Til then – there’s no place like home!

Emma and I have decided that we like Bruges best of all the places we’ve been. The city of Bruges contains everything that is lovely and good in the world – great buildings, beautiful weather, charming canals, shopping, delicious food, chocolate shops and fritteries, horse-drawn carriages, and bikes galore.  Nearly everyone speaks English and Dutch, and we were told by our cab driver not to speak French there. Plus, it’s only half an hour from the seashore. So to Bruges we went, for several very lovely days. We stayed this time in a hotel on the very outskirts of town, simply because we had the car and the hotel had a heated swimming pool. For kids, vacation is no vacation if there’s no swimming pool, so the girls were thrilled. We headed up there on Monday and spent the afternoon in Bruges, shopping and eating, then the evening in the swimming pool. On Tuesday we headed to the beaches of Oostende, which is a pretty interesting little city in its own right, and had a lovely day at the beach and a lovely meal at a cafe right on the seashore. Wednesday was another day in Bruges (after sleeping very late, o glory!) where we visited our favorite tea shop once again and secured cookies at our favorite cookie shop.

A word here from Stephanie: “I am not a big cookie eater. I didn’t care about cookies when we first went in to this shop; but when Jennifer bought that first assortment they were SO GOOD I could not stop eating them.” These are really fantastic cookies; I think the woman must spike them with crack or something. We’ve been to her shop three different times now to get cookies, and she makes the best macaroons I have ever tasted (my favorite!).

We also found a bookstore with a very tiny English language section (thank god!! I have been without anything to read since our second day here) and I bought three books, a John Grisham, a Jennifer Weiner which I finished yesterday, and Mutiny on the Bounty which dad is just finishing and I plan to take on the plane. Then on Thursday we spent another fine day at the beach and headed back to Lasne. A word about the beach: Does it have sand? Yes. Does it have waves? Yes. Then it is a beach. Can you get in the water? Yes, if you are a polar bear. We did attempt it both days but managed to stay in around ten minutes both times. The first day we ended up making a massive sand castle, and the second day we dug trenches, hunted shells, or (me) sat on rented lounge chairs under a rented umbrella and read my new Jennifer Weiner book. (And ate frittes from a stand nearby, of course.) The architecture is very interesting – mix of old stone four-stories with 70′s block apartment buildings and some new construction. Also, there are row upon row of little sheds, which I think people must own and store their stuff in and possibly sleep in at the beach. And there’s a rental shop which rents lounge chairs, director’s chairs, umbrellas and wind screens made of canvas. We didn’t see any need for one but most people there had them. The first day I got sunburned, so the second day I rented the umbrella and the wind was chilly enough that i had to put on my pants & shirt to keep from freezing in the shade, which sort of defeated the whole purpose I thought.

When we got home yesterday we were all wiped out from the sun and wind and car trip, so pretty much lay where we fell. We roused enough to eat sandwiches, and I found a TV Guide Channel special on YouTube re: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, so Emma, Morgan and I crowded around the computer to watch it and then it was bedtime. Now today we’re doing last minute things, packing & sorting so we can head out to London tomorrow for our one-day whirlwhind before heading home (finally!) on Sunday.

Yes, three weeks of vacation is great. But three weeks of vacation in a very small house, sleeping in non-beds most of the time, getting sick of each other, not having any freedom to go here or there (dad won’t let us drive the car because it’s a standard and people here drive crazy), not having any real _down_ time or time away from the constant demands of the kids – need to be fed, need to be fed, need to be told to brush their teeth/hair/take a shower/eat something, dammit! etc. – anyway, it all adds up  to looking forward to getting home on Sunday.

I doubt I’ll have a chance to post any more so…cheers! Thanks for reading.

We returned from Paris last weekend pretty worn out from our exhausting sightseeing schedule and our nights of fitfull sleep – that is one NOISY city. I would recommend to people planning a trip to Paris that, unless you are very comfortable sleeping with earplugs, if you can possibly afford it you should get one of those “Americanized” hotel rooms that has air conditioning. Otherwise, with the windows open all night, it is very noisy and hard to sleep (and with them shut, it is really too warm to sleep). It rained quite a bit while we were in Paris, but on the days that it rained the most we were hardly bothered because we were zipping from one place to another via the underground Metro. Can I just pause here to admire the Metro? We were turned on to the Carte Navigo pass by one of the Rick Steves travel guides, and it was a fantastic bargain. The Metro itself is fantastically convenient – we were never, ever more than ten minutes’ walk from a Metro station, and I would say even that long of a hike was rare. The system is fantastic and it goes absolutely anywhere you would want to go. Another recommendation I would make is that Paris sightseers try to find a hotel along the Yellow (1) line, as that’s the line you’ll be spending the most time on to see the attractions and it’s also a line that runs east-west in Paris and connects to every other line you’ll need to be on. Once you’ve gotten the pass and used the subway once or twice, it is very easy to use even if you don’t speak the language – the signs are very clear and helpful. I’ll be writing a post about the Paris subway on my work blog so I don’t want to dwell on it here, but it was truly amazing.

I’ve already mentioned some of the sights we’ve seen, but I neglected to mention one of our favorite – Sainte-Chappelle, which was built to house the Crown of Thorns brought to Paris by Louis IX (the crown itself is, apparently, kept in the Notre-Dame treasury and only shown during Lent). Pictures absolutely cannot convey the extreme beauty of this place. It looks very plain outside and even downstairs, but because we were there, it was covered by the Paris Museum Pass (another great bargain), and it was the chapel built to honor Saint Louis, Stephanie and I decided to take a peek. We were so glad we had; I hadn’t really read much about it and so was completely unprepared for the literally breathtaking splendor of this place. If you are going to Paris, I would put that near the top of the list of must-see sights. It’s housed within the Palace of Justice, which also served as the Revolution’s headquarters, and so you can also tour the Conciergerie (where Marie Antoinette, among others, was imprisoned) and the Palace if you’re so inclined (we were not, and just as well).

Paris was a difficult city for us. We liked the architecture and the amazing history, the statutes and the churches, but were surprisingly uninspired by some of the art. We also didn’t have a ton of luck with the food, partly because of where we were eating I think, partly because there wasn’t a whole lot that the kids liked, and so we were constantly worried about how to feed them. But I was rather disappointed overall with the food experience and I would definitely say that you need to come prepared to dine late (hard to do with kids), spend plenty of money, and take lots and lots of time to eat. A blog post in response to this pretty timely Slate magazine article (which I could find the blog post link) fairly well summed up my view on dining with kids in Paris: Sometimes, you just want to feed everyone and get on with your day. That’s how, oh cliche of cliches, we ended up dining not once or even twice but three times at McDonald’s while in Paris (once just for actual American-style coffee, but still!). In my defense, if you don’t pick the exact right time to be hungry, then you don’t get to eat. There are sandwich stands everywhere, but the sandwiches are premade and many have ingredients on them that the kids don’t like. For instance, Emma has discovered in herself a love of tomato, basil, and mozarella sandwiches, and she even enjoyed one with the additional of Chevre (which gags me). But Morgan doesn’t eat ham or tomato, and therefore wiped out nearly every sandwich available. Emma, meanwhile, doesn’t eat ham or onions. You have two non-ham-eating kids, and you wipe out most of the affordable options at cafes as well – the Croque is everywhere, and the Croque has ham. And nobody wants to take the ham off the croque. So. How many times can you make your kids eat turkey-with-the-tomato-picked-off sandwich for lunch? Morgan doesn’t eat salad; Emma doesn’t eat salad with herring on top (or any other kind of fish). And on it goes. And maybe this is making them sound like picky eaters, but they really aren’t – both will eat sushi, couscous, Chinese, Mexican, Italian; both try everything we tell them to try and like a surprising amount of it. It’s just…neither wants duck, or snails, or pasta served with a raw egg on top. And who honestly expects that, when they order pasta carbonara, that it’s going to have a whole…raw….EGG on top?? Of course Rick Steves recommends a thorough discussion with the waitstaff ahead of time about each dish one is considering, but there’s the language barrier. So you see, it’s just a hard city to navigate, food-wise, with only minimal rudimentary French and kids. Plus they are hungry every frigging three hours, and so it seemed like Paris was just one endless search for food. Hence, McDo’s.

Now let’s talk about the infamous rudeness of the French people. Most of the people we encountered were as friendly and helpful as you’d expect (i.e. service workers are generally more likely to be surly everywhere; museum docents very helpful and thus surprising if they are rude). We had two exceptions – the ticket agent in the first Metro station we visited, who was very unfriendly but managed to point us to the right station to purchase our Carte Navigo passes; and a woman at a boulangerie who lectured Morgan (our ten-year-old) on her French. Morgan, after having greeted the woman properly, said, “Je voudrais un chocolate eclair, s’il vous plait” but that wasn’t good enough for the Baker Bitch. “WE say ‘un eclair chocolate,’” she snidely lectured. “If you are going to be in France, you should learn to speak French properly.” If I’d have been there, I would have said, “De là où nous venons, les personnes de service traitent leurs clients avec bonté, vous chienne uppity,” and left, but I wasn’t; and apparently that was the only patisserie open at the time when chocolate eclairs were desperately needed. So outside of those two encounters, no real problems. One thing, though, is that I did almost all of the talking outside of the very large tourist attractions where everyone obviously spoke English. And rather than ridiculing my pathetic French, people were very kind and helpful and we usually managed to communciate. My dad said he’s heard that if you even attempt to speak the language, people are much more friendly to you and will switch to English straight away; but if you don’t even try they will likely be less helpful and less likely to speak English with you (particularly waiters). That’s been his experience thus far, not speaking a word of French. I’ve read the same thing, and think that’s probably true with some people, so speaking even a little bit of French certainly helped our experience. He’s been in Paris several times on business and never had the pleasant experience that we had at nearly every cafe and restaurant; so I think he’s decided to learn at least a few rudimentary French phrases.

All in all, Paris was definitely worth seeing - and the shopping is phenomenal if you’re into designer clothing & accessories – but I think I would only visit again with several conditions. One, I would have to have an air-conditioned hotel along the yellow (1) Metro line. Two, I would travel with no more than one other companion. Three, I would budget around 20 Euros per meal per day to ensure that I can eat when I want, what I want, and have some left over for pastry. I also think Paris would be much nicer in the off season, so I would ensure that my travel buddy enjoyed cool, rainy weather as much as I do. Things I’m glad I did but wouldn’t do a second time – Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower, the Denon Wing in the Louvre (outside the sculptures, I loved those), Centre Pompidou. Things I’d do again, especially during the low season: Orangerie, Sainte-Chappelle, Rodin. I wish I’d gotten to the Catacombs tour, but I wouldn’t go back just for that, and would have loved to see Sacre Coeur and several other museums, including the Army Museum, but all in all am very content with my first – and perhaps only – visit to Paris.

So Wednesday, we headed to the Centre Pompidou to see some crazy modern “art” (I put the quotes because really, a video up someone’s nose with a breathing-and-heartbeat soundtrack is art?), then everyone else headed back to the hotel for a rest while I rode the subway up to the Tuileries and spent the afternoon wandering in the garden, through the Place de la Concorde, and into the Orangerie to see Monet’s Lympheas. Then we headed out to the Eiffel Tower, and the girls & I waited in the line to go all the way up, which I am surprised to say, was totally worth it.

Yesterday we had a turbo day, which included the morning at the Musee Rodin (LOVE the garden there, and had a great meal in the cafe, very reasonable prices and kid-friendly food, which is hard to find in Paris even if your kids eat nearly everything), the afternoon at the Louvre, and then shopping in the early evening. Stephanie was so sad that we didn’t make it to Louis Vuitton before they closed that we got up early this morning to head back before our checkout time. Mom, Morgan, Stephanie and I went out and squeezed in two last hours of shopping; Mom and Stephanie ended up with very nice bags (not Louis Vuitton!), Morgan got herself a purple beret, and I got a nice watch and a pashmina. Now Dad is pacing, wanting to go get the car so we can check out 37 minutes early, so I have to log. I’m hoping to have time to go to his office sometime tomorrow and upload our Paris pictures – we’ve got some great ones!

p.s. David A., if you’re reading this – we saw your favorite painting at the Orsay! I’m emailing you a photo tomorrow.

p.p.s. to Court & Todd – And I have a transit blog post ready to go too, just need to be able to send w/photos!

The three museums in the Hamlet were pretty interesting. The first is a dusty old wax museum full of dusty old (but authentic!) uniforms, swords, hats, etc. on the dusty wax figures. A narration in three languages tells you whose dusty uniform you’re viewing at that moment. The most interesting thing in there is a wax cast of Napolean’s face that (if my rudimentary French is correct) was taken during his autopsy. It’s in a dark room lit from above and is totally creepy. I took a picture, should have posted it. (Would have, if I’d had time to blog when I was uploading the pics.) The second museum is the Panorama – basically a big round building with a balcony. You go stand on the balcony and there’s a 360 degree mural painted all the way around, with signs showing what’s where on the battlefield. It’s a little hokey, what with the screaming and the canons (there’s a soundtrack) but it does give a good sense of what the battle looked like, where everyone was, etc. The third museum is actually the entrance to the Butte – you can’t climb up the 225 steps to the lion without going through the building first. It consists of a very hokey “animated” show of a 3D model with subtitles in three languages, then a film that is actually excerpts from a 1970 movie called “Waterloo.” I enjoyed the film the most, I think, even though I was quite distracted upon realizing that Wellington was actually Captain von Trapp! Who knew.

Kidding aside, the film looks great and I’m going to buy it when I get back home, to watch the whole thing.

We climbed the Lion’s Butte – the girls, myself, and even Dad – and took in the view from up there, including the view of his office just barely visible (a converted barn) off in the distance. The breeze was lovely and we climbed back down again. (Why? Because it was there, I suppose.)

Today we traveled to Ghent and explored the city, starting with the Castle of the Counts, the Gravensteen. It was built by Count Phillip of Alsace in the 1100s, modeled after fortresses he saw during the Second Crusade. It is huge, grey, crazy, full of instruments of torture, winding staircases, and treacherous walkways. It was totally awesome, and it sits up against one of the city’s canals. We also visited one of the churches there, St.  Bavo’s, and marveled at Jan van Eyck’s The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (well, Emma and I did, anyway). Another enormous church, we also explored the crypt while a choir was practicing, and the tombs while a man played the harp. Seems we have our own personal soundtrack at any church we visit. We wished we had more time in Ghent but dad and Stephanie both wanted to get home to watch the end of the Wimbeldon tournament (Roddick vs. Federer) which, in fact, just ended as I began this blog entry, so we were back in plenty of time.

Tonight we’re packing to head to Paris tomorrow for a five-day whirlwhind of all the usual tourist spots, and hopefully turning in early (though that’s not looking very promising – Morgan just picked up a Belgian chocolate, smeared it with Nutella, and ran off laughing with chocolate all over her face so I wonder how soon we’ll be getting her to bed; though Emma is twirling her hair already). Our hotel in Paris has WiFi so hopefully we’ll be able to post from there as well.

*Gent or Ghent, Tom Tom and the maps spell it both ways, so who knows?

Discussing it later over tea, everyone agreed that the music added something special to our first church visit in Europe. Emma and Stef, who both describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” were both incredibly moved by the church; Emma so much that she left a note in the visitor’s book about the altar.  “It’s like in the movies, whenever anything good is going to happen, and the music comes on and you know it’s good,” said Morgan. Our own personal soundtrack.

The sites and guidebooks all say “366 steps” but I don’t think that really conveys the spirit of the thing. Those 366 steps are stone at first, exactly the kind of winding, tapered stone steps that spiraled up the inside of the tower in Castle Beersel. (When I say tapered, they are triangular with the wide part being at the outside of the stairway and the narrow part towards the center, tapering to a point to spiral up.) But past the Treasure Room, the steps are wooden, extremely twisty and very narrow – with often no handholds other than a thick rope that runs down the central support column around which the stairs wind. And did I mention steep? And that there are 366 of them?

The girls, of course, scampered up like monkeys – the goal being To Get To The Top and look out. I, not being an Olympic athlete and wanting to enjoy the experience, took a little more time, stopping at each landing and viewing the historic artifacts they have on display there (like a chest from the 12th century that was used to secure the city’s important documents). I paused in the stairway whenever it was wide enough, to take pictures and let groups of French schoolchildren stream down past me (did I mention people are trying to come down at the same time you’re trying to come up, and there seems to be no etiquette to this at all, as people squeeze past each other?). I had about two dozen more steps to go to the top when I hear the girls’ clattering feet coming back down, and hear Emma saying, “No, Morgan, I really have to pee!” This wouldn’t be half so annoying if we hadn’t JUST come from the tea shop, where she refused to use the bathroom.

They slid to a stop when they saw me, sweaty and aghast, and Emma said, “No, really.” I asked (a bit plaintively) “How far am I from the top?” but Emma wasn’t having any of it. “Not all that close, actually,” she said. I couldn’t let them go down & out without me, because we hadn’t noted the bathrooms before we went up. And Stephanie was off somewhere taking pictures, so I thought, so I couldn’t count on her to find Emma again.

And so, I turned around and went back down. Now I can say with certainty that I will never know the sense of accomplishment of climbing those 366 steps, or what the breeze feels like from the top of the Bruges Bell Tower. Emma was chastised somewhat severely, but was indifferent, as she’d just found the bathroom she was looking for and the thirty cents to use it. And we all learned an important lesson – from now on I will force them into the bathroom and squeeze them before climbing 366 steps up to anything.

So on the plane over here, we were discussing communcation problems. In the large cities, of course, you can assume that most people speak English – but what’s the fun in that? I told my family I didn’t speak enough French (or remember enough from my elementary and high school classes) to be able to communicate worth a damn. Since arriving, however, I’ve actually been amazed at just how much francais I can actually parle, now that we’re here – and more is coming back every day. I think part of it is confidence – easier every time, hardest the first few stumbling times- part of it is just being able to recognize & respond to what people are saying to me (as opposed to having to dig a phrase or word out of my memory banks), but part of it is inexplicable. Maybe there’s some survival skill that allows us to pull up an entire portion of memory we had otherwise forgotten, when it’s a question of survival? Who knows.

Stephanie, on the other hand, who actually has a knack for language, keeps jumbling her rudimentary French with Spanish, with which she is pretty fluent. (She took Spanish classes in high school, but really learned how to speak it working at the Portland McDonald’s, where most of her employees were hispanic.) It’s funny, but it definitely does get the point across because most of the people we’ve interacted with are staggeringly multi-lingual. I wish, oh how I wish, I could speak multiple languages as fluidly as these people seem to do as a matter of course.

I was getting pretty comfortable with my French when I was able to go to the little podunk train depot, ask all the right questions (what time is the train? which platform does it leave from? how long ahead should I be here? do I have to transfer trains?) and actually get us to Bruges yesterday – where the cab driver immediately responded to my “Bonjour, monsieur!” with “We hate French here. Everyone talks English in Bruges.” Oookay, merci. Jerk.