A travel miracle

Hello from Vancouver. Yes, we're on the road again. Tom has a grant to do research at the UBC library and Henry and I decided to tag along. So on Saturday we headed to the Ottawa airport for yet another cross-continental flight. Oh, but what a flight this turned out to be. Through a series of events so improbable in these days of airline-induced misery you may doubt the authenticity of my tale, we won the travel lottery. I assure you that what you are about to read is true. It really happened. To us. Us!

The first leg of our trip (Ottawa to Winnipeg) was full. So full, in fact, that the check-in agent put each of us in different rows because there were no adjoining seats available. Interesting. "Hmmm--Which of these unsuspecting people milling around the gate will end up sitting next to Henry while Tom and I are relaxing in another part of the plane," I thought to myself. "I hope he or she likes to colour, and knows to make motorcycle noises when Henry straddles the arm rest, and isn't wearing clothing they care about." But I never got to see the lucky winner because we were paged soon after we got to the gate. The agent wanted to know if we'd be willing to give up our seats on the overcrowded Ottawa-Winnipeg flight and instead take the Ottawa-Vancouver direct flight that was leaving at the same time. We reluctantly agreed to shave 2.5 hours traveling time and a stopover from our trip. And when we found our seats on the new plane, we realized that not only had we been bumped up from a two-leg flight to a direct flight, we'd also been bumped up from coach to Executive Class (I guess the airline figured they owed us a little something extra because they had deprived us of our chance to see the Winnipeg airport, which by all accounts is lovely in the summer months.)

No other way to put it: a travel miracle. Four giant seats all to ourselves. So much leg room that Henry couldn't reach the seat in front of him to kick it repeatedly. Fresh fruit plate. Omelet and sausage breakfast. Bottomless coffee. And warm cookies and ice cream for snack. Sigh. We're ruined for coach forever.

So, great start to our trip. We'll be here for two weeks. I'm looking forward to spending time with old friends and family and seeing my old haunts. Well, I probably won't take Henry to the Ivanhoe, but there's other stuff we can do.

France, Part II: Issepts and environs

After three days in Paris (I wish we'd had at least one more) we headed south to meet up with our friends Jacob, Emily and Lev for a week in the Lot valley/Quercy region of Southwest France. Getting there required almost seven hours in a crowded, hot, stuffy, smelly, second-class rail car. Usually I enjoy riding the train, but in this case I was about ready to dive through the locked window when we finally pulled into Figeac. I could go on, but I'll leave it at this: in the summer months, tightly enclosed spaces housing individuals with questionable personal hygiene habits really should be air conditioned.

With that particular bit of travel hell out of the way, we rented a car and drove up to our sweet gite in the hamlet of Issepts. The gite (which I assume is French for "vacation house") was a big, fully renovated stone farmhouse in the rolling hills of the French countryside. Beautiful, and remarkably cheap. Our share of the one-week rental ran us about the same as what we paid for one night in a Paris hotel, so the gite seemed like a fantastic deal indeed. There was a huge yard with a slide that Henry and Lev loved, and the farmer next door parked his tractor right by road. Henry visited the tractor every day and even got to sit in the driver's seat once, so it was pretty much paradise for him.

It was pretty much paradise for us, too. Combine a beautiful setting with good friends, daily servings of the wonderful local cheeses, nice wine priced around 3 euros a bottle, crusty bread and ample chocolate, and you've got an ideal family vacation. Having a home base and a car let us shift our travels onto Toddler Time, and we were able to strike a nice balance between seeing the local sights and mellowing out at the house. (Of course for Jacob the cross-country coach, "mellowing out" includes 90 minute runs in the afternoon heat, return route unclear. Somehow he induced Tom to come with him more than once. I stuck with rosee in the shade.) Jacob's parents and a group of their friends were staying at an even nicer gite nearby, so we shared several meals with them and made use of the pool at their place.

There's not much to Issepts, but drive 45 minutes in any direction and you'll encounter plenty to see and do. Some of the highlights:

• Rocamador: A medieval village and cathedral built into a cliff face. Stunning views, lots of staircases. Besides the historical sites, the town is quite the tourist trap. We didn't go to the "Foret des Singes" (monkey forest), but we were tempted. Rocamador is also the name of a particularly delicious goat cheese made in the region.
• Peche Merle: A spectacular limestone cave featuring a series of pre-historic paintings. The only way to gain entry to the cave is to take a guided tour, which was less than ideal for us in two key ways. First, it was in French, and as it became painfully clear to me on this trip, I cannot understand spoken French. At. All. Second, the tour lasted almost an hour, and we couldn't leave the cave until it was over. That was the real problem. Keeping Henry in check for that length of time is no small feat, and he was in borderline tantrum mode by the time they let us out. Still, it's a remarkable site and I'm glad we went.
• Cahors and Figeac: These are two of the larger towns in the area, both featuring Medieval squares. Market day in Cahors was fun--lots of great produce. Our visit to Figeac for dinner one night almost ended in disaster when a wrong turn forced us to drive down a medieval alley so narrow we had bare inches of clearance from the stone walls on both sides of the car. If we had gotten stuck the only way out would have been to smash the windshield and crawl through. Luckily Tom and Jacob were able to maneuver their respective cars to safety. The moral of the story: Park and walk. If you're in a place with a medieval road system, park and walk.

Unfortunately I ran low on memory for my digital camera soon after we left Paris, so most of my photos from these day trips are on as-yet-undeveloped film. We thoroughly enjoyed our time in the region, and if it wasn't so far away we'd already be signed up to do it again next year. It's a great place for a vacation.

France, Part 1: Paris avec le petit garcon

The only truly useful advice one could give about intercontinental travel with a two-year-old is, “don’t do it.” Seriously—when your beloved child is of an age when an afternoon outing to the park requires the logistical acumen of General Patton, you’d have to be an idiot (or simply childless) to think that the daylong flights, sightseeing expeditions in unfamiliar territory and steady stream of new foods that constitute a big trip won’t push your patience and your kid’s temper to the brink of Total System Failure. There were definitely moments when Tom and I wondered what the hell we were thinking when we decided to haul Henry across the Atlantic so we could enjoy France. But there were many more moments when we had a lot of fun. And part of the fun was thinking, “man—I can’t believe we’re doing this! Who brings their 2-year-old to Paris? We soooo crazazzy!” Really, it was great.

That said, traveling with Henry meant we had to make a lot of compromises about the kinds of things we could see and do, especially in Paris. For example, we did not go to a single museum or gallery. I never stepped foot in a women’s boutique of any kind. There was no go-for-broke, pay-it-off-in-monthly-installments 5-course meal at a Michelin starred restaurant. And we saw only a small portion of the city because the massive, maze-like Metro stations were a nightmare to deal with while wrangling Henry (current motto: “No help!). And when on foot, we had to make frequent stops so Henry could chase pigeons, follow a new pattern in the brick walkway, or jump on a storm drain. (I must say, there are a lot of pigeons in Paris. Big ones. Also, many, many storm drains. Not sure if I’d have noticed if it wasn’t for Henry. Take that, Louvre!)

Basically, serendipity kept us sane. A few times we decided to see something specific and actually made it there (Le Jardin de Luxembourg, the Eiffel Tower), but mostly we simply set out from our hotel in the Les Halles district with a vague goal to go here or there and then just let the day unwind as it would. After all, it’s not like you have to dig deep to find ways to entertain yourself in Paris. When we got tired we’d hit a café where Henry sipped “chocolat chaud pas de chaud” (the closest approximation we could get to chocolate milk) while Tom and I had wine and cheese. I was always happy to eat the leftovers when Henry didn’t finish his chocolatine pastry. And every bistro we entered reacted like it was perfectly normal to bring a small child into the establishment. No fawning over-attention, no looks of horror and dread, even when we went for sushi at 11 p.m. (We were pretty jet-lagged the first few days. And, weirdly enough, we had sushi twice in Paris. It was really good).

I could go through what we did point by point, but I think it's better just to say we enjoyed being in the city, eating good food, drinking nice (and cheap!) wine and doing what we could do, given our less-than-flexible travelling companion. Henry had fun, too, but at least once a day he’d start chanting, “home, home, home, home.” It was a little humbling. Kids just don’t like being taken out of their element, even if it does mean they get to eat chocolate buns for breakfast and ride a merry-go-round first thing every morning (there was one right by our hotel). The country was more enjoyable for him. I’ll post something about that within a few days.

France photos

Now posted. Enjoy.

Back home

We returned from our excellent adventure in France yesterday. It's going to take me awhile to write up an account of our trip, and in the meantime I have to do things like buy groceries, unpack and relax a bit. So, no ETA on the writeup. But here's a teaser photo of the three of us cruising the Seine to keep you interested.