THE ITALIAN FINALE

R O M E , I T A L Y

My beautiful cousin gave us a wedding card with a quote from Lewis Carol written on it. “The best gift you could have given her was a lifetime of adventures,” it said. A lovely little line from Alice & Wonderland. And as we close this part of the trip it comes to mind, because when I married Brad it is what I knew I would be getting. It’s what I know I’ll continue to get for the rest of my life.

One of the very best things about my husband is he always does what he says he will do. When he said he wanted to race to 2700 miles across the country on his bicycle with no assistance (something that sixty percent of the people who attempt drop out of), I knew he would finish. When he said he wanted to start a compliance company from Montana (something that made everyone in the industry he pitched the idea to balk) there was no doubt in my mind he would be successful. When he said he would figure out how to run that business from Europe so we could whisk our kids around from country to country showing them this big ol’ world I knew that we’d do it. The man worked so hard the entire time we’ve been here. He’s been on calls most nights until 3 or 4 in the morning. He’s only taken two days off. He’s kept his commitment to his company and to me and to our babies because he always does. And honey, I just want to take a moment to say thank you for everything. This has been so so truly incredible, and possible because of you.

We’ve been in Italy for 3 weeks now, and I think we did a good job of saving the best for last. It’s been by far the easiest and most welcoming country we’ve visited with children. In France I often felt as if I was being judged for bringing the boys into a restaurant. I could feel people roll their eyes at me when there was any display of crazy in public. In Italy I felt like I was traveling with two of the most precious jewels to have ever graced humanity (which is the truth of course). Women would coo as we walked by. Old men stopped what they were doing and came over to admire them. Everyone we passed touched their hair and threw out Italian phrases of admiration “Che belle Bambino” “Bellissimo!” Broken glassware at restaurants was met with chuckles and head rubs. On the metro, when I was trying to keep them from climbing the poles and causing a ruckus, people just smiled. “Children are the same everywhere,” a kind stranger said to me with a grin.

We spent the first week in a sleepy little town called Lesa that sat on the corner of a giant lake. It was off season and therefore mostly deserted, but we played at the shore and enjoyed the quiet and had a few beautiful meals at the only restaurants open in town. Then we caught a train to Rome and spent a little over two weeks eating and drinking and dancing our way through the the ancient ruins.

I don’t quite know another way to put it except that I freakin loved Rome. I loved walking through the crumbling history that fills the city. That everything feels old and a little gritty. I loved watching the people - the way Italians speak with their hands, the inflection with their voice when they yell lovingly at each other across the table while passing the bread. I loved eating under the outdoor awnings at all the of the twinkly restaurants with their red and white checkered table cloths. I loved their holy-like reverence for cheese and tomato sauce and pasta. I loved that every slice of pizza I ate felt like heaven my mouth. But most of all I think I loved that they loved my babies. I just felt comfortable and welcome everywhere. Like I was part of a family. And when you’re so far away from all that is familiar, and spending a huge amount of your time navigating foreign cities by yourself with two wild children, that is a pretty great feeling.

Our original plan was to head south for Christmas and stay in Sicily until our visa ran out but instead we’ve decided to throw in the towel a few weeks early and head home. I haven’t felt great since I got sick in England - have had some weird tingly feelings in my hands and legs and recently started waking up with my arms completely asleep every morning. And while I hope I’ve just got some weird long covid or carpal tunnel shit going on that will eventually go away, I will feel a lot better being in a place I can get it all checked out. Plus it just seems like pretty good timing for us overall. We’re all a little tired. I can tell Brad’s ragged from burning the midnight oil. Ketch for the very first time asked if we could go home. I could sure as hell use a babysitter. And while I’m sad to leave Italy, I also know it will always be there. We’ll go back someday. Maybe with some teenage boys and bikes in tow. But for now I think it will be pretty darn nice to go home and get some R&R with our families for a quick minute. To drink coffee from a familiar mug and take a breath. We’ve still got some time until our house is finished and our plan was to head to Guatemala in February, but it all feels a bit up in the air at the moment. We’ll just see what happens.

As I sit here writing this blog on our plane back to JFK, it’s hard to even put down in words all the feelings. I’m sad our time in Europe is over. I’m relieved to be going home. I’m filled to the brim with gratitude for this little slice of time with our family, for the opportunity to do something that felt so significant together. Eight countries, three strollers, hundreds of trains and trams and busses. The things we’ve seen, the moments we’ve shared, the food we’ve eaten, the stories we now have to tell. It was so fun and so hard and so beautiful and so so good. Backpacking through Europe with a five and two year old was certainly some kind of crazy, but it was also some kind of wonderful, and I’m going home with a pocket full incredible memories that I know I will always hold dear. So cheers, Brad Burgtorf - we freakin’ did it. Another adventure in the books.

L E S A , I T A L Y

L E S A , I T A L Y

R O M E , I T A L Y

R O M E , I T A L Y

R O M E , I T A L Y

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R O M E ., I T A L Y

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F L O R E N C E , I T A L Y

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F L O R E N C E , I T A L Y

S A C R O B O S C O , I T A L Y

S A C R O B O S C O , I T A L Y

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FRANCE ROUND DEUX

C H A M O N I X , F R A N C E

I have a thing for the chimneys in France. The way so many of them reach out of the beautiful old buildings into the cotton candy clouds at sunset. It makes you feel cozy and romantic and maybe like when the wind blows through them it could whisper to you stories that rose from their hearths long ago. Nostalgic for something you’ve never really known. Amazing how something as weird as a chimney can do that.

After leaving Scotland, we caught a few trains back down to France and stayed in the city of Lyon which served as a nice home base for a handful of day trips down to the French Rivera. We smelled a lot of lavender and toured a lot of castles and ate a lot of great food and then caught a few more trains that wound right up the sides of the Swiss alps and into the most absolutely epic ski town I have ever visited, Chamonix.

As per usual it was equally exhausting and exhilarating. To tell you the honest to god truth, I am freakin whooped. But also as per usual there were so many moments that made it all worth it. Here are a few of ‘em.

There was the first day in Lyon. Strolling through the open air market, holding juicy red tomatoes to my nose and fumbling my way through sentences about their beautiful smell with old farmers in overalls and colorful scarves and tortoise shell glasses. Being told by a man with kind crinkly eyes that I speak French well (which is absolutely one thousand percent false but made me smile all the same).

There was the morning we accidentally wandered into the Vieux district where the walls are high and the roads are crooked and little restaurants speckled with warm white lights line the streets. And it was a warm autumn day and we sat on a bench and ate melty ham and cheese sandwiches with sweet fig jam in the sunshine.

There was the night we ate dinner in a tiny bistro that had stone walls like the inside of a cave and was so crowded and loud that we spent the entire meal bumping elbows with our neighbors and scooching our chairs in and out for waiters. The food was mediocre but the music was loud and the conversation was louder and everything was buzzing and alive. And we drank wine and tried to figure out how to eat the shrimp Ketch ordered with their long tentacles and gooey eyeballs and laughed and laughed and laughed.

And the afternoon we spent in Annecy with its giant mountains and glacial lake and ice blue rivers that run through town and wrap around castles. Where flowers spill out of high shuttered windows and the the old streets look just like a movie set. And we played on the playgrounds and rode the carrousel and sipped espressos with Ketch when West passed out in the stroller. A rare and precious moment in a beautiful place alone with our biggest kid.

And there was the train ride home from who knows where one afternoon where we bought convenience store baguettes and cheese and salami and tiny bottles of wine and beer and I remember staring at my husband and my boys and looking out the window and thinking to myself, I’m pretty fucking certain it doesn’t get any better than this.

There was the day I thought it would be a good idea to take Ketch and West to a medieval town I had read about and ended up pushing the stroller a mile and a half into rural France and straight up a giant gravel covered hill. But when we finally reached it, after huffing and puffing and sweating and cursing under my breath for an hour and a half, we walked through the ancient stone gates and immediately understood why it had earned the title of “one of the most beautiful towns in France.” It was off season so we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves and the boys ran through the streets and traced their little fingers over the old stone walls and played in the gardens lined with grape vine covered lattices. And we sat and had hot cocoa at the only open cafe in town. Alone and together in awe.

There was the night (after a very long day) that Brad took bedtime duty and sent me down to the restaurant below our apartment. And I bellied up to a candlelit bar and sat by myself clinking large ice cubes around in my fancy french cocktail and watching fancy french humans enjoying their fancy French evening.

There was the trip up to Chamonix that felt like a page of the Polar Express brought to life - the one where the train wraps up that magical corkscrew mountain in the darkness. Except that it was daytime and you could see for miles and the four of us sat with our noses pressed against the cold windows gazing up into monstrous pointy peaks and down down down into the valleys below blanketed with pine trees dallopped with snow.

There was the gondola ride up to Flégère. Watching the boys look out the glass…watching Brad look out over what he loves most.

There was the night the giant snowstorm came. I had taken the boys swimming at the rec center in town. We bundled ourselves up and walked outside into a winter wonderland. We danced the whole way home humming Christmas music and catching snowflakes on our tongues. And even though it was cold and we smelled of chlorine and our hair was crunchy and our feet were soggy we stayed outside and stayed up late making a snowman in the moonlight.

There was the dinner our last night in France at a pink bistro called Rose du Pont. That had perfect warm lighting and a huge wall of green glass bottles and a corner window booth where the boys could look out over the river that rushed by. And the wine was good and the food was glorious and it felt like the perfect way to say goodbye to France.

There was the snowball fight on the way home that night. Listening to the sound of the boys giggles ring through the air as they tried their best to pelt Brad with giant snowballs.

And there was the day we left. Walking out into the cold dark morning, stars still glittering over the giant mountains illuminated in the twilight. And the way everything in that magical landscape turned a warm pink and orange as the sun rose and our train chugged back down the mountain.

But perhaps my very favorite memory of this part of the trip - one that is almost too cheesy to share, but I’m going to go ahead and do it anyways - was the afternoon I took the boys Switzerland. It was freezing cold and raining and I was pushing them down a busy city street ducking every so often to avoid the splashes of cars passing by trying to find this little fondue restaurant I had read about. It was utterly miserable. And this is totally a read-too-much-Glennon-Doyle-millennial-parenting thing, but since they were little, when they’ve been doing anything hard or scary - like trying to scale the monkey bars at the park or jumping into my arms at the pool, I’ve had them repeat the words “I’m brave. Im strong. I can do hard things.” And so here we were walking through this super shitty moment together and so I just started saying it. “Im brave. I’m strong. I can do hard things.” And West, riding on the back of the stroller was repeating each phrase. “Because we love to live.” I said after that. “BECAUSE WE LOVE TO LIVE!” he screamed into the air after me, his little toddler fingers outstretched, his face covered in rain looking up at the sky. And it was just one of those moments that stood still. And gave me goosebumps. And felt like, in the grand scheme of moments, it would stick out forever.

I hope that dragging these two kids around from country to country has shown them that sometimes shit gets miserable. That sometimes you have to tell yourself that you can do hard things. Sometimes you have to travel to all the way to France so that you know the way a chimney can make you feel. And sometimes it’s worth it to take a train to Switzerland and walk around in the cold and the rain just to taste the fondue there. Because man does that stuff make you love to live.

L Y O N . F R A N C E

L Y O N . F R A N C E

L Y O N . F R A N C E

A I X L E S B A I N E S , F R A N C E

A I X L E S B A I N E S , F R A N C E

A I X L E S B A I N E S , F R A N C E

A V I G N O N , F R A N C E

A V I G N O N . F R A N C E

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A N N E C Y , F R A N C E

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P E R O U G E S , F R A N C E

S O M E W H E R E B E T W E E N S W I T Z E R L A N D & F R A N C E

C H A M O N I X , F R A N C E

C H A M O N I X , F R A N C E

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M A R T I G N Y , S W I T Z E R L A N D

SCOTLAND

A R T H U R ‘ S S E A T , S C O T L A N D

When I was a little girl I used to tell all of my babysitters that I lived in a castle. That the house we were in wasn’t my real house. That actually I was a princess who lived high in a tower on top of a mountain overlooking the ocean. I so vividly remember what it looked like in my mind, my imaginary home. And now I’m pretty certain I’ve seen it in real life.

I don’t know if I’ll ever forget staring out the window as we left London for Edinburgh by train. The blur of dull yellows and browns slowly deepening and brightening into deep and fluorescent greens as we sped by. Flat fields lifting and waking and rolling into soft hills sprinkled with sheep. A clear sky above eventually giving way to dreary clouds that stretched along jagged cliffs and out over an angry looking North Sea, with its white capped waves crashing into shore. And a deep mist that slowly appeared creeping above everything and between everything and which seemed to envelop the landscape in some sort of enchantment.

Scotland is every bit as magical as you would imagine a country that picked the unicorn as its national animal would be. Mountains made from sleeping dragons and mystical islands protected by Viking Princesses. The home of King Arthur and and his knights, the Loch Ness Monster and Merlin the Magician. Walking the streets of Edinburgh feels like walking through the pages of a story book. Huge towers and giant castles literally every where you look. Flying buttresses and pointed arches and ancient stones covered in moss. Tiny pubs tucked into crooked alleyways. Streets that weave into and out of and straight up and down. It’s Hogwarts in real life. And you half expect a wizard to walk out of a potion shop at every turn.

But the last couple of weeks, as magical as they were, were also really hard. I was still really sick, battling the fourth week of a wicked virus and a cough that I just couldn’t kick. The kind of cough that sneak attacks you on bus and just won’t let up until you’ve completely peed your pants (thank you motherhood), pushed the call button in a panic, fled out onto the street hacking and gagging and into the nearest market with tears pouring out if your eyeballs desperately searching for some water to make it stop. And with the cough came pretty intense chest pain and a slew of heart-type symptoms that I’ve never felt before. And man is it unnerving to have intense chest pain you’ve never felt before when you’re far from home.

I’m happy to report that one urgent care + two ER visits, a couple EKGs, some bloodwork and a “wee catscan” later it was determined that I must have sprained a rib head from all of the coughing and that the virus could have flared up my autoimmune disorder causing the other symptoms. And finding that all out definitely felt like some sort of relief. But as any parent knows, being sick with small children isn’t the lay-down-in-bed-all-day fest that it used to be. The idea of resting is laughable. And let me tell you about trying to carry your refusing-to-walk-two-year-old with a badly sprained rib head.

Keeping two boys inside a 300 square foot airbnb all day was impossible so we tried our best to get out and managed to still do lot of exploring. We drank hot cocoas and read Harry Potter cozied up on cafe couches all over the city. We visited the castles and the museums. We played at every park we could find. But I also did a lot of downing lozenges and guzzling hot teas and laying sprawled out on the mats of a the local soft play places with feverish chills while the kids ran circles around the joint. And poor Brad. Waking up at 7 to take the boys so I could sleep when he himself hadn’t gone to bed until 2. It’s all made for some rather exhausted parents and some questioning of whether it was time to call this thing quits and head home.

But just when you think you might seriously be ready to throw in the towel you go and have a day like we did in St. Andrew’s. Where you’re feeling a little better and the weather is perfect and the train ride is gorgeous. Where Brad, by some stroke of unimaginable luck is able to walk on to play a round on the infamous golf course and you take the the kids to romp around the beach and watch them dance through ancient cathedral ruins. And they’re sweet and play well together and miraculously listen to you all day. And you have some kind of wonderful type meal that melts in your mouth in a wicked cool old pub with stone ceilings and stiff drinks made by a red headed bartender in a bow tie. And you sit on the train ride home, just marinating in the high of it all, realizing that these types of days are the reason you want to keep going.

I had someone ask me recently if this trip was as dreamy as it looked on instagram. And the answer is absolutely effin not. Because Instagram stories or posts are moments. Glimmers. The best seconds of people’s day. I think maybe that’s why I like them so much. Because when I see them all back to back I am reminded of how fucking beautiful my life is. And those glimmers are certainly real but they’re not the whole story. The whole story is more chaotic and messy and frustrating and insane. The whole story includes me, peeling myself out of bed sick and miserable after being shook awake by my 5 year old so that I can bow to the demand for “yogurt, oh wait no eggs, oh wait no now that you made them I’m not hungry.” And me swallowing hot embers of rage 45 times a day while I try not to loose my shit on my absolutely wild children. And me coughing up cupfuls of snot while pushing them uphill over slick cobblestone streets while being pelted by rain. And me lying in bed awake at night wondering what the fuck is going on with my heart and my chest and “am I making it up or are my limbs feeling a bit numb?” And Brad and I snapping at each other because we’re lost and about to miss our train and the kids are screaming and we’re both at the end of our rope. The whole story includes exhaustion and worry and longing for the familiar. Mixed right in with all of those beautiful bits. And I guess that’s why I like having the blog as well. Because it gives me a chance to paint the entire picture. Because I think the shitty parts are as equally important to the story as the amazing ones.

There was definitely more than a couple moments over the past few weeks that I really wondered if we could keep doing this. Where it felt like it was just too much and maybe we should head home. But as I sit on a train to France, finally breathing through my nose and feeling like an ordinary human again, I know I’m not ready. I want to continue to collect more of those glimmers that make life feel so beautiful. Because lord knows, that little girl who thought she lived in a castle is still a sucker for the fairy tale bits thirty years later.

A R T H U R ‘ S S E A T , S C O T L A N D

T H E N O R T H S E A , S C O T L A N D

E D I N B U R G H , S C O T L A N D

E D I N B U R G H , S C O T L A N D

E D I N B U R G H , S C O T L A N D

E D I N B U R G H , S C O T L A N D

T R A I N T O P I T L O C H R Y , S C O T L A N D

P I T L O C H R Y , S C O T L A N D

P I T L O C H R Y , S C O T L A N D

T R A I N T O S T A N D R E W ‘ S , S C O T L A N D

T R A I N T O S T A N D R E W ‘ S . S C O T L A N D

S T A N D R E W ‘ S . S C O T L A N D

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E D I N B U R G H , S C O T L A N D

THE LONDON WALL

L O N D O N , E N G L A N D

Turns out, if you’re us, it takes about four weeks of international travel with children to hit a wall. To go from that this-is-all-so-romantic-and-exciting mentality to worn out and weary. We arrived in London with colds, which rapidly evolved into something more gnarly. And let me tell you, nothing makes you realize what a physical feat this all is quite like lugging a bulky stroller and sixty five pounds worth of small human by yourself down three flights of stairs to the London Underground with a deep and persistent chest cough.

Sure there are the more obvious things about this trip that are tough - the hauling of children from one place to another, the constant planning and packing and unpacking and planning and packing again. The complete lack of routine or predictability. But it’s also the little inconveniences that start to wear on you. Trying to stretch two pairs of pants two weeks on a toddler who is known to always pee on them just a little each time he uses the potty. Constantly navigating unfamiliar grocery stores with a cranky 5 year old who doesn’t yet have the level of patience required to kindly wait while you try to locate where the eff they keep the peanut butter in France. Lugging those children and groceries home every few days down wobly streets without a car. Making dinner night after night with the crappy frying pan provided by the Airbnb. I think above all though, the thing that is most difficult about this trip is that we’re on our own. Without any of the usual reliefs or distractions. There’s no few hours of alone time while the kids are at school or babysitters or yoga classes or occasional night out to blow off steam with your girlfriends. Brads working most of the time and I’ve got the kids most of the time and we’ve got each other. But when he has to take morning meetings along with 2am calls and I’m trying to juggle two very free spirited (if I’m putting it nicely) kids all day by myself through unfamiliar places, it does make you long a bit for the comfort of home. Then you go and slap a mega virus on top of all that and everything is amplified times ten.

I suppose though if you’re going to get really sick and tired, it’s good to do it in a place where the the urgent care nurses are that British sort of polite and call you love and darling and sweetheart in a better sounding version of your own language.

Despite being a little rundown, we did manage to have a lovely time in England. We stayed about an hour outside of London in the towns of Hove and Caterham and got to dip our toes in the English Channel and ride around on double decker busses and make our way into the city by train on the days we were feeling up to it. The boys loved London. We rode The Eye and got tickets to The Lion King and watched Ketch stare up with wonder at Big Ben. Peter Pan is his all time hero, so seeing where Wendy and Michael and John took flight was a pretty big deal to him.

And while this all sometimes feels exhausting and overwhelming, I still wouldn’t trade it for anything. Because the moments you feel like you want to lock yourself in the bathroom so you can get 10 goddamn minutes without listening to anyone whine pass. And the ones where you find yourself sitting next to your kid at a train station and he looks up at you out of the blue and says “can you even believe we’re lucky enough to be on this trip?” remind you that what you are giving them is worth it, and that we are in fact, the luckiest. The boys have wildly surprised me on the level of stoke they’ve maintained and their ability to travel well. In fact, I think they’re probably holding up better than Brad and I at this point. And while us parents could both use a break every once in a while, I’m so grateful for this uninterrupted time with our family. Childhood seems to be slipping through our fingers these days. West is seeming less and less like a baby with each passing week and I’ve already had to buy Ketch new pants because he grew out of the ones we brought. This time together might sometimes feel like A LOT, but its time together I that I know in the end we’ll hold so dear.

I think another thing that has felt heavy recently is watching current events unfold. I sat up until 2 in the morning with tears steaming down my face as I watched the horrific footage on the night of initial the Hamas attack. I’ve had an especially hard time stomaching that kind of news since I became a mother. And I will say it’s also pretty unsettling knowing you’re far from home when the world’s tensions are high. We left Paris the day before they tear gassed riot crowds at the Eiffel Tower, and I think we had our all time scariest travel moment at a train station in London on the day 100,000 people gathered in the city for a pro Palestine rally.

We were planning to head up to Scotland that morning and had hauled our crew to Kings Crossing downtown in anticipation of our departure. When we entered the train station it was absolute chaos. Storm Babet had hit the eastern side of the UK and it’s high winds and mass flooding had led to canceled trains across the country and swarms of stranded people crowding every inch of the terminal. After a stressful hour of juggling melty kids and trying to figure what the heck we were going to do, we gave up trying to get to Edinburgh, booked another week in London and headed for the tube on our way to our new accommodations. However when we got to the entrance it had been blocked off. Confused crowds of people gathered around the ticket booths. I looked at Brad and Brad looked at me and as we were exchanging “what do you think is going on” glances, a woman standing next to us whispered in a eerily calm voice “there’s been a terrorist attack in The Underground. They’ve locked down the train station.”

The words “terrorist attack” hung in the air pulsing like a heartbeat inside my ears. I looked again at Brad and tried to keep the outside of my body calm as my insides shifted into sheer panic, adrenaline surging through my veins. We stood there for a moment, our eyes both frantically searching the building for an exit and realized sure enough, there wasn’t one. The doors had been closed. We were standing in this huge mass of people locked inside…with our babies.

Immediately we started walking along the perimeter of the building trying to find a way out. After ten minutes that felt like an eternity they opened an entrance at the side of the station. We elbowed our way through the crowd, and bolted out into the rain as quickly as we could, intense claustrophobia lifting from my chest as the feeling of fresh air hit our faces.

After finding a pub that felt a safe enough distance away we popped in and finally hugged each other and kissed the boys and thanked our lucky stars we were all okay. We sat down, ordered a pint and began to search news sources and twitter for what the heck was going on. And while we did find there was a small disturbance where an engineer started shouting Palestine slogans over the loud speaker, it became apparent that the temporary lockdown had more to do with the amount of people that had flooded The Underground and already chaotic station en route to the rally, than any sort of attack. And my god I’ve never been more thankful for misinformation. While I still feel like we’re making the best, most informed decisions that we can about our travel, I think the incident forced upon us a whole new level of awareness. And it has most definitely decreased my appetite for hanging around in big cities during our duration abroad.

There are a lot of things I’m hoping my kids will get from this trip, but if nothing else, I hope it shows them that the world is big. That people look differently than they do and speak differently than they do and live differently than they do, but at the end of the day we are all more similar than different. I love watching them interact with other children at parks and libraries. It’s amazing that even when they can’t speak with each other they still find a common ground. Because isn’t it true, that no matter where you are in the world children love to play.

Watching the events in Gaza continue to break my heart. I know that the issues are deep and complex and untangling the right and wrong and determining the best path forward is more difficult than I can even comprehend, and so I continue to pray for everyone involved. I hope that the violence ends and that peace is found. Because I know the people suffering on both sides are more like us than we know. Their children are our children.

L O N D O N , E N G L A N D

L O N D O N , E N G L A N D

L O N D O N , E N G L A N D

L O N D O N , E N G L A N D

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FROM A CAFE IN PARIS

P A R I S , F R A N C E

Ketch has decided that his favorite city is Paris. To be expected I guess from a kid whose most frequently requested food is muscles in butter sauce with frites and who has been obsessed with the seeing the Eiffel Tower since we put together a 3D puzzle of it one day after preschool.

I will not say it’s been an easy place to navigate with children. Clumsily pushing the kids down ancient sidewalks that slope horizontally at a 45 degree angle while attempting to avoid the giant cobblestone curbs fit to knock a two year olds teeth out. Surprised at both the number of people who offered to help me lug the stroller down the three flights of stairs to the metro while trying to hold the hand of an unsteady toddler and keep eyes on a quick-to-dart-into-crowds big kid…and the number of people who did not. The intimidating feeling of requesting a table at a corner restaurant filled with rows upon rows of glassware, easily tipped chairs and even more easily annoyed French people with two wild banshees at my side. The hour train ride back to our Airbnb at rush hour each evening smushed like sweaty sardines in a small smelly box, everyone overly tired and cranky.

But as tough as it has been to get around this city, it has also been equally freakin magnificent. Listening to the boys giggle with glee as they chased pigeons around the courtyard of the Luvre. Watching them devour crepes in the Jardin du Luxembourg, sticky Nutella smudged all over their fingers and smeared from ear to ear. Rowing about in tiny boats in the Bois des Vicenesse, making shapes out of clouds and marveling at the giant swans passing by. Delighting in the accordion music wafting through the underground tunnels and the ever so fascinating feats of street performers. Experiencing the all out astonishment and wonder of riding to the top of the Eiffel Tower through the giant eyes and hand-cupped-over-mouth’d expression of a five year old.

Throughout the week I developed a personal set of rules of sorts for survival. Each day should be started with a chocolate croissant. The number of historical sites visited must be equally balanced with the number of parks galavanted through (this is quickly becoming a world playground tour). Expectations of appreciation should be kept low - after all, comprehending the significance of what happened at the Notre Dame or the feats that it took to build it cannot be imposed upon a five year old. I had to laugh the day we took the kids to Versailles and Ketch took one look at the giant palace, immediately took a big huff and blurted out “looks like a long boooring time.” Fill them with pasta at every opportunity. Ride a carrousel whenever one is spotted. Try not to give a fuck about what anyone thinks of you or your parenting (easier said than done than when you can feel the eye rolls from onlookers being burned into your skin as you try to prevent your boys from pulling each others hair and screaming whilst squished together in the aforementioned sweaty sardine box). Relish in the moments your children are overcome with happiness and discovery. Quickly brush off the ones they act like little shits. And when all else fails there is always ice cream.

I love that you never feel rushed at a restaurant here. That you are expected to linger and savor and practically have to beg to get your bill. I love watching French women out of the corner of my eye on the metro, effortlessly beautiful and confident in their impeccably paired trench coats and scarves. I love the streets lined with small cafes, their waiters all scurrying about balancing trays of beautiful food in their in their black vests and bow ties. I love that every strawberry or peach you purchase from a produce stand is the best you’ve ever tasted - perfectly sweet and sticky, leaving a taste that lingers on your lips. I love the way the limestone buildings glow a burnt orange as the sunset crawls down their sides in the evening. I love that when you get home and shower at night, you can feel the city dripping off your skin.

We’ve had a couple rather memorable hair pulling moments here. First when we arrived to our VRBO after yet another exhausting travel day to find it abandoned and under construction. Thankfully a kind neighbor invited us in off the street and filled us with espressos and small talk for an hour and a half while we got it all sorted. His older children got quite the kick out of our kids crocs…really glad we could represent Americans with our classy footwear choices. West also decided it was time to make his foreign emergency room debut, by proclaiming in the sweet little way that only he could “I swallowed a penny!” at lunch one afternoon. Brad had a work call he couldn’t miss that day so I had to take him by myself which at first felt rather overwhelming - especially when trying to find the damn entrance to the hospital on foot, but I’m happy to report that aside from awkwardly attempting to communicate with the non English speaking nurses in my high school French, the experience was totally positive and felt a lot like being in an American urgent care.

One of the best things Brad and I have started doing is swapping one day a week to explore by ourselves, and my God is it wonderful to spend a morning in Paris alone. I’m writing this blog from a tiny table on the sidewalk in front of the St. Regis - one of those perfect little cafes, with beautiful gold French words and roses scrawled upon on the walls. Out of the corner of my eye I can see a fashion model strutting down the opposing street, a photographer running after her snapping away as she purses her lips and takes a puff of her cigarette. I’m sipping on a flat white and spooning runny egg yolks and salty bacon onto a warm and squishy-just-out-of-the-oven baguette and listening to a language that I cannot understand but find wildly beautiful float around me in conversation. Sunshine is warming my cheeks and I am trying my best to soak it - and everything else about this moment - in.

When we were talking to Ketch about our departure he said “it’s fine because I’m going to come back and live here someday when I grow up.” Then he asked if we’d come live here with him, and all I have to say is “kid, if the offer still stands in 15 years, we’re in.”

P A R I S , F R A N C E - ( T A K E N BY K E T C H ! )

P A R I S , F R A N C E

P A R I S , F R A N C E

P A R I S , F R A N C E

P A R I S , F R A N C E

P A R I S , F R A N C E

P A R I S , F R A N C E

P A R I S , F R A N C E

P A R I S , F R A N C E

P A R I S , F R A N C E