We had more luggage than would fit in our rented minivan, so we had to split up for the trip to the Geneva airport. I went with the 13yo and the 7yo in the van, run by Mountain Dropoffs, an outfit that shuttles people from Chamonix to Geneva; took our three passports, three big bags, and our carryons, plus a tip for the driver, and off we went at 8:45. Mark and the other kids stayed behind to finish cleaning up the apartment; they would drive our rental back to the airport.
We still have two round trips through the Mont Blanc tunnel left on our ticket. They don’t expire for two years, so Mark decided to save the ticket, in the box of European currency he keeps on top of his dresser, in case he is lucky enough to score a business trip over a weekend.
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It takes more than an hour to drive to Geneva. We rode with a retired couple from Chicago and a Norwegian who had just summited Mont Blanc by the standard route. The 13yo dozed the whole ride. He had the look of, well, a teenaged boy who stayed up late and got up early.
Our first task was to locate the British Airways check-in counter. It was at the far end, right before EasyJet. So we trundled the length of the airport, each of us with a backpack and a roller. Even the 7yo had our smallest of the rollers we were to check.
Second: bathroom trips. The 13yo watched the luggage and the 7yo while I went, and then he watched the luggage alone while I took the 7yo to the men’s room and waited outside.
You’d think it would make more sense to send the 13yo with him, but the 13yo was so sluggish and morose and droopy that I decided to let him rest sitting on the luggage.
Next: to find an unattended counter where I could weigh the bags on the scale, to save time later if one turned out to be overweight. EasyJet had those, so the 7yo and I trundled our bags over in batches to check. Everything that we had was fine: carryons under 10 kg and checked bags under 23—or was it 26? No matter, the heaviest was about 21 kg.
Then we had an hour or so left. The food court was right over our heads, but our bags would not go easily up the escalator. 70 m to the elevator, up, and 70 m back. I thought the 13yo was going to keel over.
But there was a McDonald’s there. Both of these guys perked up considerably after a familiar sandwich and a big, big Coke.
There was a long, long, long line to get through UK customs. The 13yo’s Coke had worn off and he was sad and slumpy again. The 3yo was frenetic-and-loopy tired, the kind where as a parent trapped in a crowd (literally—we were being watched over by Border Patrol, where were we going to go?) you eye them warily, and make strategic decisions about when to speak firmly and when to just give them what you think might keep them quiet.
Customs is not really the time to exercise consistent discipline. It’s the time where hopefully your discipline decisions in the past will bear some fruit.
I decided that if he didn’t want to be on my back in the carrier, trying to put him there would fail. But I kept threatening it.
My 11yo stepped in, and held his hand, and played little games, and made a sort of ritual where the queue would shuffle forward, we would move the car seat forward a few feet, and then he would run forward and leap into the seat and sit there till the queue moved again, and then the 11yo would open her arms and he would jump into them (all this in a serpentine queue kept orderly only by nylo
n webbing straps stretching between wobbly poles), and she would hold him till I set the car seat down again a few feet further.
Apparently it was only barely more expensive than trying to do this any other way, and less expensive than some of the ways we might have tried.
Our stuff barely fit in the van, but we managed. Mark sat in the front (on the left!) and we settled in for a surprisingly long drive that began in the relatively calm country outside Heathrow (I had no idea it was so far away) and progressively became more and more clogged and congested and reinforced Mark’s certainty that hiring the van driver was the right thing to do. And that he was never, ever, ever going to try driving in this country.
Our daughter spotted our first London cab.
I tried to take many pictures of ordinary London-outskirts neighborhoods as we came in, but pictures out the window of a moving van rarely look like you wanted them to.
Let’s just say that I was transfixed. There is so much same-but-different here. The language is the same but the voices sound different. The ordinary row houses express the same home-ly-ness but in different materials and shape. The cars are the same but in mirror image.
And I delighted in just this gradual approach into a bigger and bigger city, denser and denser as you go in. I love cities; in truth I don’t need to live in, raise children in, a city bigger than mine; but I delight in them, love to be surrounded by people and the things people have built.
Mark loves the mountains, and I love cities: even the grime and the sirens and the scents of diesel and cigarettes. I love being around people and the things they have made, big things, beautiful things, delicious things. I love being alone in a crowd.
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Here is one picture I made up one street:
Not a church, but a temple of a different kind: the Natural History museum. On a Saturday like this, the queue wrapped around the block. Dismaying! But I hear it is better on weekdays.
First double decker bus!
Our apartment is on a pedestrian mall that cuts off a corner of one city block, so we could not be dropped at the door. The driver went around the block a couple of times, then made a calculation and pulled over at a (left!) curb, and before we knew it we were standing on the sidewalk of a busy street, herding our pile of enormous suitcases.
I convinced the 3yo, who’d slept the whole way from Heathrow, to get on my back in the carrier. The 13yo had to carry two packs, one back one front, and the 17yo had to roll two rollers and carry a pack besides. We crossed two streets, warning smaller children to stay close, and turned into the quiet little mall of restaurants and shops.
Mark went ahead and rang the right doorbell, and soon waved at us to follow.
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It isn’t an apartment building, but a building of different business suites, with a rentl apartment on the very top floor.
We have three bedrooms: one for the girl, one for three boys, and one for Mark, me, and the 3yo. There is one full bath, and a comfortable living room with windows that open wide, and a balcony (too frightening to let the small kids onto at all) that overlooks Bloomsbury Square.
It has wifi and a coffee maker. There was some beer in the fridge left over from the last tenant.
It will do, yes.
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The 13yo went straight to bed.
The younger kids went straight to the TV and watched cartoons.
The first thing Mark wanted to do was sit on the couch quietly with a beer. Any beer.
I let him.
Then we made a plan. It was 6 pm.
He and the 17yo would walk to the Sainsbury’s just around the corner and buy food for breakfast and for dinner. And then Mark and I would go out.
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They bought cereal and milk, yogurt and square white bread, and slices of square orange cheese.
On
ly this time the square orange cheese was Red Leicester.
They bought takeaway pasta, and cut fruit, and hot potato wedges. And we put it on plates and fed it to all the children. And then they were all much happier.
And then!
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Mark and I set out and walked through Covent Garden, on a Saturday night, and I was too overwhelmed to take pictures. We didn’t have a plan for food, but wandered and wandered, past noodle shops and pubs and tea rooms and curry houses and bars, and an M&S food market which I had to go in and marvel at (so much takeout food! Samosas! Pre-cut pre-peeled mango chunks! Beautiful salads!) then somehow there wasn’t any food at all but a lot of designer clothing, so we turned around and walked back looking more closely at menus, and wound up in a pub called the Freemasons Arms or something like that.
Tired of having to transact everything in France and Italy, I made Mark walk up and talk to the very nice woman behind the bar, who explained how pubs worked, and we took the menus she handed us and found ourselves a table for two by the front window (so cozy we had to squeeze between table-corners to get there). A man brought us a beat-up wooden box labeled “Condiment Box” that contained knives, forks, paper napkins, salt, pepper, Colmans mustard, Heinz ketchup and mayonnaise, HP sauce (which Mark examined curiously and sniffed, deciding it was of the same family as A1), and malt vinegar.
I want a Condiment Box.
Mark went up to order. He told the woman “We are Americans, and this is our first night in London, and we have never had cask-conditioned ale before.”
“Oh dear,” she said, and pulled us a pint of Spitfire. He brought it back and we shared it. It was mild, velvety soft, not too bubbly, and not too alcoholic. I thought it was just fine, though I don’t know yet what I am looking for.
(Mark prefers hops, so our second pint would be something else, a red ale, but beer will be its whole saga by itself here, so I’ll move on.)
Mark ordered a Malay chicken curry with rice. Me, after such a long day I was apparently desperate for comfort food, but not terribly hungry; and wound up with just about the cheapest thing on the menu, a jacket potato stuffed with cheese and mild, slightly sweet baked beans.
It came with a tiny pile of salad with a pale dressing spiked with mustard seeds. It was simple and boring and plain and exactly what I wanted. The beans were probably canned, but almost exactly like the baked beans my grandmother used to make, in a thin sweetish sauce that is not at all like the barbecuey beans most Americans are used to.
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