too. School is something that I don't really like.
Sincerely James O. D. O. Smith
P.S. I do not want to be a football player when I grow up.

Dear Roland,
Ahem. And now you do something that you love. What is it? Why don't you read Exploring the Titanic by Dr. Robert Ballard.
Sincerely, James O. P. E. Smith
P.S. You are a house.

Dear Aunt Martha,
Please come to my birthday. And Silas and Roland too. Tell them they are crocodiles, please. Please do something good. And I hope you like the guests at my birthday. Did you like the guests and Felix's birthday.
Sincerely, James O. P. O. D. O. Smith
PS When is the next time you are going out to Albion?

Questions from James

Did the bow section of the Titanic or the stern section of the Titanic sink faster?

When the bow of the Titanic sank, did it sink like this (horizontal arm) or like this (vertical arm) or like this (diagonal arm)?

Did the guns on the Bismarck fall off before it hit the bottom of the ocean?

How many of the Titanic's funnels broke off before it was underwater?

Did the Californian sink?

How many funnels did the Californian have?

Was the Lusitania a White Star Line ship?

Was the fourth funnel on the Lusitania a dummy as well?

Which ship sink faster, the Californian or the Carpathia?

Which ship did Dr. Ballard find first, the Bismarck or the Titanic?

What was the first ship that Dr. Ballard ever found?

Why didn't the hull of the Bismarck break apart like the Titanic did?

Did the USS Indianapolis roll over on its side?

How many ships did the USS Little Rock sink?

How many stories tall was the Bismarck? (vertically)

How many people survived the sinking of the Californian?

Why did the Lusitania sink so fast?

How many people were in the crow's nest of the Lusitania?

Do battleships have crow's nests?

What was the date when the Titanic's hull was launched?

Did anyone ever scuttle a White Star Line ship when it was sinking?

Did the Cunard Line or the White Star Line ship have more shipwrecks?

How much longer was the Knock Nevis than the Titanic?

Does an oil tanker need more lookouts than a passenger ship?

September Updates

James is back into the swing of things with homeschool, which we're sort-of unofficially calling 2nd grade. I've thought about writing an extensive blog about his homeschool program for this year, but he's getting to an age where he might very soon be reading the sorts of things I write about him, and I'm a little conflicted about publicizing exactly how he "measures up" according to the universal standard 2nd grader. On the one hand, he's doing great work with reading--and he doesn't even realize it's great work. He just loves reading, and he's really good at it. And on the other hand, he has abysmal penmanship and spelling. As far as I can tell he's doing fine with everything else--math, science, history, and whatnot. He knows (I think) his last name and his address, which is also an improvement from a few years ago, though he probably wouldn't have the faintest idea what to do in a fire drill.

Owen is doing a much better job in James' school this year. Despite school taking almost an hour longer each day (we're really buckling down on those handwriting exercises) almost-four-year-old Owen is a lot easier to deal with than almost-three-year-old Owen. He's more than happy to play LEGOs alone in his room for at least some chunk of the morning, and when he comes downstairs to listen to James' read-aloud book or to do his history and science projects alongside him he's actually a constructive participating instead of a force of destruction.

Felix is the force of destruction. Felix is curious about everything, but mostly about the sorts of things that we put in trash cans. If it's in a garbage can, Felix wants to pull it out and examine, and then to move it somewhere else. And Felix likes to give non-garbage can items (like important documents, dishtowels, and his brother's toys) a chance to experience the garbage for themselves. He also pulls napkins out of the pantry by the handful and sweeps armloads of books off of the shelves. He is, frankly, an armful.

Some nuggets from the past few days:

Owen: Don't tell me anything, because I already know everything. I know about the Titanic, and the Bismarck, and dinosaurs, and Mount Vesuvius.

Owen: Jesus told me I don't need to clean my room.

Me: I think maybe the Bills are playing the Chiefs next week.
James: Are the Chiefs a good team?
Me: I don't know. I think they were pretty good last year, but maybe they didn't make the playoffs?
James: Oh, yes they did. They did make the playoffs, and they played the Titans.
Me: Oh, okay. If you say so.
James: It seems to me that kids are actually smarter than grown-ups.

Paris Vacation 2018, Part 6

Paris Vacation 2018, Part 6

Our last few days in Paris were deliberately slower paced. On Tuesday morning we chose to take the Metro (a 20 minute trip) to the Eiffel Tower rather than walking over an hour each way just to get there. It was simple enough to catch a train about two blocks up from our apartment that went directly over to the Ecole Militaire, and then to head up and find our bearings.

We decided to explore the Rue Cler, a very old open-air market, before making our way to the Champ du Mars. We either came on an off morning, however, or most of the vendors weren’t set up yet. We did find a patisserie that was open and doing business and bought a tarte aux pommes to split. There was a mother with two little boys ahead of us, and as they gathered their purchases to walk away the younger one scooped up our tart as well, apparently thinking it was part of their purchase. The mother was very apologetic. We told her that we understood.

We didn’t go into the main promenade under the Tower, since there was already a huge security line to cross into that section of the park. Instead, we found a shady bench and read for a few hours with a lovely view of the Eiffel Tower right in front of us. We were ready to walk again after a bit, and picked up some coffees on our way to the Place des L’Invalides. There was more reading and coffee sipping there, and then we ended up back in the Champ du Mars for a picnic that we assembled for ourselves—some baguette, sandwiches, and a little salad from an epicerie.

We took long naps that afternoon, and then had our “fancy” dinner out at the Café de Musees. It was just a few minutes from our apartment, so we finally justified bringing our dress clothes and nice shoes. We took our time with that meal, stretching it out all evening and eventually walking home in the dark, filled up with cocktails, poultry terrine, beef bourgingon, croquettes with hollandaise, duck, and desserts.

In retrospect, it shouldn’t have taken us almost a week to eat our first really nice meal out. If and when we go back, we’ll come better prepared to have several reliable reservations out and to eat more like that throughout the trip. With that said, we had wonderful meals that we prepared for ourselves, and came in way under budget in the process—but that isn’t exactly why you go on vacation.

We took the train again the following day up to the Opera and back towards the Galeries Lafayette. One of our guidebooks had advised us that Printemps was a department store similar to the Galeries that ordinary people might find a bit more accessibly priced. It was, in fact, compared to J.C. Penny. (This was not an accurate price point reference.)

We did, in Printemps, find the two things that we had specifically come to France to acquire—a genuine grown-up salt and pepper shaker set. I don’t know how we got fixated on the salt and pepper mills, but they were up in conversation long before we ever thought about going to France. We had some diner-esque glass ones that were perpetually clogged up that might have been a wedding present, but mostly just poured salt directly out of the bulk Wegman’s container and just cycled through the disposable plastic Aldi peppermills. How nice would it be, we reasoned, to find a salt and pepper mill set in France? Something lovely that we would use and be reminded of every day?

We settled on a mill set, and then did some other browsing at shoes, overcoats, some fancy raincoats that you can’t find in the States, and a set of lunchboxes that we ended up ordering once we got home. The highlight of the day for Julie, though, was going upstairs to the kitchen floor. There were rows of cookbooks, kitchen utensils, exotic chocolates and spices, and six or seven full-service eateries. After taking many photographs and skimming through some of the English-language reading material we had some lunch at the seafood eatery—white wine, octopus carpaccio, and a dory filet. 

(Don’t anthropomorphize that, for Owen’s sake.)

I picked out a new black tie from a men’s shop—something I could wear every weekend and be reminded of the trip. We walked all the way back to our apartment and took our usual siesta, and then capped off the evening with a walk down to the ice cream shop (Amorino) in lieu of a proper dinner. That night we sat on the balcony and worked through a bottle of wine reflecting on how different the pace of the week had been and how odd it was to move through the days so slowly and casually. We talked about all of the things we try to keep up with (exercise, homeschooling, keeping the house clean, seeing our families) in addition to all of the jobs we work. Vacation was ending too fast.

On Thursday, the last full day, the market was outside again, and we went out to do all of our souveniring in one go. It turned out to be easier than either of us had expected. We found crepes for ourselves again, and then talked through what we thought each family member would like and which colors would be better for one person than for another. We didn’t have room to bring back much, and we did bring was pretty modest, but it was fun thinking of everyone as we browsed.

We did one more falafel on Thursday afternoon, and finished up the last of the remaining souvenirs (read: The Lego Store) at Les Halles that evening. We did dishes for the final time, cleaned up our apartment as far as we could, and finished our last battle of wine.

The trip back home on Friday felt more adventurous than it needed to be. We were out the door early and onto the train that came just outside our apartment, and then onto the RER B to get us to Charles de Gaulle. Then, another train to get us into the Terminal one. Then a line to check our bags, then a line to scan our boarding passes, a line to do a passport check, and a line to get through security, and then additional security for me because I must look threatening. Despite planning several hours of margin into the time we thought we’d have, they were already boarding that plane when we got to our gate. So we stood in that line, then took a bus out to the jetway, and then were finally on a big 747.

The trip back was long, and we dozed and watched movies together and had another airline meal. (Not nearly as good as a fresh falafel wrap.) We were practically aching for our kids by the time we landed in Dulles, but there was another long line to catch the bus to the terminal, then a line for the train to the main terminal, and then another LOONG line for passport control, a search for baggage, a half-hour wait for the airport shuttle, and then a rush hour drive back up to Hanover.

And then we were back with our kids! James was immediately sick (he couldn’t eat the dinner that they were waiting to share with us), Owen was bouncy and excited, and Felix looked thoroughly unimpressed. (Initially.)

And that was our vacation!

There are a few other post facto details that need to come out in the telling. First, even though we didn’t say much about them in the telling of the story, it was Mom and Dad Davis that made everything possible. Every morning that we slept in or stayed out late or took a random mid-afternoon nap they were with the kids, either giving tractor rides or trying to come up with a meal that all three of them could eat, or just trying to keep Felix from pulling dirt out of the houseplants. Without them, there would have been no Paris apartment, no Seine cruise, no wine on the balcony, and no falafel. We cannot thank them enough.

When we started planning this trip in 2017 we drew up a “high guess” and a “low guess” budget for what we thought everything might cost. We ended up coming in a couple hundred dollars below the “low guess” budget somehow, and that money turned into a proper vacuum cleaner once we got back home. That makes us sound really lame, but it’s actually been one of the most exciting “changes” that have happened since we’ve been back. Our downstairs feels properly clean almost all the time now. 

And, judging by how much junk we sucked out of the carpet in the library, maybe it is properly clean for the first time since we moved in.

That was the first trip we’d taken together since our honeymoon in Tampa in August of 2007.

We won’t wait eleven more years to do it again.

Paris Vacation 2018, Part 5

Sunday morning was downright indolent. We slept in, sipped on allongees, and put our sore feet up as we read on our kindles. By now our apartment was looking a little lived-in. There was spare change on the table and a little pile of receipts, a row of empty wine bottles along the wall, and laundered clothes hanging from every available chair, rod, and hook. (We had a washing machine in our apartment, but not a dryer.)

Having laundry was huge. We were able to pack five outfits instead of ten, and we ended up using it even more than we thought. Between sometimes going through two outfits a day (you got sweaty when you were hiking all over a major city in the middle of August) and J needing to wear socks more often than she had planned (once she bought the sneakers) we ended up washing some sort of laundry most days.

We eventually got hungry enough that we had to go out looking for some sort of brunch. The flying market was just outside our apartment again, and we took our time looking through every stall. Plans to find some salmon didn’t quite work out, but we did bring more fresh vegetables and some wonderful looking pastries back with us.

We stayed at home long enough to say good morning to the kids (who got up around 2 PM our time) and then started out for Notre Dame. We were planning to go to church and to start using our Museum Passes, and then to do our Seine Cruise at 9 PM that night.

The Museum Pass is a great idea, theoretically. Not only does it get you access to most of the major museums and monuments in Paris, but you’re supposed to be able to hop the line at most of the locations. (Apparently the equivalent of the fast pass at Disney, which I’ve never done.) It didn’t work out for us that way.

As soon as we arrived at Notre Dame to do the tour of the Towers we saw a big sign stating that all entries to the bell towers had to make an online queue through a special app, and that included the Museum Pass. And, of course, the queue was full through the rest of the day. We abandoned the Notre Dame tour, then, and headed for the crypt. The Crypt is a museum underneath Notre Dame which shows off some ancient ruins of the city, lots of coinage and inscriptions from various points in French history, and some information about the construction of the cathedral.

I am entering here for the record that when we first walked into the excavation area where some of the old building foundations were displayed we passed a sign that said something about a settlement from pre-Roman times. I remarked to Julie that the foundations we were looking at were definitely not pre-Roman, and that they looked like they were from much later in the imperial period, based on how the stones were cut and the passages were laid out. And then we walked past another sign at that said the remains in front of us were from the 4^th century A.D.

One of us was very impressed with myself. (It wasn’t Julie)

After we came out of the crypt we tried to get into Sainte-Chappelle, but there was another big sign denying Museum Pass holders any special expedited entry there. Since the chapel was closing in a half hour, we were just out of luck. The best thing we did in our first day of Museum Passing was the thing that required no special entry or admission at all—going into Notre Dame to see a service.

We went to the 5:45 Vespers service, a half-hour of continuous organ music led by two cantors with just a couple of breaks for some readings from the front. The cathedral itself is unbelievable. Any “chronological snobbery” you might think yourself entitled to just because we have decent dentistry and iPhones and take showers every day in the modern world gets flattened by the grandeur and symmetries and detail of this incredible space that was put up without the aid of a single power tool or motor vehicle, and yet somehow makes every other church you’ve been in seem like a straw hut.

It was packed in the church, and most of the crowd was passing through the various displays and tourist areas that surrounded the still massive but slightly smaller congregational area. Every few minutes an announcement came on asking people in French and English to please remain quiet and respectful. (There were lots of overcooked kids who’d seen one too many grown-up tourist attractions by this point in the day.) It didn’t feel like it mattered. There was actually something really powerful about seeing “the nations” pouring into this sacred space while we listened to the psalms being sung, and answered back in the same spots where Christians before us had stood and sung these words back for almost a thousand years. The final hymn was the Magnificat, and we sang in Latin about “just as he has spoken to our fathers, Abraham and his seed forever…glory to the Father and the Son and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be forever, Amen.”

Dazed and a little overwhelmed, we crossed over to the Left Bank to pass a few hours before our cruise. Having both read Jurassic Park within the last month and knowing how incredibly impressive it would be to show a picture of it to our boys, we decided to see if we could get into the Jardin des Plantes, where there was a big T-Rex skeleton on display. We found out afterwards that it would have cost a fortune to get in, but it was closed by the time we arrived anyway. We found a bench to read in the Botanical Gardens for a bit, and then crossed back over towards the Bastille for wifi and bathrooms. (This was our most American stop, as we went to a Starbucks and got iced coffees.)

At 8:30 we went down to the Port de L’Arsenal for our cruise. Out of all the things we did in Paris, this was Julie’s favorite without contest. We recommend it heartily. (We took the Canauxrama tour.) We sat on the upper deck of the boat and exchanged cameras with some of the couples sitting around us so that we could get photographed together.

We had to pass through a fumy-smelling lock to get out of the initial canal, and then we were on the Seine. All around us people were sitting on riverbank with picnic blankets and bottles of wine. It was just starting to get dark, and we passed a couple of large crowds where DJs were playing music and people were dancing together. (The tour guide told us that there are free dancing lessons along the river every Sunday evening.) The guide gave information in French and English, and most of her commentary took place during the first hour of the tour, so that we could just watch and wonder for the second hour.

As we passed under one of the first bridges leading to the Ile-St.-Louis, everything suddenly started to light up. The streetlights came on, the bridges were illuminated, and the whole city began to twinkle as a cool summer night set in. We hadn’t yet seen the city at night, and it was worth the wait.

We passed under all the faces of the Pont Neuf and watched some landmarks go by that we hadn’t seen yet—the Palais Bourbon, the Musee d’Orsay, the Place de la Concorde, and the Grand Palais. 

Then, just around corner from us, was the Eiffel Tower.

It’s hard to put into words just how impressive the Eiffel Tower is in person. Paris isn’t a particularly tall city in most places, and the Tower completely dominates the entire surrounding area. It’s impressive by daylight, and in any light it wows you with its symmetry and power. But at night, glowing with lights throwing everything you can see into its visual orbit, it’s magical. The whole boat hushed as it came into view, and we all watched as we glided by. There were still people milling about at the base, and you could see the elevators moving up and down.

We passed into one of the more modern-looking areas of the city as we went beyond the Tower, past the Radio France building and some proper skyscrapers before turning around in front of the French Statue of Liberty. (Just like the American one, except a bit shorter.) Our boat timed the moment we passed the Eiffel Tower on the return for 10 PM perfectly, and without warning the Tower lit up like a sparkler.

Applause broke out and everyone gawked as twinkles and bursts and flashes of light raced up and down the structure. This went on for almost five minutes, and then we were drifting back under bridges again. I went below just long enough to bring back some champagne, and more revelers waved to us from bridges overhead and the banks on each side as they danced and drank.

That cruise was the most overtly touristy thing we did. It was maybe the best thing we did. The final adventure came after we had come into dock again in the Port de L’Arsenal, and found that the entrance back to the street had been gated and locked. We had to hop a fence to get back to the road!

Monday was our Louvre day, and the day for doing whatever else we might require our Museum Pass. We hiked up to the Louvre in the morning and went down into the bowels of the museum under the big glass pyramid. (This time we actually did get to jump a line.)

We were in the museum for close to three hours, and by the time we left we were both museum-ed out. It was crowded, hot, and smelly. I did get to see some wonderful antiquities—artifacts from the Parthenon and from the Temple of Jupiter, coins, all manner of vases and urns, and a wonderful (largely empty) room of inscriptions.

Any moderately “famous,” piece, however, was completely mobbed by crushes of people with cellphones out. We did get reasonably close to the Venus de Milo and Nike of Samothrace, but it was hard to appreciate either of them while you were getting jostled and worried about getting separated. We did brave the crowds long enough to get to the room with the Mona Lisa and could kind of see her from the very back as we edged our way along the mass. (Yes, her eyes followed you the entire time.)

It would have been an amazing experience if you had the museum to yourself. I’d attempt to Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler the place if I weren’t certain I’d be immediately shot by French military guards carrying automatic weapons. (You saw these strolling about in groups of four near all the major tourist destinations.)

We limped towards home and found coffee along the way, then got falafel again (this time with the hot harissa sauce) at L’As du Falaffel and ate it at a little park near the Place des Vosges.

Julie was done with adventuring for the rest of the day, but I left by myself in the evening to see what I could see and squeeze a little more utility out of the Museum Pass. I went to the Pompidou museum first (which was largely empty and comfortably air-conditioned) and looked through corridors of Picasso, Matisse, and Dali. It was just getting dark when I left the museum, and the view from the top floor of the Pompidou was one of the best in Paris. You could see Sacre-Coeur perched up on Montmartre to your right, you could see the Eiffel Tower in front of you, and Notre Dame to your left.

I wandered down the Seine as it got dark out and sat for a few minutes in front of Notre Dame, where a busker set up in the square with a guitar and played some Albeniz. He was a wonderful player, but was driven away by a noisy band that brought amplification and started playing about 20 minutes after he had begun down by the cathedral.

And just like that, there were only two full days left.

Paris Vacation 2018, Part 4

We overdid it again through the rest of Friday, but it wasn’t quite as bad as trying to hike up to Montmartre again. As we walked back from the Galeries Lafayette (with Julie already changed into her new sneakers) we found what was to be our go-to food for the trip—falafel.

I had read about the quality of the street food in Paris being quite high, and the excellence of the Middle Eastern dishes in particular. We watched a special on L’As du Falaffel that gave us a starting point, and, as it turned out, we never went any further.

The Rue de Rosiers is about fifteen minutes from our apartment, and we were hungry and footsore when we finally arrived. It’s in the Jewish quarter, and there are kosher bakeries and several temples, as well as much-newer looking fashion boutiques. L’As du Falaffel turns such a hot business for most of the year that it has two windows along the street about forty yards apart. Since we were there in the “dead season,” only one was open, but there was still a line stretching down the pavement with a man in a t-shirt and apron taking orders. There were probably four or five other falafel shops along this street, and I’m sure they were great too. The cooks were calling out to patrons, “Come to L’as du Falaffel, the best falafel in Paris!” and then being answered and argued at by the stands across the street, in what seemed to be a pretty good-humored bickering match.

Julie asked for a traditional falafel wrap and I asked for shawarma our first time there. It’s hard to say what exactly makes the falafel wrap so good. It starts with the pita, which is thick and chewy, and still warm. Then you have the vegetables, which are layered in at least twice—fresh tomatoes, diced cucumber, some lightly fried eggplant, and two kinds of pickled cabbage. And then the falafel itself is just perfect. It’s right out of the oil, perfectly spiced, and a magical texture. Every bite you take of it makes you think “this tastes like seventeen different things, and I can taste each one clearly, and they are all GREAT.” It’s all melded together with a creamy hummus-yogurt dressing.

I don’t want to undersell my shawarma, which was also delicious, but after tasting a bite of Julie’s falafel I went back to that for each return visit. There is a small eating area inside the restaurant that we went to, but since we (like most everyone else in line) got our food “a l’emporter” (which is cheaper than buying it to eat in the restaurant) we crouched on the curbside and took amazed bites with our plastic forks. As hungry as we both were, there was no impulse to wolf it down. This was too good to be rushed.

We made it back home to stretch out and retreat from the sun a bit, and then headed out again in the evening to check out Les Halles, an enormous (mostly) underground mall that used to be the city’s main market. We poked into this store and that (including a LEGO store, where we took some pictures for the boys of an enormous LEGO reconstruction of Notre Dame and the Hogwarts castle) and got some ideas for souvenirs, and then went home via Pierre Herme, the supposed champion of Parisian macarons.

These little cakes (cookies? What are macarons, anyway?) were each works of art on their own. Perfectly even, perfectly textured, and balanced with unbelievable flavors. We bought six of them and split each one on the balcony. Rose-litchi-raspberry, Passion fruit-rhubarb-strawberry, yoghurt-raspberry, dark Brazilian chocolate, hazelnut-praline, and pistachio. A little sweetness, then a lot of wine, and a movie were in order on Friday night. And you would think that we would have slept the sleep of the profoundly tired.

Friday night was probably the roughest night of sleep for the trip, and that was when we missed the air-conditioner we thought were going to have. Aside from this one hot night the weather was practically perfect while we were there. It may have sprinkled for ten minutes one of the mornings we were out, but that was the only time that it wasn’t perfectly sunny and upper seventies. If it had rained with any seriousness our walking-all-over-the-city plans would have been seriously compromised. (We did pack an umbrella, but still…)

Saturday morning was a pretty late start, and we decided to make an easier day for ourselves. We planned on getting breakfast out at Ble Sucre, which was going to be our “best croissant” destination. It was only a ten minute walk to get there, but the storefront was closed with a notice about how the staff was “en vacances” until the beginning of September. Phooey. We were going have to find the second-best croissant in Paris.

We wandered around until we stumbled onto the Marche D’Aligre, which turned out to be our favorite market experience of the trip. You have to have cash on hand to do anything at the Parisian markets, but it isn’t anything like negotiating a Middle Eastern market is supposed to be. There isn’t any bartering, every stall has a registered set of scales, and all the prices are clearly marked up front. (You do end up with a big pocketful of coins, since everything is priced so precisely.) We stopped at a boulangerie for some bread as well, and ended up going into a grocery for some wine, since the morning had turned into a grocery run.

We stayed inside for the rest of the morning, and then crossed over to the Left Bank for the first time. Our trip took us through the Latin Quarter (where the old Universities of Paris stood, hence everyone spoke Latin there in the Middle Ages) past the Pantheon to the Luxembourg gardens.

It’s hard to describe how one city “feels” different from another, but our afternoon in the gardens might have embodied most of what makes Paris feel like Paris. The gardens were busy, but in a quiet and slow-paced sort of way. It felt like everyone was out to enjoy the sunshine, and children were pushing wooden boats around in the enormous fountain below us. Couples laid in the grass reading books, women sunned themselves and carried on quiet conversations, and every once in awhile somebody pulled themselves up to go get an ice cream. The rowdiest thing we saw all afternoon was a friendly game of petanque as we walked out of the park.

It had been in our “while we’re in this neighborhood” plan to stop in at La Maison du Chocolat, a highly renowned chocolatier with multiple locations in the city. I did okay at speaking French while we were there. Usually whoever I was speaking with picked up on the fact that I was an English speaker even if I didn’t stumble over something, but I couldn’t make any sense of what the young man who initially greeted us was asking me. He smiled after repeating himself a second time and asked if I’d be more comfortable in English, and then asked again if we’d like to try a free sample.

Well, yes, of course we would.

This was good chocolate. This was EXPENSIVE, very tiny, very good chocolate. And we each had one sample, and then we had another. Just those two bites each probably cost ten euro. But boy, was it good chocolate. We ended up bringing a dozen home, and he offered us another sample each while we were picking them out, and then another sample after we’d paid up. He was a nice guy.

By now we were getting hungry. We had made plans to look inside Bon Marche (another big mall), but multiple hours on nothing except a few bites of chocolate was catching up, and we ended up picking a random restaurant that was our thumbs-down experience.

We had a did-not-translate moment about whether we were going to order food at all and sat there with just drinks for close to twenty minutes, and then when Julie’s croque madame arrived it was overdone and appeared to be made with offensively plain sliced sandwich bread. I had some pretty good potatoes dauphinoise and a pretty bad duck confit.

By a deliberate decision we cut the evening off on the early side to make sure we had our feet under us for the following day and to catch up on some lost sleep. We headed back along the Seine and decided to give some street food another shot, what with dinner being kind of a bust.

The French know a thing or two about making crepes. I got Nutella, Julie got cookie butter, and they were everything that dinner was not—hot, sweet, and memorable. You get them all folded up and wrapped up in a wax paper napkin, and as you get down to the last bite you get an extra big bite of all the filling that’s sunk down. So, as we walked back over the Seine towards our apartment, we had satisfied taste buds after all.  

Paris Vacation 2018, part 3

Paris Vacation 2018, part 3

We pushed too hard over the first few days, which was why we were in a department store buying a pair of sneakers by Friday morning. Here’s how we wrecked Julie’s feet in less than 36 hours. After our Thursday afternoon stop at Camille’s we decided to head up to Montmartre to see Sacre-Coeur instead of going back to our apartment. We probably should have gone back to our apartment.

Paris is a pretty flat city, but there is one midsized hill that looks very prominent in context. It’s up at the very northern end of what was walkable from our apartment, and atop this hill (Montmartre) is a gleaming white cathedral—Sacre Coeur. Some of the most stunning sights in the city were actually views of the white church upon the hilltop. You could see it from the top of the Pompidou, and there was a great “wow, there it is!” moment along the Boulevard Housmann as you rounded a corner directly south of it. So, Sacre Coeur is pretty great. But getting there was a drag. Even with some baguette and coffee in our systems it was a LONG walk (in the brunt of the afternoon heat) up to Montmartre…and then UP Montmartre.

We passed through the wedding district on the way up, where there were dozens of bridal shops showing off white gowns and tuxedos, and passed by the Republique statue. (Stopping briefly on a park bench outside the McDonald’s there to pirate some wifi) We also went into an indoor market, then clomped up the hill into the swarm of tourists in search of a patch of shade.

We ended up finding a stone bench that was partially shaded by the walls of the lower promenade just under the cathedral. The view of Paris stretching out beneath us was spectacular. But the shade and a few sips of water were even better.

Water is not a public commodity in Europe. I can’t remember seeing a single water fountain for our entire time there, and when you go to a restaurant there’s no complimentary glass of water brought out to your spot. If you want water, you have to pay for it. It’s delicious mineral water, but since it costs pretty much the same amount as a glass of wine, I always just ended up ordering the wine. We were definitely both dehydrated by the end of the week, despite our best efforts to pack sufficient supplies for each day of walking. (J-I was not dehydrated. I took my Nalgene with me and faithfully filled it from our apartment each day.)

We read and stretched out in the shade, both having kicked off our shoes, for over an hour. We watched the tourists flit by and the souvenir sellers calling out to the passerbys to look at their miniature Eiffel towers or to buy a painting. We never made it up into the cathedral. It was nearly 4:00 and we hadn’t ever really had a proper lunch. We decided to start walking home and find some place to eat along the way.

After bridging some considerable distance about how one ought to choose a restaurant in Paris, we ended up at a bistro by the Republique. We had some truly spectacular food over our time there, and one meal that was just flat out bad. This was neither here nor there. I had steak tartare (and did not get sick from it) and some camembert. Julie had a salmon sandwich. We had, by the time we made it back to the apartment, walked almost ten miles. It was time to be done.

But we weren’t. We put our heads together to make a more concrete itinerary for the next few days and listed out all of the places we knew that we wanted to eat: Le Maison du Chocolat for chocolates, Ble Sucre for croissants, Pierre Herme for macarons, Amarino for ice cream, and so on. We ended up watching some episodes of Netflix food shows about Paris, and wrote down all the restaurants and markets that we liked the look of from that. And then we mapped them all out and made plans by neighborhood to see where we might go in smaller, more manageable chunks.

As tired and footsore as we were that night, we did head out once more. We walked down to the Place de la Bastille and got some ice cream at Amorino’s—perfect little flowers of gelato shaped into individual petals in a “cornet” waffle cone. We strolled back through a little cobbled alley that twisted through some apartments and was filled with ferns and hanging green plants. It was cool out, and just starting to get dark.

The next day we were planning on centering our day around the Tuileries. <Cue immediate Mussorgsky melody from Pictures at an Exhibition any time either of us said “Tuileries.”> The French take their public gardens very seriously. They are multi-generational works of art with perfect balance and symmetry that take massive public investment. Our plan was to find a comfortable spot in the shade and to spend the morning off our feet once we had secured a reading spot in the garden.

Our walk took us down the Rue de Rivoli, the main commercial thoroughfare beside the Right Bank. We passed the Louvre along the way, which was as enormous as advertised. There is a semi-permanent carnival at the entrance to the Tuileries that our boys, had they been there, would have loved. A huge Ferris wheel, spinning cups, carousels—and all of it was empty. We had started before the rest of the city again, and we had the park pretty much to ourselves for the first hour we were there.

It was a beautiful morning, but when we stood up J’s feet had reached the limit. She’d packed comfortable and sturdy Keen sandals, but whenever debris from the street kicked into the sandal part it was rubbing her soles raw. Fortunately there are more than a couple places where you can buy a pair of shoes in Paris.

We walked (or, in her case, limped) up towards the Opera and the famous Galeries Lafayette. We were passing through the High Fashion corridor—the place where Paris fashion week starts and ends. Julie says it was a bit like stepping into an issue of Vogue. The price tags alone were dizzying, let alone the handsome suited Frenchmen attempting to woo in deep-pocketed tourists.

Two things stuck out about all of the Paris “malls” that we went to—first, that they all took male fashion as seriously as female fashion. If there were four floors of women’s clothing, you could expect four floors of men’s offerings as well. Second, merchandise wasn’t broken up into storefronts, but grouped together by kind and sold by a representative in in front of his or her company’s shelf of offerings. For example, Julie bought Puma shoes from a Puma employee who had one wall in a massive floor of all of the mall’s women’s shoes.

J: I bought a pair of white tennis shoes. All of my people watching from the previous two days had informed me that would be a safe bet for blending in. And I needed a pair of shoes that I could wear socks with because of the condition my feet were in—I’ve never had blisters on the bottoms of my feet before.

Her countenance improved dramatically when we stepped out of the mall and she could walk normally again.

Paris Vacation 2018, part 2

Paris Vacation 2018, part 2

There was a lot to do once we were off the plane at Charles de Gaulle. We started off with the two most questionable financial moves of the trip—the museum pass, which we didn’t use enough to justify (more on that later), and the currency exchange, which had a huge fee and wasn’t particularly competitive with some of the other exchanges we saw outside the airport. Then we collected our luggage, bought train tickets, and wandered around looking for signs to the RER B. (The main railroad into Paris)

The train was full and not air-conditioned. We changed trains at the Gare du Nord and were excited to see the Richard Lenoir stop on the Metro Line 5. As we climbed the stairs out of the metro station we were fully in view of number 52, our home for the next week and a half. Richard Lenoir is one the grand boulevards…two one way streets separated by wide well-developed park area full of playgrounds and markets that took up far more space than the traffic lanes of the boulevard itself, or the bicycle lanes on the outer edge.

This moment was also when our adventure without cellular service began. Our cellphones were pretty much useless for most of the time we were in Paris except, critically, Google Maps. You can download a map for offline access ahead of time, and though it doesn’t retain many of the features of an online map, the GPS can tell even without wifi or cell service where you are and which direction you’re heading. It was wonderful to be without a phone (except in our apartment, which had wifi) all week. But it would have been a lot harder to do almost everything we did without Google Maps.

J: Can’t recommend it enough.

Number 52 Richard Lenoir is a complex of several apartment buildings with a courtyard in between which you enter via an enormous old wooden door and marble floored colonnade. You entered a code at the street (C.J. Spiller-Phil Hansen) to enter the courtyard, and then there was another code (Terrence McGee-LeSean McCoy) to get into Batiment B. Then we took an elevator so tiny you could barely fit two people in it even without luggage up to the sixth floor, a dark and windowless corridor, somewhere along which we’d paid almost a thousand dollars six months prior for a room that we’d only seen in pictures.

The pictures were accurate. It was tiny, but it was everything we needed…clean, elegant (in a modern way), and with a beautiful view of the courtyard and the surrounding buildings from the little balcony. It was just a studio, with a double bed at one end and a little table and chairs at the other. There was a kitchen and a bathroom, and the balcony had two wicker chairs and a wicker table, three window boxes, and several bees. (We never got stung, but there were bees everywhere in Paris. They were particularly curious about whatever patisseries we visited)

It was close to 6 PM in Paris by the time we were actually in the apartment, and we’d both been awake for at least 30 of the previous 36 hours. I stepped out in search of a grocery store and picked up some eggs, bread, wine, cheese, and the best pear I’ve ever had at a grocery store a few blocks down. Julie made her first cup of Nespresso.

The basic unit of European coffee is the espresso shot. If you want something more substantial than that, you can have your espresso “allongee.” This has as much umph as a standard cup of American coffee, but is about a quarter of the size and comes out of the espresso machine all frothy-looking. I was ready for an American cup of coffee by the time we came home—it’s nice to sit and work on something that will take 20 minutes when you’re reading the paper in the morning—but we got by just fine with our allongees and Nespresso machine (which basically takes something like K-Cups) while we were there. We didn’t have a bad cup of coffee while we were there, but we never really had a great cup of coffee either. The Nespresso machine was pretty universal.

The coffee didn’t keep either of us awake. We had little dinner on the balcony of bread and goat cheese, hummus, and a pear.

J: That was one of the most romantic moments for me—sitting down on that balcony, which I’d dreamed of for half a year, and knowing all there was yet to come. Compare that to our honeymoon, when we were exhausted, jobless, and poor.

I don’t remember anything about that night beyond falling asleep very early, and waking up again very early—close to 5.

Julie, who had a gift for sleep in the face of all obstacles even before she was Owen’s mother, slept in later. We had the first of many omelette breakfasts a little after 7, and then went out for our first day of exploring.

We discovered that Paris also has a gift for drowsing through the morning. Most shops don’t open until 10 at the earliest, and 11 is the norm. Since August is a nearly universal vacation time in France we couldn’t tell how many of these closed up shop fronts were going to be shut down the entire time we were there, and how many just weren’t going to open at 8 AM.

Richard Lenoir has a marche volante, a “flying market.” Every Thursday and Sunday morning the whole “park” in the median is filled with vendors, produce stands, souvenir shops, fishmongers, baked goods, cheeses, and street food from our intersection all the way down to the Bastille. This was up and running by the time we left our apartment, and we gawked at the produce as we walked south. Every vendor was meticulous about a beautiful presentation of their goods. We made a note to come back and explore much more thoroughly later.

The Place de la Bastille was the big landmark closest to us. The Bastille was the (no longer standing) fortress that was stormed at the beginning of the French Revolution, and the site where it stood is now an enormous cobbled traffic circle with an opera house on one side and the Canal de l’Arsenal on the other, which is an entry onto the Seine.

J: I always knew the Bastille from the huge golden statue in the middle of the circle.

We followed the canal down to the Seine and walked along the river bank (and you can go RIGHT up to the river bank) up towards the islands past morning joggers. I was taking care of directions and was reading signs and trying to translate the snatches of conversation I heard on the fly. Julie was much more tuned into picking up the customs and the flavors of the city—how people dressed, protocol with traffic signs and lights, exchanges of pleasantries. We were trying not to look too obviously out of place, and I don’t know that we were entirely successful. There was a lot to take in.

We crossed from the right bank onto the Ile de St. Louis and scouted out some potential ice cream shops that we never ended up visiting, then crossed another bridge onto the Ile de la Cite and saw Notre Dame. Notre Dame was breathtaking. It’s the historical center of Paris, you understand why when you see it. It felt busy there at 9 AM, but that was easily the emptiest visit out of the three times we went by. We went back to front and looked for the “bored” gargoyle once we were in the main court, then admired the Kings of Judah and headless St. Denis.

Every time we face timed with Owen he asked what animals we’d seen. I don’t know where he thought we were—maybe on a safari or visiting a place with lots of zoos, but it was always a little disappointing when we could only say “dogs and pigeons.” We did have a good answer on the first day, though, because we saw a lobster carved into the stone façade of Notre Dame.

From Notre Dame we crossed back over to the Right Bank and past the Hotel de Ville in search of espresso.

J: This is where things got martially testy.

I had a theory about how to buy espresso in Paris. Or rather, how to choose a place to buy espresso in Paris. Because if you stand at any point in the city and look around, you can see five places to get something to eat and/or drink. At least. So, my guidelines were—

J: Unvoiced guidelines. I didn’t know about these the first day.

Number one, avoid places in immediate vicinity of the tourist traps. Number two, avoid places with big English language signs out front. Number three, listen to the music that they’re playing. Gentle jazz is better than American pop music. Number four (this was the most important one), a cup of espresso should probably cost about 2 euro. Look for the espresso on the menu to gauge whether the rest of the menu is affordable.

J: I just needed a cup of coffee. We’d been walking for a long time. There were plenty of places that served coffee, best as my eye could see. We kept walking by them, and I’d see another, and I’d think “this is the place,” and then we’d walk by it. And I couldn’t tell what Roy was thinking because he hadn’t shared his list of arbitrary rules yet. I also spoke no French, whereas he’d been studying for over a year, so I was waiting for him to initiate any verbal exchanges made at a restaurant. So we walked, and walked, and walked…

I stand by guidelines. They were entirely correct, as far as our dining experiences went, except that I eventually needed to account for some inflation regarding the espresso. Apparently my 2 euro guideline was a little outdated. 2,50 is right on the banana, if you happen to be going to Europe in the immediate future. (Before the banana inflates again)

Eventually we found a place—Camille’s. We had some perfectly lovely 2,50 euro espresso out on the street with some croissant and baguette. (And a bee who was terribly interested in the strawberry jam for the baguette.) And Julie had her coffee, and was not nearly so hangry as she had been earlier.

Paris Vacation 2018 Part 1

Paris Vacation 2018

J: I like that this blog has a year on it. It implies that there’s going to be another Paris vacation in the future. That’s important to me.

There was almost a disaster at the beginning. On the morning of the 14^th we were basically just looking for a way to make the hours pass faster so that we could leave for our 10:30 (PM) flight—a Lufthansa connection to Munich, followed by a short flight to Charles de Gaulle which would put us into Paris early afternoon on the 15^th.

I practiced for a bit, trying not dread how out of shape I’d be when I picked up the trumpet again after 10 days off. We played the kids, who were sharing in our excitement for the flight, except for Felix, who was sweetly oblivious. 

And then at 11:30 a notification popped into both of our phone screens: Your Flight has been delayed.

I was already a little nervous about the tight transfer window in Munich. 

Nearly two hours is plenty for a domestic transfer, but when you’re traveling internationally you have to do a passport check again, another security check, and sometimes get your luggage. And there’s no saying how long you might be waiting in line for some bus or airport train if you have to change terminals.

At first the delay was only for a half an hour. But then there was an update, and now our flight wasn’t scheduled to get in until 3:10 Munich time. And our connection was supposed to depart at 3:15. There was no way we were going to make it. This time a notification about the EU bill of passenger rights came in along with the message. The European Union loves its lists of rights, and the ones for delayed air travelers are particularly generous. You’re entitled to compensation and victuals if your flight is delayed even a little bit. If your flight is delayed for more than two hours (as it looked like ours was going to be) then you are eligible for a 600 euro payout. (Each.)

So I called a Lufthansa agent and asked about what we ought to do. He was very kind, and a little hard to understand. He wanted to rebook us, but said the next flight wouldn’t leave D.C. until the 15^th. I asked about keeping our original flight out of D.C. and just getting a later flight from Munich to Paris on the 15^th, and I could see several options on the website—but he said it wasn’t possible to rebook us on any of those. They were all completely full.

This turned out to be nonsense, but we were afraid of getting stuck in Munich with nowhere to stay and no way to get to Paris if we didn’t take the sure thing on the next day—and the phone agent assured us we would be generously compensated for the delay. So we grudgingly agreed to give up a day of vacation for a nice cash payout and a direct flight a day later. And then I sat down to read the terms of the bill of passenger rights in all the fine print. No matter how you sliced it, you had to be checked into the airport and physically present to be entitled to the payout. I called again and asked another agent about the terms and conditions. They didn’t have any answers—call back once you’re in Europe, they advised.

Our bags had been packed. Julie had changed into her traveling clothes, and then changed out of them when we found out we were going to be delayed a day. She changed back into them. We were going to the airport. The worst case scenario, I thought, was that we’d be stuck in D.C. for a day with Lufthansa paying for our hotel and food. It would still be vacation.

The goodbyes to the kids were not what either of us had in mind. We were discombobulated, in a hurry, and unsure of whether we might have to just turn around and head right back to Hanover later that night. James was urged to look after his little brothers. Owen was urged to listen to his grandparents and use his best manners. Felix was urged to not forget us and not to learn how to walk too soon, and to not be angry at us when we came back, and also to sleep through the night if at all possible. And then we were on the road.

The drive to Dulles takes an hour and a half in the best conditions, but that easily expands to two hours whenever there is traffic around D.C., which is basically all the time. That said, we didn’t really have any trouble. We were both quiet—no kids, but lots to worry about and all sorts of uncertainty about where we’d be sleeping that night and what the financial ramifications would be. Every once in a while we’d try to remember whether we’d packed something—it had been an irresponsibly quick dash out the door once we’d made up our minds.

We’d paid for a parking spot at a hotel near the airport for 10 days, so we parked the car at the very back and then waited for the airport shuttle to drop us off at the Lufthansa gate. At the airport there was a long line of delayed passengers trying to get food vouchers and figure out whether or not they could be rebooked. The first person we spoke to dumped a bucket of cold water all over our vacation plans. We were no longer eligible to board our original flight since the phone agent had put us on another carrier and that was the extent of the compensation available to us. That’s not the song the phone agent was singing, we argued, and a manager came out to complain that nobody else was going to get a hotel and we were just out of luck. If we wanted, we could talk to the booking agent, but we might have to pay the difference in fares.

We waited almost a half an hour to talk to the booking agent, partly over a misunderstanding over whether or not we had already been helped, but she was worth the wait. Simultaneously juggling us and an angry woman who was going to miss her connection in Stockholm, she got on the phone with United and booked us out on a flight that night that put us in Paris two hours earlier than our original itinerary at no extra charge. When she handed us our tickets the world brightened, birds sang, and a huge weight lifted from my luggage-laden back.

There was just enough time for us to comfortably get through security, find our terminal, and grab a snack before our flight left. Neither of us had eaten dinner in the rush to get out and it was nearly 10PM. We were now heading to Portugal, albeit in the very back row of seats next to the bathroom. We stood in line at the front of Boarding Zone 3 and eyed the list of unconfirmed passengers (those waiting a seat assignment), grateful for our confirmed, if slightly smelly, seats.

“Would passengers Roy and Julie Smith please come to the service desk?”

So close…

This gate agent was also arguing with somebody, who was in a particular huff about having to sit next to a child. (What’s wrong with people?) We nervously approached, knowing it was probably all too good to be true. He handed us two new boarding passes, explaining that we definitely didn’t want to sit by the bathroom for eight hours and he had found us a pair of seats much closer to the front.

And then we were on a plane, sitting together, tiny TV screens at the ready, settling in for a transatlantic journey.

The dinner service didn’t come around until almost 1AM, but we were both still awake and both still definitely hungry. We attempted to watch The Post together, but I fell asleep about halfway through. Julie said it had a good ending.

Neither of us really slept deeply, but there were snatches here and there and some croissants and yogurt were passed out about when my watch said 5:30AM. (Who knows what time that was locally.)

From the air, Lisbon looked amazing. It’s right on the ocean—a city dotted with beautiful old red roofs and soccer stadiums. We walked, went through passport control, went through security again, and had just enough time to use the bathroom before checking into our Air France flight to Charles de Gaulle. A young man was checking all boarding passes at the gate and instructed us to wait until all other passengers had finished boarding since we were going to be next to a passenger who would be traveling on a stretcher. We waited with a dozen or so others until everybody had checked in, and then were flagged as we headed down the jetway by a gate agent who asked for our luggage tag.

We didn’t have a luggage tag.

They had no electronic record of our luggage. They had no way to guarantee that our checked suitcase was going to make it to Paris. (This was probably because of the carrier change.)

“What does your suitcase look like?”

“Well, it’s big and red, and we left from IAD.”

She went to go look for it. We kept one eye on her and one eye on the door of the plane, just to make sure it stayed open for us. She reappeared a few minutes later and gave us the blessing to board. The suitcase was down below.

We didn’t get to sit together on this flight, and both of us dozed some more. The stretcher passenger was laid out over three rows of seats to our right, with her face just inches below the baggage compartment. Any comfort gained from lying down was lost in the claustrophobia.

It was just two hours and then a descent, a landing, and the captain’s voice on the intercom:

“Mesdames et messieurs, bienvenue a Paris!”

“Smile, James!” v. “Smile, Owen!”

At the Glen Iris

"Okay boys, so what are some things that we are going to remember about nice restaurant manners before we go in here?"
"Please and thank you!"
"Yes, those are good words to say. And also that we will use inside voices?"
"Yep!"
"And we will lean over the table when we eat?"
"Okay!"
"And we won't complain about our food if we don't like it?"
"I think I will get food that I like...like a hangaburgaburger!"

At the table
"Daddy, I have to go to the bathroom."
"Okay, Owen, follow me."
"Where is the bathroom?"
"Follow me and I'll show you wear it is."
"Wait, Daddy!"
"What is--"
Owen has pulled his shorts and underwear down in the middle of the restaurant and is waddling through the amused diners with his clothes around his ankles
"What are you doing? Pull your pants up!"
"But I have to go potty!"

Upon returning to the table
"Daddy, I have to go to the bathroom"
"Okay, James. Follow me. Try to keep all your clothes on until we actually get to the bathroom."
"Yes, yes. I will."
Owen, in his loudest voice, calling out to James across the dining room: "Be sure you hold your penis when you pee into the potty, James!"

Snacks

James and Owen are sad. They are very, very sad. They are so sad because they just got up from their afternoon naps and I am not letting them have a snack. We are going to eat dinner in two hours, and that is so far away that they will probably starve. Also, the enormous lunch that they ate a few hours ago apparently wasn't enough to fill them up. Poor James and Owen.

Here is what they would like to eat:

Even one cherry
Penguin crackers
Veggie straws
Crackers
Chips
Dill pickles
Cheeseburgers or hamburgers
Hot dogs
Carrots and hummus
Cucumber slices
Graham crackers
Cheese slices
Apples
Applesauce
Blueberries
Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
Pepperoni or Chicken Charlie pizza
Cheese pizza
Grapes
Ice cream
Chocolate bars
Cake pops
Cake
Whipped cream
Strawberry yogurt
Strawberries
Yogurt and cookie butter
Nutella off the spoon
Parade candy
Even more parade candy
Chocolates
Burrito bowls
Fish
Chicken
Cracker jacks
Pancakes
Almonds
Hammelburgers (Owen hamburgers)
Fries
French fries
Rolls
Potatoes
Popcorn
Pudding
Jello
Fortune cookies
Sesame chicken
Ranch dressing
Apple juice
Green apples
Broccoli
Peas in the pod
Cinnamon
Smoothies
Toast
Bread
Eggs with ketchup
Peppermints
Salt and pepper
Pickled peppers
Regular peppers
Ice cubes
Bananas
Popsicles
Pepperoni slices
Donuts
Cookies
Barbecue sauce
Bacon
Baked beans
Brussel sprouts
Salsa
Avocados
Raisins
Oatmeal
Peanuts (suggested by Owen)
Biscuits
Celery
Some salads
All waffles
Waffle cones
Chicken nuggets
Maybe chili
Tomato soup

Things they wouldn't like to eat:
Felix's puffs
Beer
Black beans
Dates (Owen says they are okay)
Hot sauce
Milk (Owen and Felix say milk is okay)
Lemons
Lemon sauce
Mushrooms
Onions
Pumpkin soup

Camp

What the boys have done at camp so far (day 3):

Bleeding: James' lip, Owen's right hand, Owen's left hand, Owen's left elbow, Felix's head.

Singtime: Just James the first night, and then both James and Owen the second night

Climbing: For James, the big Houghton rock, two trees (from which he was able to get down successfully), and all of the furniture in our apartment. For Owen, the big Houghton rock (with some help), one tree (from which he was not able to get down successfully), and all the furniture in our apartment. For Felix, all of the steps in front of Luckey Hall, the big Houghton rock (with some help), and select furniture in our apartment.

Throwing: James: rocks, balls, nametags, handfuls of leaves and dirt. Owen: rocks, balls, James' toys, handfuls of leaves and dirt. Felix: applesauce, peas, mashed potatoes, granola, water bottles, cereal, pizza bites, veggie straws, balls, and handfuls of leaves and dirt. A note about Felix and rocks--he doesn't throw them, he chews on them.

Letters from Owen

Dear Aunt Martha,
You are my great friend. Happy Birthday to you! Well, I love you. You will be 23 on your birthday. I hope Mommy makes you a cake. What do you say, bunny on a bench? What do you say of a tree falling down on your head? And I hope you have a great time with having to play with me. Every time you go to your room I think it gets messy. And I like your sandbox--Nama and Papa's sandbox. I love you Aunt Martha, and I always think the room you sleep in looks messy. You should come to sleep at our house some time. We just had a baseball game, and I have a sticker from the baseball game, from the team we were rooting for, and they won! We were there for half the game. Felix is so sticky. Mommy is going to a party and only girls are allowed. Help me if I fall in the water at your house. A long time ago me and Uncle Lucas and James and Felix went to a hockey game. It was great there and it was really loud. Mommy couldn't come. I hope you have a great cake and love your birthday!
Love,
Owen

Dear Silas,
I love you Silas. You talk real good, too. If someone is on your head and a bunny fell on your head too, that would be an "uh-oh." We have a planet book. I'm going to bring it to your house. Would that be great? Every time Uncle Lucas gives you water, just bubble in your water. If he sinks in water, help him get out. Toilet paper. Ha ha! Happy Birthday to you. <belch> Excuse me! I have a watch! I was going to put that on the wrist. Did you know that? I hope you have a great time. I love you, Silas!
Love,
Owen

Dear Roland,
I guess James likes you, Roland! I have a football, but I have a soft one, too. And Happy Birthday to you. R-O-L-A-N-D.
Love,
Owen
Silas
Your best friend is mine other best friend, Silas. Luckily. And, that's all.

Dear Silas and Roland,
Do you know something? I have even more stuff that James and me like. We have three clocks, which is this many. (3) Happy Birthday! And I love you. I like you, Roland and Silas. I like drawing pictures to you. I love you. I like you. I love Jesus and I love you. Felix and James are great guys, too. Mommy and Daddy are pretty good, and I love them. They are pretty good at football. I am really faster than everybody. And I can go very, very fast on mine scooter. But I can go more than one hundred fast on mine tricycle. And even faster on mine scooter.
Love you, good bye,
Owen

Dear Silas,
I like you, but I don't like it when Roland scrambles your crown up and ruins my life. I don't like it when you cry. Thank you for Knight Camp and getting to sleep over with you. Thank you for helping me and be happy. There's going to be another Knight Camp. You're going to read these when it's almost time to go, but not quite time to go. Thank you for making mine life and fixing mine knee every day.
Love,
Owen
P.S. Thank you for making me happy. Thank you for making Felix cry. Thank you for our pictures of "A" and "B."

Dear Aunt Martha,
Thank you for making me so happy to see you. Thank you for making me not going to naptime and having a rest time. Thank you for having mine life to be very happy and making me happy at your house. Tell Silas he has a green toy and sometimes I want to come to your house. And thank you for having mine life to be very happy and for being in my life. And God, thank you for having me up. Thank you for making me a piggy bank--but I don't have one! Thank you for having mine life to begin. And having time with me. Silas and James had rest time in the barn. And thank you for getting me to be happy. Thank you for having me to begin. Thank you for making a house. And making a light.
Love,
Owen

Dear Roland,
Thank you for having mine life to begin again. Thank you for being in mine life again. I have a great friend. Do you know who it is? It is a guy I like who is a girl. Know who it is? Aubrey! We need to get all of your books out of our house. We don't like them. I like your toy, but I don't like it when it makes noise. That's kind of scary. Thank you for making Jesus dead and making a pumfrey and a window thing and for making us...DOORS!!!
Love,
Owen

How They Wake Up

Getting the kids up in the morning is an irrevocable step. Whether you're ready for them or not, you're committing to looking after them for the foreseeable future, and especially for the initial 20 minutes of getting them all changed/pottied/fed breakfast.

It's important to note that only James is reliably able to tell whether or not he's just taken a nap or slept through the night, so as far as Owen is concerned he should be able to eat a breakfast meal every time he wakes up. If you try to explain to him that it's mid-afternoon, he'll just tell you that today was yesterday, or that next day isn't come yet, or that tomorrow was last night, or some similar Lewis Carrol nonsense. James is also the only child is can be counted on not to have peed in the night. You would think, given how many times we hear the bathroom door opening and closing during the night, that Owen would have sufficiently emptied his bladder to avoid any accidents. But we are still in a pretty unreliable cycle with him. We may need to just throw out his mattress at some point. And Felix, of course, is still in diapers. J thinks that Owen has regressed with staying dry through the night because he's sleeping that much harder after playing that much harder during the long, high-intensity summer days.

This theory would help to explain the other characteristic of Owen's waking-up routine--near drunken grogginess. Once he's awake, the child is a dynamo of movement and chatter. But if you have to wake him up he might not even recognize you. He'll suck his fingers and bury himself under the blankets--or he'll groan unintelligibly about carrying him downstairs and then curl up into a ball on the sofa until he's ready to start for real. He's sort of like a machine with only one very high intensity gear that just repeatedly stalls out until all of a sudden it's on ALL THE WAY. Felix is usually sweet and happy when you get him up. He doesn't make too much noise--just some of his low-voiced babbling and moaning, and when you walk into his room he's sitting in his crib and grinning at you, two teeth poking out of his little gums. He raises up his arms when you go to pick him up, and then he'll rest his head on your shoulder--his heart-melting little hug. His most regular start-of-the day position, though, is arching his head backwards. James and Owen both come in and pay their good mornings to him by standing on the side of his changing table, and he cranes back to look at them and giggle for them.

James is my favorite to get up, though. It's a little bit like getting an owl out of bed. You walk into his room, and his head pops up from the top bunk, glasses sitting crooked on his face. He changes himself into pajamas up there, and they're usually on backwards, or inside out, or both. And then he asks you in a quiet but rapid-fire voice whatever it is that he's been lying awake thinking about for the past hour.

"What was the score to the baseball game and who did the Red Wings play?"
"Do you think that today we can have pancakes for breakfast and have Nutella with them?"
"Are there still seven popsicles left in the freezer, or did you and Mommy eat some of them last night after we went to bed?"
"Is today the day that Miss Jane is going to come over for a visit, and do you think that we can schedule a playdate with Alexa?"
"How does the sun travel from East to West?"
"Do you want to hear some jokes that I read from my clubhouse magazine?"
"How many days until we camp out?"

It's usually better for him if Owen is sleep-drunk, because if Owen is also awake then Owen will immediately start talking in a much louder and more piercing voice, and then you can't hear anything James is saying. You just see an owlish looking six-year old with his hair sticking out in odd directions while the soggy three year old tells you that he was a good boy because he didn't get out of bed to play with toys except for three times, so can he please have some ice cream?

Getting them is an irrevocable step, but always an interesting one.

Felix's First Word

We think Felix may have figured out a first word.

Like his cousin Hayden, he seems to have figured out "Uh-oh."

Here are some real life situations where he's used it correctly:

Dropping a pen onto the floor repeatedly
Seeing a toy he wants on the floor while being held
Dropping the toy he wanted onto the floor
Eating rocks in the driveway
Tipping over a can of peanuts repeatedly
Getting ahold of a grownup's phone
Finding an adult who isn't willing to immediately pick him up
Finding one of Owen's matchbox cars unattended
Knocking computer parts off the desk
Pushing my phone off the sofa ledge
Tipping over a coffee cup
Falling over when standing up against someone
Ripping a dust jacket in half
Dropping my kindle onto the floor
Dropping my notebook onto the floor
Dropping an empty envelope onto the floor
Seeing James and Owen playing outside without him
Dropping pens onto the floor
Pushing food off the side of his tray
Dropping food into his lap
Getting wiped off with a wet paper towel after a meal
Ripping up a post it note that had a list on it
Pulling the soles out of Owen's boots
Being unceremoniously deposited on the carpet

Owen's Legs

Owen's legs hurt.

They hurt because his parents are trying to be healthy. And we try to be healthy by eating lots of vegetables and fruits and exercising regularly. And you can't really exercise regularly with young children except by exercising WITH the young children. This was simpler two years ago, before we had a Felix. We would strap James and Owen into the stroller and they would conk out into a semi-napping state as the miles went by, or perhaps they would bring books to look at or just talk to one another and point out neighborhood cats and dogs.

But then we had Felix. And now we don't have room in our double jogger. We briefly flirted with the idea of putting all three kids in strollers (we do have a single jogger still), but James is really much to big to be pushed around anymore, much as he'd be fine with it. So instead, he's learned how to ride his bicycle. He's very fast, he doesn't easily get tired, and he seems to have a pretty good head about safety.

So Felix can go in a stroller, and James can go on his bike while we run. Except, of course, there's Owen.

Owen won't go in the stroller anymore. That's for babies. But he isn't big enough to ride a bike. He's pretty good on his scooter, for a three-year old. But a three-year old on a scooter absolutely cannot keep up with a six-year old on a bike, not matter how fast he things he is. (He is, in his own words "faster than speed.") And so Owen tires himself out trying to keep up with James, and then he whines about how tired he is and how his legs hurt and he needs someone to carry him.

But even when you offer to let Owen ride in the stroller (once he's tired himself out) he'll back out of the agreement once he realizes that he's going to have to sit with the baby instead of riding with the big kid. He needs to scooter like James. And everything is a race.

Our pre-run preparations have turned into battles. Here's how it usually goes.
Adults: "We're going to go for a run in a few minutes!"
Owen: "Outside?"
Adults: "Yes!"
Kids: "Yay!"
James: "Can I ride my bike?"
Adults: "Yes."
Owen: "Can I ride mine scooter?"
Adults: "No. This time you need to ride in the stroller because of--"
Owen: "WAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Adults: "--but don't you remember last time when you crashed three times and said you were so tired that you were going to sleep by the side of the road and--"
Owen: "I NEED TO RIDE MINE SCOOOOOOOOTER! LIKE JAMES!"
Felix: <eating paper he found on the floor>

We were always conspicuous when we went on family runs. But now you'll definitely hear us before you see us. And we're sorry, whether it's for Owen's legs hurting because of how tired he is, or whether it's because he's been unjustly imprisoned in the stroller like a baby. We're just going to keep on running.

Because we're going to be healthy even if it kills us.