National Lampoon’s Richards’ European Vacation

 Warning:  long vacation = long blog entry!

 Well, the title should say it all.  We definitely felt like the Griswolds on more than a couple of days of our recent three-and-a-half week vacation/forced march through France.  Our planned itinerary included a lot of magical thinking about just how much we could realistically accomplish with a barely potty-trained 3-year-old and a 10-month-old mama’s boy in tow.  And THAT was the toned-down version.  Needless to say, we were quickly humbled and a couple of days behind.  Oh well.  Here’s what our itinerary morphed into:

Day 1:  Laundry, packing, drive to Ramstein Air Base 5 hours away in Kaiserslautern

Day 2:  Shopping at Ramstein due to not having any summer clothes for Cannon – the hand-me-downs I thought I had in the basement for him turned out to be a size too big, which I didn’t realize until I pulled them out to pack them.  Drive to the suburbs of Paris (5 more hours), find a hotel.

Day 3:  Take the train into Paris, take two very small and uninterested children to the Louvre (luckily we found more elevators than we expected and they both took good naps in the stroller), walk through the Tuileries to the Place de la Concorde, across the Pont Alexandre, to L’Hotel des Invalides (Napoleon’s burial place, which had just closed), through the Parc Champs du Mars to Le Tour Eiffel, and up to the top at about 11:30pm.  Race to the train station in case there’s a “last train” out to the suburb where our hotel was.

Day 4:  Disneyland Paris so that Hudson could meet Buzz Lightyear.  No characters to be seen walking around anywhere.  Apparently you had to pay to go to a “meet and greet” character lunch in order to actually meet any characters.  Uh, no thanks.  Hudson did get to go on the Buzz Lightyear ride and annihilate Zurg a couple of times, but the wait lines were really long, the restaurants all seemed to close when we wanted to eat, and the park itself closed at 7pm.  Rip Off.  It will be a long time before we do that again.  Same hotel.

Day 5:  Drive to Chartres Cathedral to see the famous stained glass windows.  Hudson’s favorite part was playing in the pea gravel in the courtyard out front.  Cannon was so fussy I was asked to leave because the tour group nearby couldn’t hear the guide.  We couldn’t find anyplace to have lunch that actually had food Hudson would consider eating.  This was to be a recurring theme.  I spent a good chunk of the afternoon crying.  Shockingly enough, when I downloaded the photos, I found some really great ones.  Go figure.  Drive to Caen in Normandy, where we were supposed to find a campground, but since Hudson fell asleep and had an accident in his carseat, we stopped at a grocery store outside Rouen for two hours to clean up and buy some dinner.  When we finally arrived in Caen, we found a hotel and brought the carseat inside for a bath.

Day 6:  We tried to go to the D-Day Memorial Museum in Caen, walking there from our hotel since the carseat was still trying to dry out.  Alas, strollers were NOT allowed in the museum and we had one already-napping baby and one also-in-need-of-a-nap big brother, so I opted out.  Karl did the museum, I took the boys for a walk and a picnic on the grounds, and then went back to the hotel for naps all around, followed by blowdrying the carseat.

Day 7:  Beaches of Normandy.  We headed first for Arromanches, where they built the “mulberry harbor” as a supply port on D-Day.  It was built by sinking several (7? 17?  can’t remember – ask Karl) old ships to form an artifical reef.  You can still see the remnants of the harbor from the beach.  Then along to Omaha Beach.  We took the first turn we saw and ended up on more of a recreational area of the beach, where Hudson peed in his pants rather than tell his dad he needed to go.  That one was on purpose.  Grrr.  After I got him cleaned up, we went up the hill to find a 1st I.D. memorial that was mentioned and ended up at the Coleville-St. Laurent American Cemetary, which overlooks the serious part of Omaha Beach.  It is shockingly beautiful and deeply sobering.  I found myself trying to explain to Hudson that there were soldiers just like his daddy underneath each one of those white crosses, and that his dad will have to go to war, too, but that we know he will get to come back to us.  I know he didn’t fully understand, but he seemed to “get” that it wasn’t a place for running around and didn’t protest having to stay in the stroller.  It was a little different at Point du Hoc, where a small group of Rangers overpowered a heavily fortified German gun position and held it for days until reinforcements arrived, losing 2/3 of their number in the process.  They have left all the bomb craters and destroyed bunkers just as they were, with a Ranger memorial out on the point.  Looked like a playground to Hudson and it was tough to keep him in check.  Ran out of time for St. Mer Eglise.  McDonald’s for dinner (not for the first OR last time – see note above about French restaurants not offering much for Hudson), found a hotel near Le Mont St. Michel in order to be in striking distance in the morning.

Day 8:  Woke up to rain and wasn’t sure about Mont St. Michel.  We didn’t have any rain gear for Cannon and due to all the stairs I knew we’d encounter, the stroller would have to stay in the van, with Cannon in the pack on my back all day.  Karl convinced me to get ready and head over there anyway, and see what would happen.  We stopped at a local grocery for lunch materials and I found that they had a bunch of rain jackets in their souvenir area.  Must be a lot of other tourists who also show up to find it raining.  I bought a cute one for Cannon and felt better about heading out to what used to be an island but isn’t any longer because the bay has silted up around the causeway.  The day remained grey, but didn’t actually rain again until right after we made it back to the van at the end of the afternoon.  Discovered that “May Day” (May 1st) is a huge holiday in France and the abbey at the apex of the island was closed (Christmas, New Year’s and May Day), but we had fun climbing around the island anyway.  Hudson made a little French friend when we stopped to eat our sandwiches in a small park.  Wherever we went, Hudson wanted to join in with any kids he saw, including school field trip groups.  It was pretty funny to see him sitting with a bunch of French 8-year-olds, listening intently to their teacher telling him in French all about French history or whatever.  He thought the golden statue of St. Michael at the top of the abbey was the Angel Moroni, and, by extension, that the abbey was a temple.  Um, not quite.  We were supposed to drive to Tours and find a campground in the area to be in a central position for our planned excursions in the Loire Valley (two chateaux and a medieval abbey over 3 days), but we ended up in Blois, further northeast and later than planned, with no clean underwear left.  We ended up in a hotel and stayed there for the duration of our time in the Loire Valley…

To be continued… 

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