Tuesday we wanted a nice relaxing day after the boys’ and Mark’s glacier outing and my grocery store expedition. So we slept in, and had a leisurely breakfast in the apartment. Then Mark went out to buy picnic items while the kids and I pulled together daypacks.
The 4yo carried two water bottles in his little purple daypack. The 8yo carried all the food (“This is a good job,” I told her, “because it will be be heavy early in the morning but it will be light after lunch”). I carried the baby. The 14yo and Mark carried rain gear, diaper supplies, and fleeces for everyone in bulky but not especially heavy packs. The 10yo went packless as the emergency backup pack carrier — the unspoken idea being that if the 4yo melted down, the 10yo could carry a pack and Mark could carry the 4yo.
We started out walking through the town towards the Brévent gondola lift.
The street went steeply uphill past many houses and apartment buildings, and ended at the bottom of the gondola lift. We have a sort of unlimited pass, which we bought on the first day at the counter, from a woman who warned me vigorously about the foolishness of taking babies up in the gondola.
(“Mais ce n’est pas interdit?” I asked. No, she told me, it wasn’t forbidden per se, it was only for my information, but the rapid pressure change was very bad for the eardrums, and she once knew a child who was six years old and they went up in the gondola and their eardrums ruptured and they couldn’t hear for a very long time. Possibly ever.)
Anyway, we climbed up the steps to the gondola, where we were stopped by an attendant who wanted to tell me how dangerous it was to take the baby up in the gondola.
“Mais ce n’est pas interdit?” I asked. No, he told me, it wasn’t forbidden, but the pressure changes are not good for a baby’s ears and I should give him something to drink.
Yes yes, I told him as he walked away, I will nurse the baby. Except I think I got the word wrong and I actually said that I would lick the baby. Let’s hope that he didn’t hear me. I do speak fairly fluently, in the sense that I can, you know, talk at a normal rate, but in all that flowing I make a lot of mistakes.
So anyway, we herded everyone into the gondola and while we were in there I got the baby off my back and onto the breast. He struggled and complained, because it was hot in the gondola, but he did nurse a little, and his ears seemed to give him no trouble. I gave the 4yo a life saver to suck on. The others had to make do with periodic swallowing.
After watching them for a while and finishing lunch we went to hike around on the mountain. Mark put the four year old on a short rope for safety. He said it was easier than holding his hand.
We walked around and enjoyed the view. In one place we found a tiny little microclimate where we seemed to have been dropped into Northern Minnesota, except the bushes were myrtilles, bilberries (whortleberries), instead of blueberries, and the conifers were not the same conifers.
After that we were quite tired, so we went back down into town and rested several hours before heading out for dinner. We went away from the town center to a little restaurant with red-and-white checked tables, and got the last one that seated six.
I split the fondue savoyard with the 10yo and Mark, and we wondered if we’d made a mistake when a giant fuel burner was plunked onto our table inches away from the baby, who had no high chair and sat on our laps. I recommended the salade de chèvre chaud to my 14yo, who also ordered tagliatelle carbonara. The 4yo and 8yo each had the three-course menu enfant: assiette de saucisson (kind of a salad with several slices of salami), steak haché (think hamburger steak) with frites, and ice cream, all for €10.
The food was good. The fondue was nothing but torn baguettes speared on little forks and spun in the bubbling cheese sauce, excellent with the white wine I chose, and my 10yo who isn’t much into meat was pleased: “Mom,” he said, “this tastes like your beer cheese sauce!” The 14yo was ecstatic about his dinner. The younger ones ate the salami and the fries. The baby sat on my lap and gnawed on chunks of baguette, about which he was very happy.
We finished the meal with a slice of tarte aux myrtilles. My slice that is — everyone said, “I’m too full for dessert!” so I was the only one who ordered it, and then as soon as it arrived everyone changed their minds and wanted several bites. I can hardly blame them.
The people at the next table complimented us on our children’s behavior, saying that my daughter had une jolie mine and cooing at the baby. So: we won the game. Very satisfying.
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