European Vacation - Paris Recap

Paris is incredible. 

As tourists, we are constantly at risk of the Disney World effect - that sense of trying to fit everything in but there's so much to do and see, that you actually burn out instead of existing in the joy. We managed to avoid the burnout despite how much we did every day. I think it's because part of the "doing" was sitting at cafes, taking naps, having a wine and cheese picnic in our room, and wandering endlessly without agenda. Each day, we'd have one scheduled thing, like a museum or food tour. The rest of the day we'd figure out as we go. We took the time to notice the height of the doors and the color of pigeon feet. We counted the rats in the park at dusk. We picked through vintage clothing stores and walked for miles every days. There was plenty of stuff we didn't get to see (like the Catacombs) but that gives us all a reason to come back and do it again.

Where we stayed

AirBnB in the 7th - it was perfectly fine and functional, in a great location steps from Rue Cler, a great little street with cafes, markets, and gelato. About a 10-minute walk from the Eiffel Tower.

La Chambre du Marais - We splurged a bit for our final night in Paris and moved to Le Marais to see another part of the city. This place was perfection. Also, they upgraded our room when we got there, so we extra liked them.

Eating in Paris

We opted not to pre-book restaurants in order to have a more free-flowing kind of vibe and that was definitely the right move. Everywhere we ate was excellent. Would it have been more excellent if we booked at the places everyone recommended? Maybe. But we'll never know and I'm fine with that. Thanks to the food tour of Montmartre, we got to sample the local chocolate, fromage and baguettes, and we stumbled upon the best croissants I've ever had at the bakery right across the street from our AirBnB. 

What stands out to me about eating in Paris is that everything is fresh and the ambiance brings out the flavors. Every piece of fruit we bought from a market was perfectly ripe. The cafes, each one looking like it's straight out of a movie set, allow for leisurely people watching and the gift of time to taste your food. 

What we did

Day 1:

We arrived in Paris by train and took the Metro to our AirBnb, where we had to follow a series of scavenger hunt steps to find the key in a lock box attached to a bike rack, put in a door code, climb 3 flights of stairs, and then wiggle the key for 10 minutes in the lock to get in. All part of the adventure.

After dinner, we wandered on over to the Eiffel Tower, which I really thought would be sort of cheesy because of how popular it is on souvenir change purses and t-shirts, but the impressiveness totally outweighed the cheese factor. We took our cues from the crowd and found a spot on the grass to wait for dusk when the tower would light up and the hourly twinkle would begin. It really is beautifully done and I'm sure a spectacular site from everywhere in Paris it can be seen.

Day 2:

We did an early tour of The Louvre called "Laughing Through the Louvre" with our guide, Cedric, who is part art historian and part comedian. I enjoyed his art history more than the comedy, mostly because I could only understand about half of what he said, but he ran us through the Louvre, taking side stairs and elevators that cut through the crowds, and explaining works of art that I never would have stopped to look at if he didn't point them out. Two hours was just enough for this intro to the Louvre kind of day.

We all agreed that our afternoon nap at the AirBnB during a heavy downpour was one of our favorite parts of the week. We maintained a rigorous pace throughout this trip, and the afternoon chill times we allowed ourselves were just as much a part of the experience as the sites and tours.

After rest hour, we walked and walked and walked along the Seine to the Latin Quarter for dinner, passing by all the fancy buildings, bridges, pillars, doors, light posts, and museums. It's incredible how many enormous buildings there are in Paris.

Day 3:

I woke up early and walked the Rue Cler before most of Paris was awake (shout out to Rick Steve's app which has free audio tours of various sites in Paris). I sat down at a cafe and drank coffee all by myself just as it started to pour down rain. Side note: it did that a lot on this trip. There were no full-day rainouts, but we got "stuck" at a cafe on more than one occasion and it was lovely to drag out our time talking, watching people and drinking coffee.

We headed over to Montmartre to meet our "Secret Food Tour" with Marcel, and this turned out to be our favorite tour of the week. Marcel grew up in this neighborhood and it seemed like he was taking us along for his daily shopping as we popped in and out of chocolate shops, fromageries, boulangeries, and whatever the word is for butcher. We sampled macarons and cheese in some places, and in others, he'd pick up ingredients for the meal we would share at the end of the tour in a "speakeasy" which was really just a wine cellar down a steep set of stairs through an unmarked door. The food, the company, and the vibe of this tour were unique and we really enjoyed it.

I have no idea what we did the rest of that day. It probably involved walking. And gelato.

The gelato shop around the corner from the AirBnB had a very cute scooper that was Cate's Parisian crush. We went back there 3 times as their wordless, eyelash-batting love affair unfolded. When in Paris...

Day 4:

This was supposed to be Stacey and Cate's departure day, but their flight was canceled and re-booked for the next day (yay!) so we got to spend a full day wandering around Le Marais, which was easily my favorite part of the city. Narrow streets, vintage fashion, interesting history, and the beautiful hotel we stayed in all contributed to a perfect ending to this trip.

This is also considered the Jewish section of Paris, where most of the Jews in Europe lived throughout history. We didn't get to any of the museums or synagogues that document the struggles of this community before and during the war, but you can see references to it everywhere, including the signs above doors that tell the story of the people who lived in those houses that were deported to concentration camps during the war.

We also walked over to Notre Dame, which is sadly surrounded by miles of scaffolding due to the devastating fire in 2019 that burned through the roof and damaged huge sections of this monumental church. They've done a nice job creating a narrative of the renovation on the walls surrounding the scaffolding, where you can read about the painstaking detail of rebuilding and repairing. Paris is no stranger to burning and destruction of property, and I'm sure this 5-year process will eventually become just a small paragraph in the long history of this city.

Day 5:

After spending the morning on a walk-about with the Waldmans, Tyler and I made the most of our final day in Paris with a trip to the Musee d'Orsay. I'm so glad we didn't skip this! We loaded up the Rick Steve's audio tour of the museum and powered through a tight 90 minutes, which is about all we had left in us at that point in the trip.

And then it was time to go!

European Vacation - Amsterdam Recap

The last time I was in Amsterdam was about 25 years ago when I lived in Germany for work. We'd take the train from Duesseldorf every so often for the sheer novelty of its sinful spectacle. I don't think we ever left the 3 blocks around the Centraal train station. This time was different.

Either the city itself, or my memories of it, seem a lot more clear. We explored miles of canals and roads that circle the busiest parts of the central area to find quiet cobblestone streets, hip coffee shops and boutiques, trendy second-hand stores, and oh so many bikes.

Bicycles are at the heart of Amsterdam's identity. Every person has one. They commute to work on them. They transport their kids in wagons attached to them. They put their groceries in the baskets on the front of them. The locals seem to have an innate feel for the flow of traffic and a deep respect for the sanctity of the bike lane. After riding a bike for 2 hours around Amsterdam, I can see why. Pedestrians are a real safety threat if they're not paying attention or wander too close to the red lanes. If one bike slams on the brakes, there's likely to be a pileup. While I love the idea of this mode of transportation, I don't know that I could ever feel comfortable navigating the city that way every day.

Away from the crowds (which isn't easy to do, by the way - there are as many tourists each year as there are residents of the city), there is a true sense of authenticity and beauty to this city. The houses are stacked side by side, leaning into each other for support, telling their stories through their unique markings, window styles, and rooflines. They are adorned by animal statues, shutters that identity their industry, and a stork on the house of the midwife. Some doors sit only feet above the waterline, right against the canal. Others are set back with a view of the many houseboats that line the canals, once a low-incoming housing option but now costing about a million Euros for a floating shack on the water.

While we only stayed for a day and a half, we easily could have spent a lot more time here.

Where we stayed

The Delphi Townhouse (in the southern part of the city)

What we ate (and drank)

This trip will be remembered lovingly for the coffee machine at the hotel that made the most perfectly frothed cappuccino. We drank a lot of coffee and talked about it endlessly. We took pictures of the coffee machines. I think Stacey hugged it goodbye when we left.

Really amazing avocado sandwiches at Munch, a little health cafe that could have been totally unmemorable except that it wasn't. Right near the hotel.

The Carter - Modern European - it was good. Steaks and burgers.

...and that was IT. How did we barely eat during 36 hours in Amsterdam? I don't know.

What we did

We arrived really late on Monday night and went straight to the hotel where we all stayed up until 1am adjusting to another time difference.

The next morning we wandered down Beethovenstraat, which has a bunch of cafes and boutiques. I scored a pretty leather jacket. We left Tyler at the hotel for some much-needed alone time and wandered through the Albert Crupys market and into the central area of Amsterdam. 

There, we met Tyler (who took an Uber from the hotel) and our bike guide, Ilya, and started off on a 2-hour death-defying bike tour of Amsterdam. I'm pretty sure Ilya told us a lot of things about Amsterdam, but mostly what I remember is white-knuckling the handlebars while we barely avoided getting hit by or hitting other bikers, pedestrians, cars, curbs, poles, dogs, etc. 

From there, we hopped on a canal cruise which was a lot more relaxing and full of history and interesting tidbits about the way the city was built and how it has grown.

On our last morning, we wandered through Jordaan, a section of the city that's full of international cuisine and vintage shopping and walked by the Anne Frank House (which seems way more commercialized than the last time I was there 20+ years ago. I think they've added on to the museum since then.) Regardless, we didn't book our tickets 2 months in advance, so we just stared at the front for a little while trying to soak in the stories and history within those walls and all around us.

A couple of stories and sites that stood out

During the war, they hid Jews in cages with the animals at the zoo because nobody would look for them there. We apparently rode by that Zoo, but I never looked up from the bike bath because I would have ridden into the person in front of me.

There are a lot of cranky people in Amsterdam - most of them in a hurry to get somewhere and/or over the age of 65. They find us tourists annoying and I GET IT. We really are. I would be that cranky person on the bike paths if I lived there. They long for the olden times when it was less crowded, but of course, there was also a ton of poverty and drug use then so we tourists aren't all bad.

A bunch of people accidentally drive into the canals every year, often while parallel parking right next to the edge. To prove it, on our last day, we saw a fire truck with a crane attached lifting a truck from a precarious position over the side of a canal wall. It was clearly not their first rodeo. We stood and gawked and took pictures, probably to the chagrin of the driver who stood nearby. A handful of people also drown in the canals each year - usually those who are drunk and peeing over the side of the canal during the winter. Cautionary tale.

European Vacation - London Recap

We started the first leg of this trip in a state of glee. There were a lot of belly laughs at somewhat inappropriate times (like afternoon tea) caused by somewhat inappropriate words (how else do you get a 14-year-old boy to laugh?). Our two days in London went fast but we packed a lot in and found our tempo as a travel group. Highlights were pretty predictable: Harrods, the Changing of the Guard, afternoon tea, a bit of rain, curry, and fish & chips.

Warning: The following will undoubtedly be very boring for anyone else to read, but I'm writing it down for my own memories and because my mom will want to know every single thing I did and ate.

Where we stayed

The Pelham Hotel in South Kensington

What we ate

Lebanese, Indian (Memories of India). Chinese. Croissants. Coffee. Dessert (El & N), and fish & chips. The Indian was really good. Nothing else was really that notable.

What we did

A walking tour of London with a guy named Will (not that Will) with a stroll through Green Park (possibly not the real name) which used to be a mass grave for plague victims, then to the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, then to Big Ben and Parliament. 

Afterward, we ate some deliciously crispy fish and chips and then went to Churchill's War Rooms, an underground bunker where Winston Churchill and a bunch of people directed the war while bombs went off overhead. You could almost imagine how intense that must have been in these windowless, airless rooms, somberly tracking air strikes and determining what to blow up next.

That night, we met cousin Deborah and Uncle Steve and Aunt Ellen and their friend, Nancy, for Indian food and then went back to their flat for a visit. It's so nice to see people you know in other countries.

The next day, we went to the Tower of London, where we rushed through a 2-hour wander of this incredible fortress with a salacious history of torture and beheadings. We didn't make it to the Crown Jewels since we had a tea time to get to, but it was well worth the history lesson we got from Beef Eaters who actually live right there within the walls. It's somewhat jarring to walk out of there and see the most modern architecture of the city directly across the Thames. 

One of those buildings they call the walkie-talkie building. Tyler claims that a YouTube video told him that the building had a design flaw that reflected the sun off of the angled windows to the street below, causing roads to melt and eggs to fry and they had to redesign the window angles to correct the problem. Cool story. Thanks, YouTube.

From there, we headed to afternoon Tea at 11 Cadogan Garden, a sweet little hotel in Chelsea with a sweet little afternoon tea. What started as a slightly awkward, slightly underdressed situation quickly turned into a raucous tea party with insulting attempts at British accents and hilarious discussions that would have made a proper tea-drinker blush and faint. We managed to not get thrown out and instead had a delicious blend of tea, sandwiches, scones, and pastries. Even Tyler liked the tea, declaring it "just like Bobba Tea without the Bobba". 

We made it to the train station just in time to be really late for a very long queue (that's "line" in British), which we were escorted through to the front and hopped the train just in time for a leisurely ride through the Chunnel and the countryside to arrive in Amsterdam around 11:30pm.

European Vacation - Setting the Scene

About a month ago, we realized that Tyler would need to leave camp halfway through the summer to attend his first football clinic for high school. We had already rented out our house in Westport for all of July, so we would be a little bit homeless between the 3-day clinic and August 1st, when we could move back into the house.

This homeless hiccup also corresponded with the achievement of a professional goal for which I've long been striving - to feel confident in the autonomy of the Experience Camps programs. I've always been surrounded by really great people, but there's been a lot of learning and growth and change in the last few years and I haven't felt ready to let those little birds fly all on their own in the summer months. Until now.

And so I called up my sister and asked, "do you want to go to Europe with me and Tyler?" and she said "yes, and Cate does, too". And then I waited a few days for her to change her mind but she didn't, so I booked our flights and a few hotels, and a month later, we were on our way! It probably sounds like I skipped a few steps or conversations, but I really didn't. I did, however, get an instant sense of excitement and worry all at the same time.

Excitement for this adventure! 

...For going to Europe, which I hadn't been to in DECADES. For doing something different and a little unexpected.

...For traveling with Tyler, who is 14 and pretty funny and eats all kinds of food and is interested in things (some things, anyway), and doesn't complain about walking long distances. And who has two other siblings that take a lot of my attention when we're all together, so we haven't really been alone since 2010 when his sister was born.

...For traveling with my sister, Stacey, who makes me laugh until I cry, and is up for anything, and who I haven't traveled with since my junior year of college when she met me in Spain after I studied abroad. That was our first time really getting to know each other away from our parents and our entire adult relationship was built from that trip. 

...And for traveling with my niece, Cate, who I have loved like my own child since she was born - before I had kids of my own that kept me from being more present in her life these last 14 years - and who is now a junior in college like I was when I last traveled with her mom! (holy shit, I just realized that as I was writing this). 

And yeah, a little bit worried. I'm not even sure why. Maybe for breaking the mold of our usual family vacation by splitting up the group. Or maybe for the unknown outcomes of mixing 4 different travel personalities together. Or maybe because I can't see in the dark and I'd have to depend on other people for 10 days straight. Or maybe it's just the idea of having to figure everything out - like how to pay for the Tube, and how to get from the train station to the hotel, and which shoes to pack.

We are halfway through the trip as I write this and it has been flawless. 

We've wandered through the streets of London and Amsterdam. We've delighted in every interesting bit of history, every morsel of food, and every piece of architecture. We have laughed until our bellies hurt. We've had a few snippy moments of irritation that quickly pass - always directed at our children (obviously). We are acutely aware of how special it is that we're here. Together. 

And now we will spend four days eating cheese...

All of the details on London, Amsterdam, and Paris to follow.