bearing blog

bearing blog


bear – ing n 1  the manner in which one comports oneself;  2  the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~];  4  pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation;   5  the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

  • Tube, Natural History, chicken dinner.

    Mornings begin around here with blogging and coffee.

    One by one the children stumble out of their rooms and wake up with British cable TV, which seems always to have several children’s shows on at any given time. There are lots of ads for kids’ board games, or boardless games, such as the one where you are supposed to stuff miniature pizzas into a plastic pig and pump up his stomach until he pops, or the one where the plastic dog makes so many plastic poops every turn, and the like.

    We think British children, or possibly their parents who pay the cable bill, must really like poop jokes.

    Monday morning Mark and the 17yo walked to an office in Trafalgar Square. When they came back we stuffed, into plastic sleeves on lanyards, six London Passes (the 3yo gets into attractions for free) and five prepaid Oyster Cards (the 7 and 3yos travel free on public transit). After a day of walking where we could walk on our own two feet, it was time to try the Tube.
    I wrote our phone numbers on Tyvek wrist bracelets for the two youngest children. They have all been coached, and we are going to keep hold of them, but this is just one more layer to speed up the resolution should we have An Incident.
    And off we went, to Holborn Underground Station. I had the 3yo on my back, and Mark had the 7yo by the hand. We herded the others nervously. To his credit, the 17yo (who would be able to navigate the Underground with no problem on his own) was very patient with us. One of the hopefully mild frustrations of being the oldest teenager in a family that runs down to toddlers is that sometimes, your parents are overstimulated and they just want to deal with the whole family as a group, to simplify things (“How many kids do we have? Five? Okay then”) and then, well, you’re being herded.
    We got into the station, collected in a corner to review how the little door opens when you touch the Oyster card to it, asked an attendant what to do to get the 7yo through (answer: go together through the accessible gate on the end, wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair or a person who needs an attendant), and then headed through. This first time we all went through the wide gate behind Mark. Then, repeating our train and destination like a mantra (Piccadilly line, westbound train, South Kensington station, STAND TO THE RIGHT, WATCH WHERE YOU’RE WALKING) we filed along with everyone else and waited on the platform.
    “We’re going on an underground train,” I told the 3yo, and he was very pleased.
    The train came, we got on it, yes we’re all here, and I stood and held the pole because of the 3yo on my back.
     
     
    We counted the stations, I showed the 11yo how to read the map, and we made it off okay. Whew! It isn’t that subways are themselves a problem—I love them—it’s just the kid-management in a new and crowded place. It’s always a little bit of a strain.
    + + +
    We chose the Natural History Museum for our first Tube outing because it’s easily reachable on the same line as our home station, Holborn. Changing lines we will save for another day.
    Also, there was a backup plan. Our London Passes let us jump the line into participating attractions (that’s really why we got them), but the NHM isn’t one of them; it’s free. So if there was a prohibitive line to get into the NHM, we would go to the Science Museum next door, where we could jump the line there.
    There was a line at the NHM, but we decided it was not that bad, all contained well inside the courtyard, so we went in.
    The exterior of the building itself is fun to look at. There are many details to search out to pass the time while you wait. I have read that it was designed to look like a church, to function as a sort of temple of knowledge. Its striping reminds me of the candy-colored columns in what used to be the great mosque of Cordoba in Moorish Spain; its spires are topped with weather vanes that look like globes or like speared fish; its gargoyles are an assortment of animals living and extinct; the false columns flanking the front entrance, under the multilayered arch, are carved with a variety of dazzling geometric patterns. Medallions carved with various creatures (squirrel among oak leaves and acorns; two rats with intertwined tails; thistles and wild roses) decorate the pillars of the gate and guardhouse. It reminds me of the picture books illustrated by Graeme Base, full of hidden creatures for children to discover.
    The cavernous great hall inside has a blue whale’s skeleton hanging from the ceiling, its great loop of a jaw open toward the visitor as they come up the stairs, its vertebrae disappearing into the distance. The effect is wonderfully dramatic. It really has a lot of the bigger-on-the-inside effect that you get inside a well-proportioned cathedral.
    I read that until recently the creature hanging in the great hall was a Diplodocus; but that’s gone on tour to museums throughout the UK, and so they’ve put the whale there instead. It serves as a reminder, too, that the NHM is not just about extinct creatures, but also living ones.
    The two teen boys went off on their own, and Mark and I ducked into the first exhibit, “Creepy Crawlies.” Many, many arthropods. All three kids enjoyed this very much, even the 3yo on my back; I had to bend over to le
    t him push the occasional button, but mostly he chattered happily about the different kinds of animals. Here is my daughter in front of an animatronic enlarged scorpion, which turned its head, wagged its tail, and snapped its claws:
    Next we went upstairs because she wanted to see the gems, but I diverted us to see the Treasures gallery first. These are historically important individual pieces, most of them carefully protected in glass boxes, some of them with a “please touch” replica outside the box. Many have a touch screen next to them that will provide considerable information if you have time to peruse it. There is a dodo skeleton, and a chambered nautilus (with its touchable replica), and a moon rock donated by the USA, and the Archaeopteryx fossil. There are some of Charles Darwin’s pigeons:
    And William Smith’s ammonites:
    We went on to the gem exhibit, but the 3yo was not at all interested in a room full of rocks, so I left Mark with the 11 and 7yos and went to find the dinosaurs.
    I have to say: the Natural History museum in Utah is the one you really must see if you want to see dinosaur skeletons. But the dinosaur exhibit has some really special individual items, like a whole Stegosaurus and a T. Rex head and a skeleton still half-encased in stone in a box. The displays are very well designed; I learned a lot from them. But possibly not as much as I could have learned from a season of watching Dinosaur Train on PBS, judging from how much the 3yo on my back was explaining things to me.
    There is an animatronic T. Rex that is supposed to be cool, but it was out of order today. So instead, in response to a text from Mark, we met up at the T. Rex Grill. The 13yo was AWOL for a while because he had accidentally turned his ringer down, but we zeroed in on him with Find My Friends and sent his big brother to track him down on foot.
    The T. Rex Grill had very lovely food. I had a big bowl of raw vegetables and pita with hummus and some really outstanding baba ganoush. Mark and the 13yo had falafel sandwiches. The little boys had fish and chips. The 11yo had a chicken burger, and the 17yo had a pepperoni pizza.
    Fed, we headed back out to the museum. The 3yo wanted to walk, and I said he could if he held my hand and behaved. The 7yo had had no dinosaurs yet, so we walked this time into a gallery of different fossils. There was a docent behind a table, so we sent the kids over. I coached the 3yo to say, “Hello, sir, what do you have to show us today?”
    The seven-year-old is absolutely in his element with an adult whose job is to talk to 7-yos one on one. “Can you guess what this is?” said the docent, handing him a large and heavy brown rock. “It came from a dinosaur.”
    “Well, it doesn’t feel like a dinosaur part,” he said, “but I am not grossed out because I know it is fossilized!” Later, shown a plesiosaur cast: “Now I’ve heard that plesiosaurs are not really dinosaurs. Is that true?”
    This is all Dinosaur Train, not me.
    While he chattered, I wandered around and looked at the cases on the walls.
    Several animals collected by Mary Anning are right here. I made my daughter come over and pose in this picture for scale. It’s a big skeleton.
    There were many other delights in the zone full of creatures, especially an amazingly detailed exhibit case, presented exactly as it first appeared in the 1800s, that carefully and systematically laid out the anatomy of birds through description, diagrams, and meticulously dissected taxidermy. For example, there was a whole thrush from which all the down and fiber had been removed from the feathers, leaving the quill ends sticking out and clipped short, so you could see the direction that all the feathers pointed as they emerged from the body, and there was a collection of different bird heads (including a beautiful owl) so you could examine their diversity of eyes, hearing organs, and beak up close, and something similar for feet, the grebes and the coots and the ducks compared. It was like a three-dimensional scientific poster, or a whole textbook chapter in a lovely nineteenth-century font, under glass in a beautiful wooden case.
    Also there was a case with dozens or hundreds of different taxidermied hummingbirds, all arrayed in a chaotic jumble on a branchy structure along with some nests and eggs. The eye couldn’t find a place to land, and as you moved about their iridescence sparkled blue, green, and rose.
    We moved past an office of the British Geological Survey, through a dark little door squeezed between a coffee shop and a gift shop, and unexpectedly into a high open room, dark and dramatically red-lit, with rocky and crystalline treasures set at a child’s height into the black wall all spotlit and visible through circular windows, and an escalator going up into the heart of a vast globe, paved with metal foil and curved irregular metal shields, some studded with the forms of ammonites, evoking the continental plates without expressing them exactly. It was the entrance to the earth-science section.
    This was a very well designed series of exhibits, interactive and interesting. The highlight for Mark, I think, was the earthquake simulator, a shake table room decorated to look like the inside of a Japanese grocery store, and set with TV screens that played black-and-white footage from a grocery security camera during the 1995 Kobe earthquake while the floor recreated the seismic pattern under your feet and the goods attached to the walls rattled alarmingly. On the screen, everything fell over and the people tried to cover themselves with anything they could find.
    “OH. MY.” said Mark.
    We also liked ventifacts, three-sided stones with sharp edges tumbled by blowing sand.
    Eventually we left, without the 17yo who was off doing his own thing (he would go to the Science Museum and to Harrods that afternoon without us). We got off the tube at Leicester Square and walked to Trafalgar, to cross something off 7-yo Lion Man’s bucket list:
     
     
    The 3yo also wanted to climb up, but we satisfied him by lifting him to let him pet the lion’s tail.
    Then, a longish walk through a new neighborhood back to Holborn.
    We found a pub, the White Hart, that promised in an outdoor posting that children were welcome, even to the point of having a kids’ menu available, and we made a mental note to go there. (It isn’t that we need the kids’ menu, but its existence is reassuring.)
    And then we went back to our rooms for a rest. It was about 4 p.m. Somebody was tired.
    He got run over by the nap lorry, I guess.
    + + +
    We rested until about six, when I proposed we try a chain restaurant that author/travel-with-kids-blogger Amy Welborn had specifically recommended to me on Facebook: Nando’s.
    It promises Afro-Portuguese roasted chicken. We were a little worried because it looks somewhat fancy inside, but it’s counter service. We squeezed our seven into a generous booth for six.
    The two smallest were a bit put out that their strips of chicken were roasted and not fried, but they got over it and ate their chips and garlic bread. The rest of us adored it. The chicken just has a good, grilled flavor with a hint of char: simple and perfect.
    Mark and I split a wing platter with sides of peas, rice, mashed potatoes, and salad. The 17yo got “wing roulette,” ten wings with random flavors. The 13yo got a massive chicken sandwich with cheese and a vinegary pepper relish. The 11yo got a child’s plate with three wings.
    It was very good, but we couldn’t help laughing at the British conception of “XXX SPICY EXTREME HOT SAUCE FOR MASOCHISTS ONLY” which was gingery and delicious and complex but maybe rose to the hotness level of a medium buffalo wing.
    Anyway: Thanks, Amy, for passing this tip on so early in our trip. I think we’ll be going there at least one more time.
    As a couple of Londoner commenters promised me in earlier posts (thank you, Beth and Kathgreenwood), London chain and takeaway restaurants are so far THE way to feed kids here. The children are thrilled, all the way up to the teenagers; the parents are relaxed; and it’s still new and different from home. It is nice to be in a place that has its own chain/fast food, not just more of ours.
    Aaaaaand after the kids are fed, there is plenty of time for a couple of grownups to go out to the pub.
    + + +
    Out into the evening on a Monday night. First we looked in the window of the modern pub on the corner, which advertised bratwurst and fries (yes, fries, not chips) via a neon sign in the window, and amused us because it had Lagunitas on tap. But we also noticed that it had six different beers from casks, newer Real Ale movement beers rather than old faithful bitters, including a milk stout, so we resolved to come give it a try on another night.
    We wound up at a sort of random pub where Mark had a pint of Guinness Extra Cold and I had a pint of Whitstable Bay Pale Ale. It had a good flavor, maybe the second best so far, but I thought it was under-carbonated; hardly a sparkle, and just a lacy scum on the top instead of the layer of fine froth on other pints. I understand this is part of the variation of cask ales, so I wasn’t offended or anything, of course.
    We drank it slowly, while talking of shows we might try to see, and googling ticket prices, until the pub closed at nine.
    We walked the long way home, past the White Hart (menu looked good), and came upon the Princess Louise which was still serving. “Let’s go in,” I said. It was another one of the Sam Smith pubs.
    I had had the Old Brewery Bitter before, it had been my favorite yet, and I ordered a half-pint to test its consistency. I let Mark order (because I knew he would share) a thing we had been intrigued by when we saw it on the menu at another Smith pub:
    One sniff and I fell in love with it. Apricot is one of my favorite flavors, and this was the scent of fresh apricots and a whiff of yeast. As for the taste, it is balanced (far more balanced than kriek or than raspberry lambic) and yet fruit-forward. I have never had a fruit beer like it. I don’t know if I can find it in the U.S., but you can bet I will try.
    Mark relished the visual treat of the pub interior. “I have the feeling, walking into these places, of walking onto a sound stage or a movie set,” I commented, and he agreed. Is it real? Is it a show put on for people like us? Or is the show real?
     
    We walked back, very happy to be here and to be together, and to be hatching plans to do more things with just the two of us. “You picked the right neighborhood,” Mark said.
    We are contemplating not taking the children to the Science Museum until we have gone together, as a date.
    + + +
    Home again, where Mark went to bed and I stayed up to upload these photos, before going to sleep, saving the writing for the morning.
    Tuesday: Mark flies to his business trip in Sweden, and I am left with children in London.
     
     
     
     
     

     

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    2 comments on Tube, Natural History, chicken dinner.

  • Walking distance: Bloomsbury, Covent Garden, and Soho.

    On the first morning in London, a Sunday, I slipped out to walk around for a little while before I had to come back and help the children get ready for Mass.
    Our apartment is on a short pedestrian-only street that cuts off a corner of a block just southeast of Bloomsbury Square. The pedestrian street has restaurants and cafés at both ends, where it meets High Holborn and Southampton Row, and impossibly stylish shops in the middle.

    I walked around the perimeter of Bloomsbury Square and, just as Mark promised, I found the British Museum less than five minutes’ walk away:

    When it came time to narrow down where we would stay, I told Mark I wanted to be within walking distance of this, since it’s free and enormous. I wanted to be able to slip in and out with the kids for forty minutes or an hour whenever we want, on any day, without feeling that we had to stay till we get tired.

    We shall see if that plan works. I will try to put it into effect on Tuesday. But already I am sure we are in a good place, lively and busy, near the Covent Garden area, with a Sainsbury’s around the corner. We will not starve here, that is for sure.

    I stood there and looked at the British Museum. People were going in. I looked at my watch. I stuck my head in the gates and looked around. I looked at my watch again. I turned around and headed back through Bloomsbury Square.

    On the way back I stopped in a café, a tiny one with one table inside and two outside and a pleasant deli case with a variety of prepared salads, and ordered an inexpensive, probably not too large Roll with Egg and a coffee to take away. The woman who took my order passed it (in a language I didn’t recognize) to the woman behind the counter, who straightaway made me a Full English Breakfast in a rectangular plastic box and put it in a petite paper bag with handles and handed it to me cheerfully.
    I decided that if fate would hand me the Full English, I would take it. I paid and brought it back to the apartment and shared it with Mark.
    The egg had been previously fried, stored in the case, and reheated, so it wasn’t amazing, but I like any egg really. The sausage was pretty good, but I left that for Mark. The combination of the beans (there’s my grandmother’s recipe again! Is this what you get in the blue cans of Heinz beans?) and the English bacon was lovely. I can see why this is a national comfort food.
    + + +
    We are equidistant between two Roman Catholic churches in opposite directions: St. Patrick’s Soho and St. Etheldreda’s. Both have an eleven o’clock Mass, but we were wary of taking the children to the sung Latin one at St. Etheldreda’s (I know, I know, but we have an impatient three year old and we were worried it would be longer), so we walked 15 minutes to St. Patrick’s.
    We could shorten it with the Tube, but we don’t have our Oyster cards yet and also we want to see things in our neighborhood. To get a sense of distance, you almost have to walk.
    I led, carrying the 3yo on my back, and the others followed. St. Patrick’s is an old parish, founded soon after Catholicism became somewhat more legal in the 1780’s, mainly to serve the Irish living in London. The interior is compact, relatively simple, and prettily painted, with a St. Patrick (snakes and all) above the altar, a Very! Assertive! Pipe! Organ!, and paintings for art (it’s not set into its surroundings in such a way that it can have much in the way of windows). The painting we could see best from our pew was of Christ with Martha and Mary.
    One downside: The pews had backs, but with only a couple of high slats over a smooth bench, and were completely open, so the smaller kids (and once, me) kept knocking hymnals, bags, etc. onto the feet of people behind us. Public service message: If your large family finds itself in such a church, sit in two rows and put your organized less-physically-organized family members in front of the others. And keep your open-topped tote bag on the floor.
    Besides the Organist! there was a very lovely polyphonic ensemble singing the mass parts in Latin. They were off to a side chapel and invisible, and I actually thought we were being played a recording until I got up to the front at Communion time and realized that there were people over there.
    The church was quite full, with a number of people arriving late and standing in the back and the foyer. I went back there with the 3yo eventually, after my stay-quiet-in-the-pew tricks had run out. The foyer was watched over by a statue of (I think) St. Anthony, in a side chapel behind a little stone railing, the bank of votive candles asking 40p for the cost of the candle, and on the railing were balanced a stack of weekly bulletins and a prayer card for a recently deceased cardinal. On the other side, a Divine Mercy image on an easel, by a table with a number of D. M. pamphlets, and a box asking for donations in return for them. There were stone stairs going up and down, probably to parochial common areas and offices, with a big old metal gate closing them off and a big shiny new chain and padlock wrapped around; it doesn’t look welcoming, but when tourists wander into your church for tourist reasons all the time, something like that has to be done.
    I admit to being somewhat amused at the English Catholics’ expense at a plaque on the wall celebrating a former rector or someone (d.1802) because (paraphrasing from memory) “wherever he went, his preaching improved the morals of the poor.” Wondered if he did anything for the morals of the rich, or if the people who put up the plaque noticed. I shouldn’t laugh, my morals could use a boost most of the time.
    + + +
    When Mass was over, and we were done singing new hymn words to familiar hymn melodies, we regrouped by a big tree in Soho Square while the smaller children ran on the grass. Would we buy groceries and eat in the apartment, or stop and eat in a restaurant on the way? I wanted to eat out, if we could find a place that looked not too full and not too intimidating with the children, and Mark said that I had to just step up and pick the place when I saw
    it.
    So we went down the road, with the 17yo navigating, and I looked in a few windows (and then we stopped and Mark reminded the 17yo not to walk so fast and the 17yo said that he had to be clearer in his expectations and then Mark reminded me that if I wanted to stop in a restaurant I had to pick one because he really, really didn’t care where we went and he would not be upset if it was too expensive or if the children didn’t like it) and we kept going and then I saw a nearly-empty noodle/salad/sushi chain restaurant called Itsu and said, “Let’s go there!”
    Thanks to some readers I have in London (hello!) I had been assured that London counter-service chain restaurants can be quite good, family-friendly, and exotic enough to be a real travel experience. After all, we don’t have Itsu, Wagamama, and Pret-a-Manger at home.
    There was some uncertain, panicked shuffling in front of the variety of bottled juices, canned sodas, and boxed coconut waters (“Do we have an algorithm for how to buy drinks in cans? We need an algorithm. Is everyone getting Coke? Just make a decision”) but in the end some had sushi, some had hot dishes ordered from the front counter and delivered to us in waxed-cardboard containers with lids, some had fruit, and everyone had something to drink.
    I wound up with a salady vegetarian platter grabbed basically at random while I was trying to calm people down. Fortunately, it was delicious, with lots of avocado and greens and a tasty cilantro dressing. The 7yo had taken a chance on chicken noodle soup, and liked the broth and the meat and was upbeat about the fact that the cellophane noodles were unusual and not to his taste. The 3yo had a fruit cup and was startled by pomegranate seeds, but liked some of it. The 11yo tried salmon rolls for the first time and enjoyed them very much. One teen was very happy with his sushi and the other was very happy with his pulled pork udon noodles. Mark liked his rice bowl. We decided that London Chain Restaurants were a-ok.
    Back at the apartment, we made some plans for the upcoming week—Mark has to travel for a couple of days, and that will require some logistics—and I proposed we take the three younger children to Coram’s Fields for a couple of hours. It was a fifteen-minute walk, and it promised to let them blow off some steam.
    We left the teens with some money and a set of keys in case they wanted to go out. Then we headed off. I carried the 3yo again.
    + + +
    We wound through the University College of London medical school area.

    Mark was highly amused by this building and made me take a picture of it.

    Google Maps dropped us at the closest, but wrong, end of the Coram complex, between the football fields and the entrance to the program reception, and we had to skirt the perimeter till we found the gated entrance to the children’s play area.

    Coram’s Fields is not a public park, but a private one, free admission unless there’s a special event, run by a foundation for the benefit of children. No adults are admitted without an accompanying child. The whole complex includes kids’ programming, athletic fields, a small zoo of farm animals, and a big open area with different play structures scattered about, grass and trees, a fountain-paddling pool thing (dry now), and a sort of gazebo in the middle.

     

     

     

     

    The truck parked in the background is for setup for an event that would be happening that evening. The park was closing early for an outdoor film series. They were setting up a wood fire (maybe a pizza oven?) and a cash bar under a tent. The film wasn’t for children, but maybe the admission fee was? It was £12, anyway.

    The best part for the 11- and 7-yos was a big spinny swing and a sort of bouncy zip line, two of them that could race. Kids climbed up a ramp, leaped onto a hanging disc-seat suspended on an elastic hanger, and sailed bouncing to the end where they dismounted and ran back to return the swing to the next child in line.

    There was also a tantalizing dynamic pile of hinged logs that would move when you climbed on them, but someone had fenced it off. Perhaps it had proved to be a bit too dynamic without supervision.

    We spent more than an hour there, enjoying a sunny and warm day, and then walked back by a different route, considering all the pubs and restaurants along the way.

    The 7yo, holding Mark by the hand, was looking at so many things that he walked right into a pole with his forehead. No concussion, I think, but I was worried for a moment.

    For that reason, and others, I am very glad for these markings on the road.

    I knew I would have to get used to the traffic coming at you from unexpected directions, but I was not prepared for the combination of one-way streets, little corner cutoffs, alleys, large crowds of people looking at their phones and stopping to take pictures, and distracting things to look at. The direction of oncoming traffic at any given curb is pretty random, and our pattern-recognition faculties are strained. So the “which way to look” signs—many say to look left, it isn’t all right—are welcome.

    Fortunately, the crosswalks are super well designed, with little signs on posts that have a single button (that the 7yo loves to press) and a lit-up “WAIT” sign that you can see even if people and tall buses obstruct the crossing signal on the other side (or if it’s damaged), and sometimes an audible signal.

    + + +

    Mark and I took those kids back, and then headed back out to the Covent Garden neighborhood with the 13yo to shop for the kids’ dinner. It was getting crowded. Some shops had people offering samples of tea, sausage, things like that.

    Someone outside a shop offered me a brightly colored, bite-sized rectangle dusted in white. I said no. Mark started to take one, then said “No thanks” also.

    The shop woman asked him suspiciously, “Do you know what this is?”

    Mark confessed that he didn’t, actually.

    The rectangle was soap. “I’m glad I didn’t take a bite of that free candy,” said Mark.

    “You almost made a sugar mistake,” pointed out the 13yo.

    + + +

    We arrived soon after at the much-anticipated M&S food shopping store.

    We bought refrigerated samosas, naan, chicken jalfrazie, chicken piripiri, pizza, a roast chicken sandwich, cut mango, greengages, and more sliced Red Leicester for the 3yo who now eats square orange cheese on buttered square white bread three times a day.

    We did not buy this:

    Really?
    Trouble with the self-checkouts, which are terribly moody compared to American ones. Also we have a chip-and-signature card, and were buying wine and beer and cider and a canned gin and tonic. The attendant was terribly friendly all three times we needed help.

    Back to the entrance of our little pedestrian mall.

    + + +

    Maybe Mark and I will just get carryout for the kids and then go out by ourselves every single evening.

    I found one of the Samuel Smith’s pubs (The Angel) from the online map that one of my London readers gave me (thanks!) and we went there. No food on Sunday, but we tried a pint of the only cask-conditioned ale, Old Brewery Bitter, and I pronounced it the best so far.

    Mark informed me that he was soon going to stop helping me experiment with cask-conditioned ales and start asking for things that came from a keg and had detectable hops in them.

    We spread out the map on the table and mused about what to do as we finished our pints, then walked on.

    + + +

    We walked for a really long time: through Covent Garden itself, packed with people and delicious odors, and the music from live violins coming up from a large ensemble on the lower level. We kept walking and I saw a bridge: “Are we at the Thames already?” I wondered. We turned right, and there were theater marquees everywhere: The Lion King, Dreamgirls, Kinky Boots. “Is this the Strand?”

    The names of things keep delighting me. So many literary associations laid down over so many years. I can’t always remember whether I know them
    from Mary Poppins or from the Baroque Cycle or from Bridget Jones’ Diary, but something on every corner, it seems, rings a bell.

    + + +

    We looked carefully at a French-style restaurant and at a bar and grill and it seemed okay but I said no. We stopped on the way at the discount theater tickets office to ask how that worked, and picked up a list of shows.

    And ended up at another pub, the Nag’s Head this time, which was open for meals upstairs. Downstairs it was all glossy wood paneling, upstairs it was surprisingly modern looking and bright, with stools at a counter and a few small tall-windowed rooms with tidy little tables. We got a round table in the back by an empty fireplace, near a table of three American-accented young women who were joking about drinking the cider from one glass with three straws.

    We split:

    • a garden salad (very crisp and fresh with a pleasant dressing; mustard figures heavily here)
    • a bowl of sweet potato fries (also very good, crisp and hot, served with mayonnaise and ketchup)
    • roast beef blade with mashed potatoes and a deeply brown and glossy gravy, plus an afterthought of steamed broccoli and carrots which I ate dutifully between bites of lovely tender roast beef and gravy and potatoes

    Honestly, I think I will happily eat pub fare. I like meat and potatoes.

     

    I had a half-pint of the Nags Head bitter (pleasant, not as good as the last pint, but also not cask-conditioned) and Mark had a pint of Aspall cider which was startlingly apple-forward, sweet, and crisp. If he can’t have hops, he’ll have apples.

     

    + + +

     

    It was a pleasant evening. I especially like having the first pint, then walking for a long time, and then having the second with dinner. It’s a nice way to see a city.

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    2 comments on Walking distance: Bloomsbury, Covent Garden, and Soho.

  • Transit to London.

    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.

    + + +

    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.

    The 7yo’s Happy Meal came with a little book, in French, which I translated on the fly for him to pass the time. It was the story of some animal friends who banded together to convince a family of littering picnickers not to throw their trash in the river, by having the duck bite them and then glaring disapprovingly.
    Everyone lived happily ever after.
    + + +
    We had to go back downstairs, another 140 meters of walking, to meet Mark, but the Coke had made it all easier. They found us: the 17yo carried the 3yo on his back and pushed two rollers standing back-to-back, and Mark and the 11yo managed the rest. We joined up, checked our bags fairly easily, and were ushered to a priority line through security because of having small children (THANK YOU EUROPE). The automatic thingy flashed alarmingly and didn’t let us through but the human being did.
    At the gate at the very end, we spent our Euros and Swiss francs on a few last panini. Plain cheese (on a petite buttered pretzel roll!) for the 3yo, caprese on baguette for me, tuna (of course) for the 11yo on a round white soft roll, and an enormous roast beef and tartar sauce sandwich on a beautifully seedy brown bread for the 17yo.
    + + +
    Here is a brief comment on sandwiches.
    I hadn’t paid much attention to it before, but the French (and, I guess, the Swiss) know how to match bread to sandwich fillings. In the US, you buy a sandwich, you get to choose the bread and the fillings separately, as if it were merely a matter of personal choice. And I suppose if the bread variety is only a matter of differently-flavored or differently-dusted bread, as is sometimes the case, that’s okay.
    But when your available bread varies significantly in terms of chewiness, crustiness, seediness, shape, and flavor, well, it matters.
    Especially for tuna.
    If you put tuna between two halves of a chewy crusty bread, then when you bite it, the tuna will squeeze out and make a mess, along with the tomatoes and the sliced egg.
    Chewy crusty bread is for salami-and-butter-and-pickle sandwiches.
    Tuna needs soft, pliable, squishy, tender bread with only the barest crust.
    End of sandwich discussion.
    + + +
    British Airways. I had a whole bag of Dum Dum Pops (sorry, Europe, they are superior to Chupa Chups, if only because you can unwrap them in under a minute) for ear depressurization.
    Completely uneventful flight. Nobody tried to buy an airplane Bacon Butty.

    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.

    It could have been a nightmare, not least because this guy usually grabs at the webbing every time we pass one of those queue-poles in normal life, but she made it work. She deserves an award.
    + + +
    Finally through and out into the cavernous baggage hall in Heathrow, where nobody’s luggage but ours (ALL 7 BAGS!) was trundling out of the mouth of the carousel, and then out to arrivals where a man was holding a sign with our surname on it.
    I’ve never been one of those people with their name scrawled on the sign!
    Mark had hired a van to pick us and all our stuff from the airport and drive us directly to our apartment. This is one of the smartest things he has ever done, and he’s a pretty smart guy.

    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.

    + + +

    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.

    + + +

    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.

    + + +

    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.

    + + +

    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!

    + + +

    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.

    We ate the food, drank the beer, and walked back. I was still gaping like a country cousin at all the buildings and the lights. I was worried it would be too crazy here for the family. I am not worried anymore. I think I am going to really love it.

     

     

     

     

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  • Last day in Cham.

    Friday dawned as pretty as Thursday.
    I drank some coffee with Mark, sitting in our two chairs by the sliding door onto the balcony (too cold to keep the doors open), and then I slipped out and headed into town by myself. The plan was for me to meet Mark and our friend for coffee at 11:30, then I would head back to the apartment to pack.

    I took a few photos in the town just to have a little record of my walk.

    I have never gotten anything from this bakery even though it is the closest one to our apartment.

    We have this kind of sign in Minneapolis too.

    Post office near center of town.

    Multi-story sporting goods store. There are a lot of sporting goods stores in town, but this one seemed to be about the actual business of selling athletic gear (and luggage and sunglasses and that sort of thing) to people who intended to use it.

    I browsed the clearance racks and found a tee for my daughter and a dressy-looking shirt in a performance fabric for me.

    Off to the bookstore to stock up on French reading material. I bought a stack of cooking magazines and something that looked kind of like Scientific American. Will dole these out to myself over the upcoming year.

    I wish there was enough time to read the backs of the novels and choose one I am really going to enjoy, but it takes me about 20 times as long to make that sort of assessment in French as in English. So I settled for a mystery novel by an author I already know I like, and a thriller by an author I don’t.

    I surveyed the cookbooks, but they are heavy and I had already bought one, so I resisted. I might get the top one from Amazon later.

    With a little time left before meeting our friends, I stopped for one last French-style protein-free petit dejeuner. Apricot juice, espresso, bread, butter, and jam (strawberry and raspberry; I think they were homemade, as they were exceedingly low in pectin). Delicious. I could only eat half of my half-baguette.

    + + +

    Back to the apartment, and pack pack pack. We spread random small items on the table and stuffed the suitcases.

    They are significantly reorganized from their initial state. Three whole suitcases were devoted to items we will not need for the rest of the trip: rope, helments, harnesses, puffy coats, long underwear, hiking boots, beach gear.

     

    + + +

    We split up for dinner. The two youngest boys ate square white pain de mie spread with butter and (for the 7yo) jam and (for the 3yo) processed orange-colored cheese slices.

    Plus a bowl of fresh, petite strawberries. (Which we later regretted because they got all over the floor and were stepped on)

    The 11- and 13yos were sent into town with money, and they chose to go to the French McDonald’s for one last time. The younger one’s Happy Meal came with a fresh wedge of pineapple labeled “P’tit Ananas.”

    Mark and I and our oldest went out for a nice restaurant dinner at Le Cap’Horn. We split sushi to start (salmon maki and a fancy maki stuffed with tomato and spicy tuna and shrimp and then tempura fried; not very Japanese, but I wanted the French interpretation of the fancy maki, and it was good).

    Mark ordered “gambas à la plancha,” shrimp that came with flavorful rice and also their heads and legs. I ordered a starter as my plat: three petite “taquillos” stuffed with avocado and sushi-grade red tuna. Very nice! I didn’t share. The 17yo ordered wok-seared prawns in sesame-soy sauce with noodles and pickled vegetables. It was great.

    Dessert: a sweet strong wine for Mark, a cheese course of fresh chèvre with myrtilles for me, and a cheesecake mousse in a glass with red berries and speculoos crumble for the teenager.

    I didn’t talk much, but listened as my husband and son talked college planning. He thinks he’s picked his major, and must write the applications when we get home, and there’s much to discuss.

    The future looks bright.

     

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  • Flight.

    The whole point of leaving for Italy earlier than planned, and coming back to France earlier than planned, was to get better weather in Chamonix. Thursday this paid off in a big way.
    So we made another stab at getting MJ a chance to fly with the parapenters. We made another appointment with Sandie the pilot (and instructor, and championne de parapente).
    It’s funny, a few years back when we were here we were sort of joking about “maybe we’ll let the kids go parapenting,” and we didn’t really mean it as anything more than an outlandish joke. Because it seemed a little bit too extreme.
    And then the 13yo asked for it. And it is exactly the sort of thing we would expect our 13yo to want to do. So we thought about it, looked into the tandem flights, decided it was not actually crazy, and said yes. And then the oldest spoke up about wanting to do it, too. We got a recommendation from a friend who lives in the valley, who knows Sandie personally, and felt very secure entrusting our children to her and her organization.
    So, okay, we were doing this.
    We walked across town and got in line with the 11yo for tickets at the Aiguille de Midi lift (the Brévent lift is now closed for the season). Waited twenty minutes and finally got to the window where I asked for a one-way pass just for her.
    Sandie the pilot arrived carrying all her gear, the sail packed small, and greeted us warmly. We zipped our daughter’s ticket into her pocket and sent her off to the lift with Sandie. Then the two of us walked together through the town, wending our way toward the landing fields, which are not really very far from our apartment.
    There were already pilots there, folding their wings in the nearby parking lot.
    More were coming in for landings. As each pilot comes in, they begin running a moment before their feet touch the ground. When they come to a stop, the pilot makes a swift turning jerk that collapses the wing into a swift waterfall on the ground. Then they spread it out again, perhaps to get pointed in the right direction and let it inflate behind them as they jog off the field toward the folding place.

    Sandie’s outfit, Les Ailes du Mont Blanc, is an école de parapente and there is a little wooden building there with an office inside it; outside is where, I think, some classes must meet. While we waited for any sign of our little flier, I perused some of the posted educational materials. How to use, and not to use, your emergency parachute.

    And we waited, with Jake, the bilingual secretariat of the organization, who offered us coffee and conversation, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and squinting at the sky with us while his friendly, brown, and not-at-all-striped dog Zébra snuffled around and chewed sticks at our feet.

    Sandie had told us to watch for a white sail with a sun in the middle. “I wonder how many different ones she has,” mused Mark. “She said she needs different ones depending on how much the tandem rider weighs.”

    We watched the blue sky for a long time. The occasional airplane left brilliant white contrails that faded quickly, a testament to the perfection of the weather. Wings of other colors circled lazily high above. We heard from Jake, keeping tabs via text, that they had had a long line for the lift and a long line at the launching grounds. Finally I saw a white sail at about the place where we thought we might see one appear.

    Can you see it? It’s a white speck, silhouetted against deep green trees, just at the treeline.

     

    Eventually after many turns it came over the landing ground. The sun was high (it was just a bit after noon) and I had to eclipse the sun with the eaves of the shed to get a picture.

     

    She came in for a landing smoothly. I took no still photos, but I did take some video, which is complicated to upload right now.
    The pilot is seated in the back of the harness. The rider has to do all the running. So our daughter had been the one to run, pulling against all the force of the wing, off the cliff up above, and it was she who landed them both on her own two feet.

    At the last minute a fuzzy dog ran in front of them and I was worried, but they were fine. They landed, and collapsed the wing, and separated themselves from the harness right there. We stayed off the field and watched Sandie pack it up, while our daughter (in the black coat, no hat, and gray pants) chatted excitedly with her. We could not hear what
    she said, but we could hear the animation in her voice.

     

    We waited until Sandie delivered her back to us at the edge of the field. “She did great! Even though the running field was very small and there were rocks in the middle, she did it just right.”
    Our girl was grinning from ear to ear. “I had to run and not stop, Sandie said, even if my brain said stop running,” she said. Right over the edge.
    “She is eleven?” asked Sandie. “Next year she will be old enough for lessons in solo flying. Next time, lessons for everyone!”
     

     

    + + +
    Later Mark took us, in shifts, to the crag. I went with the 13yo, and watched while Mark freeclimbed up to set up a top rope (I could see that it was an easy climb, practically a staircase, but really? Couldn’t he have at least worn a helmet? The French safety standards are rubbing off on him).
    I climbed first, and in two attempts scaled what the 11yo had managed in her last climb. It was a fun and tricky climb, requiring me to concentrate, I surprised myself when I realized I had gotten all the way up.
    Here’s the 13yo on the same climb.
     
     
     
    + + +
    Then while Mark took the 17yo for a more challenging attempt at the crag, I was back at the apartment for three hours or so with all the other kids. The bigger ones went into town one at a time, and one at a time texted to be let back in.
    Later, after a foiled attempt to take the kids to a street carnival that turned out not to be ready yet (don’t need to get into it, tears and walking and a public tantrum were involved), Mark and I first picked up carryout for the kids (burgers from Poco Loco, apparently a Chamonix institution of sorts for hungry climbers) and then went out ourselves.
    Wine and a “Spanish-style” plank of meats and cheeses, with bread, tomatoes, beetroot slices, and golden raisins.

    We walked around some more, fed Mark a second dinner of a crepe (I was full already), and came back to a pile of burger wrappers, a few spare burgers, and kids all watching British DVDs.

    Next day: packing and a last farewell to Cham.

     

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  • Lunch date with number 4, and a recipe for fondue.

    Italian caffè is really quite bracing, but I was content to return to an apartment with a drip coffee maker that allowed me to fill a whole mug. Wednesday morning back in France was lovely.
    Mark really, really wanted to do the Via Corda Alpina before leaving. This is a part-hiking, part-climbing trail that would involve ropes, switching between climbing shoes and hiking shoes, and what Mark cheerfully described as “route-finding,” as the online descriptions of the trail are somewhat vague.
    We debated, on our way back from Italy, whether I would come or whether the 17yo would. Someone had to stay with the little boys. I was torn: I love hiking and would gladly do more, but Mark was probably right that I would not enjoy having to hunt for cairns to be sure we were still on the trail. Also, the 3yo was clearly stressed, and I felt a pull to stay with him and help him have a refreshing recovery day.
    In the end Mark took the 17yo and the 11yo. They left relatively early in the morning, after coffee, and headed to The Best Bakery In The World (TM) to buy breakfast and then sandwiches for their journey.
    The 13yo stayed with me for his own rest day. I was glad because his babysitting would free me up to go into town myself.
    Plan for the day: first the 13yo would get a chance to go into town with money for lunch and time to relax and shop. Then on his return I would take the 7yo to lunch and shopping for a toy and for an snack to eat later. In the afternoon I would go back into town by myself to buy food for dinner. The 3yo we would just let play, use the iPad, and nap. He needed a day off.
    + + +
    While the 13yo was down in the town, I did laundry. We had still-damp clothes in a mesh bag, clothes I’d pulled off the Italian drying rack right before leaving the last apartment. There were clothes in shopping bags, clothes in piles on the floor, clean clothes in backpacks, clothes piled on chairs, all mixed up. And in a few days we would have to be organized enough to get everything on British Airways.
    I made all the beds (except the teen boys’—I don’t do their laundry) to give me a place to put everything. And then I sorted. The damp stuff from the mesh bag went into the dryer in the hopes that it would wind up a bit less moist. Then I found the truly dirty items (visible smears) squirreled away in all the corners outside the teen boys’ room and put them in the wash. Then I started folding all the clean stuff I could find and putting it on the made beds.
    Except the teen boys’ stuff, which I just tossed into their room for them to deal with, and shut the door.
    By the time the 13yo had returned, I had made satisfying progress. I know there is an element of having to still do housework when I am ostensibly on vacation that is a bit bothersome. But honestly, I can only stand living surrounded by total chaos for so long. And it was truly pleasing to see my own clothes neatly refolded in an open suitcase, ready to wear.
    + + +
    I told the 7yo he could pick anyplace in town for lunch, except McDonald’s.
    “I want to have chicken nuggets.”
    He has gamely tried many unfamiliar foods during our trip, and after a tiring day of travel I was inclined to help him find something familiar. But chicken nuggets are relatively uncommon here, so I cautioned him, “I am not sure we will find a place with chicken nuggets.”
    “How about a hamburger with no bun and some fries?” (This child dislikes sandwiches of all kinds and always deconstructs them.)
    I had seen “steack haché” on numerous menus in town, so I agreed: we would try to find nuggets, but he would accept the bunless hamburger.
    But lo and behold, the first restaurant we looked at had a menu enfant featuring “Nuggetts et frites” along with a fruit-syrup drink and a boule de glace. Who was I to say no?
    We sat outside in full sun as he wished, but the sun got in his eyes. I had sunglasses, so we switched places.
     
    Normally I don’t enjoy sitting outside in the sun, but today it was just fine. It was cool, 45° F, but the sunshine was so warm that I took off my coat. I had a fine view of the mountains.
    I ordered the kids’ menu for him, and for myself a crêpe stuffed with ham, cheese, cream, and mushrooms, with a perfect sunny-side-up egg on top. It came with a lovely green salad with rings of red onion and a cream dressing. I ordered a small bottle of Vittel mineral water (echoes of my high school French teacher in Paris; she always ordered Vittel, and that is the reason why I always do; I can get Evian or San Pellegrino at home after all). And asked for a café allongé to come at the same time as the child’s ice cream.
    It was all very lovely until three bees came along, causing the 7yo to flee the table. He retreated to the next one over. The bees got his ice cream and what was left of his strawberry syrup drink.
    I told him that he could stay there if he wanted, but I was sure the bees would not bother either of us since they were so busy with the ice cream, so I was going to finish my coffee and pay. And that
    is what I did. I explained to the waitress, “Il a peur des abeilles,” and she said “Moi aussi” and did not seem to mind his cowering a table away.
    The first order of business was macarons for snack. “You can have any flavors you want,” I told him, “but only two this time. Three is too many. They’re very rich.” He picked out passionfruit and lemon. “What kind do you think your little brother will want?”
    “Green ones,” he decided, so I asked for one pistachio macaron, but I wasn’t sure it would be popular, so for the second one I asked for chocolate. Chocolate, too, for the 13yo, along with chocolate-orange. The seller, like the one from a few days ago, picked them out with silver tongs onto a silver tray, and carefully packed them one by one in tissue in a pale blue box, which he handed to my 7yo gravely. The 7yo took it with both hands and said “Merci.”
    We wandered around looking at shops for a while, spent some time in a bookstore looking for things that might be fun for English-speaking children, and finally ended up at the supermarket, which has miscellaneous household goods on the lower level. He picked out a small LEGO kit for himself and a Playmobil Mini kit for the 3yo, and helped me select grape juice, square bread, wine, and milk. We packed these and the macarons into my two mesh shopping bags and each carried one home.

    On the way we were amused to see a very Chamonix sight, a young boy on a skateboard being pulled along by a dog harnessed to him via a piece of retired climbing rope.

    I stopped to take a picture with a beautiful backdrop on the pedestrian bridge. And then we hiked up the hill to the apartment.

    + + +

    I came in, put away groceries, nursed the 3yo, and did another round of laundry folding. Then I turned my mind to dinner.

    I had found a fondue set in a box on the top shelf in the apartment kitchen, and thought I might try my hand at a Fondue Savoyard. I mentally made a composite recipe from the three different recipes in my two local cookbooks: emmental, gruyère, Beaufort, comtè, about a kilogram in all; and most of a bottle of Apremont wine, with kirsch, garlic, pepper, and nutmeg. I headed out with a penciled list.

    On the way I got an update text from Mark, who after some route-finding challenges had finally located the way down. The kids had had a great day out. He sent a picture.

    + + +

    I continued on to the grocery store for my second round. The best thing about French grocery stores is the dairy aisle. Yes, there is also a cheese counter where you can have any of dozens of cheeses hand cut by weight; but I like to peruse the packaged section, where varieties of cheese that can only be found at specialty shops in Minneapolis are wrapped up as if they were Colby or Velveeta. Tomme de Savoie in a shrink-wrapped wedge; chèvre patties pre-breaded for you to fry up in a pan and nestle into your salad; slices of raclette the correct size to melt under the broiler in little pans.

    And the yogurt! So many kinds of whole-milk yogurt, and related treats like fromage frais. I like it plain and tart, but there is also yogurt with apricot, or myrtilles, or blackcurrant, or chestnut, or acacia honey, and of course the ubiquitous hazelnut.

    I bought my four French cheeses, plus some more Babybels, and found the wine, and after some hunting, the kirsch. A bag of salad greens, some garlic, sugar snap peas, and plums—Reine Claude greengages, velvety soft and no bigger than walnuts—and apples, Reine des Reinettes, “Queen of Pippins.”

    Also three loaves of bread.

    On my way up the hill.
    Once home, and having heard that Mark was on his way back, I prepped the dinner. I tried to grate the Beaufort but it was too soft (sort of like Havarti in texture, but much more potent) so I cut it into thin lamellae.
    My recipe:
    • 1 clove garlic
    • 225 g Beaufort sliced thin
    • 420 g Comté, grated
    • 200 g Emmental, grated
    • 125 g Gruyère, grated
    • About 2/3 of a bottle of Apremont (dry, minerally white wine)
    • About 125 mL of kirsch
    • Fresh-ground pepper and nutmeg to taste
    • Cubes of stale white bread
    Halve the garlic clove and rub the inside of the fondue pot all over, not leaving any fragments of garlic behind, In the fondue pot on the stovetop, heat the wine and kirsch with the pepper and nutmeg to a simmer. Gradually add the Beaufort, stirring with a wooden spoon, and then the other cheeses. Thin with more wine if necessary. When a smooth sauce is obtained, move the pot to the fondue base and serve with bread cubes.

     

    Unfortunately, I lost track of the stuff and broke my emulsion, so instead of getting a smooth sauce I got a two-phase pot of flavorful broth and protein s
    lurry.

     

    Oh well. Instead of using fondue forks to dip bread in the pot, we divided slurry and broth into individual bowls and let the children put bread into it and eat the whole porridge with a spoon.

     

    And you know what? The texture was all wrong, but it tasted amazing. Mark said it was the best fondue he’d had, and the 13yo said I had gotten the cheeses just right. So perhaps this is something I should add to my repertoire at home.

    + + +
    Later I found in the 7yo’s room the notebook I had bought him in Italy. He had been using his seven-color gift shop pen to draw rockets.
     
     
    I think he is pleased with these gifts.
    + + +
    We finished the night with another run for ice cream. I had pear this time, and it was grainy and sweet like a ripe pear can be. The first few bites were too sweet, but it grew on me as I got into it.
     

    And that was the end of that rest day.

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  • Return to Chamonix, via Turin.

    Tuesday morning we were to check out of the apartment in Andora, but first the 11yo and I went on a little walk, for breakfast and souvenirs. It was a gorgeous, calm, blue-sky day. The waves rolled gently from the sea onto the nearly-empty beaches. It would have been fun to spend an hour or two on the beach before leaving, but Mark and I had agreed that dealing with bathing suits and sand and going straight to the car would complicate things. Alas.

     

    But souvenir shopping is not complicated!

     

    We chose Bar Napoleon for its overflowing pastry case. I saw a gentleman choose his own pastry from the case and bring it to the bar, and we copied him. The 11yo chose a croissant labeled nocciola—I really do not understand why the kids love hazelnut so much, I can do completely without the stuff—and I chose one that looked wholesome and grainy and was labeled something like cereali.
    We carried them to the bar and I ordered un cappuccino per me, e per lei, una cioccolata calda o qualcosa comme ça, because one problem I have sometimes is that when the Italian pipeline runs dry the French starts to spill out behind it.
    No matter. We got our drinks. The barista made the hot chocolate from a packet and with steamed milk, which is fine.
    The croissants were good (I didn’t taste hers, but she ate it up; mine contained a sweet filling, sort of like apple or maybe honey).
    She didn’t like the hot chocolate. It was bitter, barely sweet, and thick, spoonable, almost like pudding. I suggested she add sugar, people put it in their espresso and there is plenty around, but she wrinkled her nose and we wound up leaving the chocolate behind.
    We walked up and down the beach. She had a little money to spend and wanted some souvenirs and gifts from Italy. On the previous days in the later morning there had been sellers of bags, wood carvings, laced tall and narrow drums, all spread out on sheets on the plaza or hanging on temporary stalls (“Good price, good price, come see”); we thought that some of the woven wicker bags might be cool; but it was too early for those sellers. The plaza was still empty.
    There are numerous little shops that read as “tourist shops” because they sell things like bobbleheads and refrigerator magnets with your name on them, crossed by plastic palms; but if you look closely they are also selling items that are very functional for an impromptu beach vacation, or for the traveler who has lost or forgotten something important. Sunglasses, and beach mats, and plastic pails and shovels and dump trucks; magazines, even swimsuits, coverups, scarves.
    She bought a scarf (I coached her to feel the fabric first, to make sure it at least felt soft and comfortable, ot cheap crepe) and felt satisfied. We went on, and back to a little store I had noticed on our way out: school supplies, office supplies, and stationery.
    I love paper and pens, neat little art kits, notebooks. I thought about buying a child’s illustrated Italian-English vocabulary book, the kind with two-page spreads of scenes, and the nouns labeled with both words. But I resisted.
    I got a little notebook for the 7yo, who had been wishing for paper ever since he spent some of his own money on a seven-color retractable pen from the gift shop in the Genoa aquarium. The 11yo found a sweet little nylon portfolio with three zip compartments, one with scissors, ruler, pens, pencils, sharpener, and eraser, the other two with colored pencils and markers. I bought it for her and called it a School Supply, so she did not have to spend her own money.
    + + +
    Back at the apartment, we repacked our clothes, pulled still-damp items off the drying rack and stuffed them into mesh bags, stowed random items in shopping bags, and crammed this luggage among our bodies in the car, which has nearly no cargo space. I was sad to leave the Andora apartment, probably the nicest rental apartment we have ever had.
    We aimed for Turin, with a modest goal: to stop in the cathedral there—yes, it is the one where they keep the Shroud, but that was not what we were after, and anyway, it isn’t on display now. We wanted to visit the tomb of Bl. Piergiorgio Frassati. I would have liked to set an additional goal of walking twenty minutes from there (past what would be some cool sights on their own) to the basilica Maria Ausiliatrice, which is the resting place of Sts. John Bosco (my child discipline mentor, also a fan of St. Francis de Sales) and Maria Mazzarello, but I knew that would be too ambitious for the small children, so I only kept it as a vague perhaps-it’ll-work-out thought.
    + + +
    Our 17yo is rocking the restaurant picks, so we assigned him to pick one on the way for a leisurely lunch. He picked Ristorante “Al Bue Grassi” at the Carrù exit; the place was close to the highway, sharing a building with a coffee bar, and surrounded by agricultural fields. They advertised a “laborer’s menu” for €10 on the sign. Mark sent me in ahead to ask.
    “Siamo sette—possiamo pranzare?”
    Yes. Yes, we could eat lunch. There was only one table open in the whole place, but it was the big one. Every other table w
    as occupied by men, except one with a retirement-age couple next to us.
    The menu was a little more complicated than others we’d looked at, with no English. Normally we let everyone choose a dish, but nobody could read the menu but me, so finally I shut everyone down and took over, while Mark was in the bathroom with the 3yo and couldn’t object.
    I ordered:
    • peperoni bagna cauda (I focused on the peppers a marinade but forgot it was made of anchovies)
    • salumi misti
    • a pasta course: tagliatelle pomodoro, tagliatelle ragù, gnocchi pomodoro (wish I had gotten the butter and herb sauce instead, as while it was good, I think that would have been perfect), ravioli ragù
    • mixed grill (sausage, pork, veal, chicken, beef)
    • filet of beef with green peppercorn sauce
    I cannot believe that those meat portions were supposed to be for one person only. Huge. At least a pound total in the mixed grill and half a pound for the filet.
    Like the trompe-l’oeil on the ceiling?
    The children drank a liter each of natural and frizzante mineral water. Mark asked me to order him a glass of Barolo, since we were in the Piedmont; but what we are finding is that most restaurants only have one wine of each color by the quarter-liter and half-liter, though they may have dozens of bottles.
    But! One bottle on the long list measured 0.375 L. It was a Barbera, a good runner up to Barolo. Perfect for splitting at lunch time.
    For dessert, they had a cart. An eggy amaretto-soaked ring cake, caramelized on the outside. (Mark.) A hazelnut torte with a custardy sauce. (The 11yo, who had not had enough nocciola that morning.) Tiramisu (the 17yo). Panna cotta (my 13yo’s new fave). Gelato, crema and limone in the same bowl, for the two little boys. And prunes simply stewed, then chilled, in sweetened, spiced red wine (me).
    My 17yo tried the prunes and pronounced them better than his tiramisu. They were quite good. I will have to make that at home.
    + + +
    On to Turin, with flat country on our right and mountains on our left.
    Driving into the middle of Turin was on the edge of what Mark is comfortable with. He has driven in Rome (never again, ever, for any reason) and Bologna (never again unless he has to), and he says that Turin was not quite as bad as those, only because there were not as many motorcycles and scooters, and we did not drive any narrow streets. He focuses on not hitting things, and I tried to navigate.
    I wasn’t sure whether to try it or not, but on researching I figured out there was a big public parking garage right on the edge of the limited-traffic zone, a few minutes’ walk from the cathedral inside it. And the roads that approached the garage were all big major streets. So we decided to try it.
    But then we missed a turn (largely because of a confusion between “right” the direction and “right” meaning correct, combined with needing to be on a frontage road instead of a main road to make a certain turn), and Google Maps rerouted us. We crossed the river five or six times, and got glimpses of numerous cool views: the Piazza San Carlo spread out before us, stunningly, at one point, until we turned and it disappeared, and a long road along the river, its walk lined with fat, shady, knobbly trees.
    Suddenly not far from the garage we were heading to, Mark spied a street parking spot and grabbed it. We were puzzling over the electronic parking meter when a traffic parking official stopped, rolled down his window, and told us it was free today.
    We couldn’t understand why, but we accepted it gladly.
    + + +
    I did not take any pictures inside the cathedral. It is not a breathtakingly grand building, and I barely glanced at the art inside. We passed quietly to the left until we found the side chapel with a large portrait of Bl. Piergiorgio, and a large informational poster giving his biography (Italian only I think), and a kneeler with a suggested prayer in Italian.
    There were candles burning in tiny votive holders, and little cone-shaped candles in a box below with a sign: €0.50. I let the 3yo down from my back and gave him a half-euro coin, and more coins to the other children, and let them put the coins in the slot. The lighter was the pull-the-trigger butane kind, but the 11yo helped the 7yo and I helped the 3yo and it was fine, we lit the candles and not our clothes.
    I knelt down next to the 3yo and said my prayer out loud in vocabulary meant for a 3yo to hear. Then we moved on to the chapel, glassed-in and with a closed red curtain behind the glass, where they keep the Shroud; there is a picture or a replica hanging in front of it, which confused the kids at first. I stayed out, though, because there was a sign saying “silencio” and I was gripping the 3yo. Across on the other side was the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, the red lamp burning, and we paused there for a moment; and then we left.
    It was clear from the 3yo and the 11yo that we were not going to walk twenty minutes to the basilica. I gathered the children together, while Mark bought the 7yo a holy water fon
    t from the gift shop, and swept past the beggars holding out their cups, an old and easy habit from one who has lived in cities all her life (and remembers well being followed and grasped at by strange men in foreign cities)—and thought of Bl. Piergiorgio, the rich young man who quietly made real friendships with the poor in this very city, who gave his life for them, whose parents were amazed when throngs turned out to mourn him.
    We are advised by wise people, including our pastors, not to give alms directly to beggars. And Piergiorgio is not a hero because, among other reasons, he gave alms to the poor—any rich young man can do that—but because he made relationships with them.
    Nevertheless, sometimes we are shown that contrast is striking, between ourselves and what we would like to be.
    + + +
    So we walked on, past the archeological park with its remains of the theater from the old Roman castrum.
    And out through terrifying traffic, including a near-mishap in a multi-lane roundabout. Mark swore and I covered my face with my hands. We made it out alive.
    People parallel parked in two rows on the street. We have no idea how that was supposed to work.
     

    Finally we escaped. This looks like Piedmont to me: totally flat, with mountains very close.

     

    Eventually we came back into the Val d’Aosta. Here we had a good view of the rock face that our teenager climbed with Jeff the guide and the aspiring aspirant guide the previous week.
    And the ubiquitous castles-on-a-hill that dot the valley.
    + + +
    Finally, around 7:30 pm, we rolled through the Mont Blanc tunnel and back into Chamonix, where the other apartment and most of our stuff was waiting for us. I was in a sleeveless top, having been walking on the beach this morning; here there was fog, and snow mid-mountain, and I shivered. The 3yo was so very stressed out (and had wet his pants) that I took him right in, stripped him, and put him to bed and nursed him there.
    Then Mark and I found hats and socks and warm coats and headed out in search of pizza. We ordered four pizzas to carry out, and two glasses of wine to drink while we waited for them. It was perfectly comfortable under the heated awning, and our wine glasses were warm in our hands. Nice; almost all the red wine in Liguria had come chilled, and I was glad to drink wine that was not cold.
    It really felt like a homecoming. The kids devoured the pizza, and settled in to watch some videos, and everyone calmed down just a little bit.
    Four nights here, and then we move on again.

     

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  • Genoa, limited.

    On Monday, with some trepidation, I suggested we drive one hour to Genoa for the day. There are things to see in Genoa, quite a lot, but I had a modest goal: the Aquarium, one of the largest in Europe. And possibly the Museo del Mare. Both are part of the same massive entertainment and tourist complex at the “old port.”
    Google Maps gave us confusing directions, so I spent a lot of the drive deciphering the driving directions on the aquarium website.
     

     

     

    We maneuvered our way into a massive parking garage and emerged onto a huge plaza. It reminded us of other places we have been where an “old port” has been turned into an entertainment and restaurant complex: Chicago, and Newport, Kentucky, across the river from Cincinnati.

    We weren’t sorry, though, because all that new construction made it easy to slip in from the elevated highway that snakes over the old port, with no slow nervous passage through medievally narrow streets. The “porto antico” was a little port within a port; it was full of boats, a working marina, and we even saw a big bright-orange tugboat in drydock there; but at the same time it was the home of several museums, a Disneyesque tourist pirate galley, and a big movie theater. It was disorienting to look around and think: This is the port from which the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria sailed.
    But then if you turned and looked up at the buildings dotting the hills, all facing the sea, it wasn’t so hard to believe.
    Sure, the houses are modern now, towering apartment blocks, and there are cars winding on the elevated highway, enclosed under perforated roofs, maybe sound protection to muffle the traffic noise from the inhabited balconies above. But there is something timeless about the way the buildings cling to the steep side of the cliffs, all of them craning their necks to see the expanse of the sea. Genoa is a craggy, green, creased city on the side of the hills, squinting permanently over the sparkling horizon, where travel was swift instead of (as on the hilly land) arduous. That intent gaze must have been the same five hundred years ago as it is now.
    + + +
    There are antiquities and architecture to see in Genoa, but I had a much more modest and modern goal in mind. I wanted to take the kids to the Aquarium.
    The Acquario di Genova claims it is the largest aquarium in Europe, although other sites name it the second-largest; maybe it depends on how you define it. I have only been to one aquarium that rivaled it, and that was the freshwater-only aquarium in Duluth. But this covered the Mediterranean and the whole world. It claims 15,000 animals; 200 plant species; and 27,000 square meters in area.
    We saw a roomful of jellyfish; a pair of manatees; piranha; many sharks; seahorses; crocodiles; part of the dolphin show (very impressive, four dolphins synchronizing their leaping, and we were very close); manta rays, enormous moray eels emerging sluglike from their holes, scintillating spidery crabs, two sawfish skimming bizarrely along the bottom.
    There was a touch pool where you could pet a sort of ray that fluttered along in the sand. And an exhibit with many species featured in “Finding Nemo.”
    We all thought it was tremendous, from Mark down to the youngest. But it was that youngest who was really entranced. Our three-year-old’s favorite show is Octonauts, that cartoon about deep dives into the ocean among the sea creatures; and he spent the two hours of our visit in a state of utter delight. One of his brothers had him in the back carrier, so he didn’t tire, and he wanted to stay and look at every fish.
    One of the last exhibits was about explorers and biodiversity and evolution, and it was very attractively set up as a mock deck on the H. M. S. Beagle. My 7- and 11-yos, in the process of learning about transatlantic explorers, were surprisingly engaged in the exhibit.
    We ate a forgettable, but functional, fast food meal in the museum canteen midway through the visit. The fries weren’t bad, I should say, and I was pleased with myself for transacting everything relatively smoothly in Italian.
    One thing that I think is funny is that the cashiers and baristas are always impressed with me for rattling off the numbers on the receipts. I think numbers must be difficult for most people who struggle with a little traveler’s Italian. Me, I have Italian numbers down cold by now: Tredici cinquanta, cente ottantasette, ventidue ventotto. I hear them and the numerals appear in my inner eye: 13.50, 187, 21.28; easy. You would think it was maybe because I am a math person, what with the engineering degrees and all that; but the truth is I am not nearly so facile with numbers in French, and have to think hard and “translate” them, not merely deal with them as words in a language I know. Before learning Italian I had a theory that the left and right brain both have to crunch the numbers in order to translate them from a foreign language, because I felt a real resistance in my head to press through to the meaning of treize cinquante, cent quatre-vingts-sept, vingt-et-un vingt-huit. But the Italian numbers just seem to work perfectly. Is it because they are less cumbersome than French: novanta (ninety) instead of quatre-vingts-dix (four-twenties-ten?) Or is it because the Italian enunciation is clearer to English-speaking ears? I don’t know; just that Italian numbers seem to work right away in my head, with no translation.
    + + +
    After the aquarium we went to the Galata Museo
    del Mare    . This is the Genoa naval museum, and it includes a stunning variety of models of ships, from ancient times through Genoa’s golden age of shipping and exploring to today.
    There are a few lifesize, walk-through ship reproductions: a whole galley, rooms on a transatlantic steamer, a more modern ship with a simulation of steering into the Genoa port.
     
    There was also a temporary exhibit about the Andrea Doria and its sinking, including a reconstructed room listed to 30°. And some atlases and globes were exhibited under glass, some hundreds of years old. One was an edition of Mercator’s atlas. There were also navigational instruments, clocks, and a simulated galley bench with an oar-handle to try to row.
    + + +
    Eventually the 3yo got too tired, and we had to rush through the last bit of the museum. Mark and the 17-, 13-, and 7-year-old boys went to tour the Real Submarine while the 3yo (forbidden to tour the sub) and the 11yo (bored) and I went to find a treat; we found a coffee bar that sold sorbetto popsicles. The barista, hearing that I was American, first expressed condolences for the destructive hurricane season and then commented that in America we had weak coffee; I pointed out that at least in the U. S. we could obtain large quantities of coffee and did not serve it in thimble-sized portions.
    It was good espresso, though. Can’t argue with that.
    + + +
    We drove the hour back to Andora, stopped in a grocery store for bread and olives and jarred peppers and beans, and made a feast out of refrigerated pasta boiled three minutes with Genovese pesto from the deli, and bread and meat and fruit.
     
     

     

     
     

     

    And limoncello right before bed, bought from an Italian gas station.

     

    A good day.

     

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  • Windier beach day.

    Oh man. I just had half a bottle of wine and a couple of shots of limoncello. And I am sitting across from Mark and there is more limoncello here. And it’s late on Monday and I still haven’t written my blog post about Sunday. Let’s see what I can do.
    + + +
    So the first thing that happened on Sunday was that Mark and I went for a very pleasant walk to find coffee and pastries and to scope out a different beach to play on with the family.
    Mark got a hazelnut pastry cornucopia thing, and I got a quilted puff pastry full of “crema.” Which was a sort of eggy custard.
     
    One of the things I like about Italian dolci is that the “neutral” dessert flavor is not vanilla. Vanilla is okay, but I can overdose on it. The neutral dessert flavor is just sweet cream, or sweet custard. No vanilla. Just the flavor of the milk and cream and sugar. In ice cream, it’s fior di latte, the flower of the cream. Or crema dell’uova, the cream of the eggs, for an eggier flavor. No vanilla. Sugar and cream; or sugar, cream, and eggs.
    Good cappuccino, and a sea breeze, and a faint but not unpleasant scent of tobacco from neighboring coffee drinkers.
    It was windy on Sunday! The waves were breaking all over the beach, and people were surfing! And windsurfing too.
    We decided to go to a beach that had a play structure for kids, Tortuga Beach, in case the wind was too strong for the little ones.
    We made our plan: We would go home, gather up the kids and dress them with clothes over their swimsuits, go out for a full Italian lunch, then go straight to the beach, then go home and have dinner in the apartment with our tired children.
    We stopped at the grocery on the way back for dinner food. Look! Proscuitto in single-serve packets:
    We bought breadsticks, and cheese from the deli (sold by the weight, so you have to talk to someone to get it). Cereal. Crackers. We moved on to a pastry shop and bought loaves of fresh bread, and six cookies for the children, and two stuffed cannoli. We stopped at a final small grocery and bought wine, and apples. The store owner’s two little daughters brought me a basket to put the apples in as I selected them.
    + + +
    We gathered the children and went out walking, looking for a good full lunch. The first place we tried would not seat us without a reservation. So we walked back, and found a good-sized table at “Il Bastione,” a restaurant in a medieval stone tower.
    I asked for a smile from these two and got this:
    I don’t think I could have gotten a smile out of the 3yo. He was rapidly melting, saying things like “Your red car is better than our car in Italy. It has faster tires.” And there were no breadsticks to be found! Mark picked him up and carried him around the restaurant, looking at the interesting windows and lamps.
    We ordered penne pomodoro for him, and a marinara pizza for our 11yo and 7yo, and a shared pasta with tomato pesto for Mark and the 17yo. Me, I saw “insalatina di farro con tonno rosso” on the list of antipasti, and knew I had found my lunch. Chewy wheat berries, herbs, olive oil, lemon-soaked raw fresh tuna, and thick shards of parmigiano reggiano? Please. I didn’t want to share with anyone.
    Except the 13yo, who had ordered the pizza Genova: pesto, with roasted potatoes and slim green beans. The crust was perfect, crisp and light. We traded some. It was heavenly.
    For dessert: gelato, and crème brulée (very like eggy vanilla pudding), and a fudgy chocolate log with hazelnuts sliced and served with gelato, and a fantastic panna cotta served with seasonal fruits: melon, kiwi, peach. I had a semifreddo with pistachio and chocolate, a bit too rich but lovely. Finished with espresso.
    On to Tortuga Beach!
    By this time the wind and the waves were quite strong. We tried to take the little children to the play structure, but it was closed for lunch and wouldn’t open for twenty-five minutes. So we went down to the beach, where there were literally no families playing in the waves and no one but wet-suited surfers in the water.
    Our older kids were excited and ran in, but then the lifeguard and a manager both came out to tell us not to let them in deeper than their bellybuttons, because the water was “molto pericoloso” today. The waves crashed and broke all around us. I saw a jellyfish washed up on the sand, told the 3yo not to touch it. “It will sting me,” he said gravely. Kid has watched a lot of Octonauts.
    + + +
    So I kept a firm grip on the 3yo’s hand, and Mark kept the 7yo, and we ordered the tween and teens to stay close in. And the lifeguard watched us nervously, as we were literally the only family on the whole beach. And at three o’clock the lifeguard got my attention and said: Il parco de gioca è aperto adesso. And I said “Thank you! Grazie!” and asked the two little boys if they wanted to go to the playground, and they shrieked yes and ran over the sand, with me chasing after them warning them not to step on the jellyfish.
     
     
    The wind from the sea blew a fine sand into my eyes, even with my sunglasses on; I pressed them closer to my face. The two little kids attacked the play structure with relish, and I sat on a bench and felt the sun—even with the wind, it was warmer today.
    Eventually the water got so rough that Mark called it off even for the older kids. They all came in and hung out with me in the play area.
     
    We didn’t stay long, long enough for some play on the play structure, and for the big kids to get money and go buy themselves a soda. Then we walked tired home through the town.
    There is a little herb garden here. Lemon thyme, and oregano, and rosemary, all carved into little signs.
    Home, and a little rest. Mark produced some espresso from the machine and handed it to me proudly. I tasted it: “Sorry, it’s brown, but it’s ice-cold. Freddo.”
    “What?!” He bent over the machine to tinker with it, and I microwaved my espresso. Then I started pulling things out of the fridge. Cold meats, and the cheese from the deli —both goat cheeses, it turned out—wine, and a can of borlotti beans that I doused with oil and vinegar, salt and pepper; and a jar of roasted peppers, and a bag of hard breadsticks, and a plate of cut apples and yellow plums. We set it all out on the patio and fell to.

     

    Afterwards, while I wrote the previous day’s post, Mark and the big kids cleaned up, talking late into the evening of college majors, of management and finance and engineering.

     

    While the youngest curled up in a blanket and looked up at the stars.

     

     

     

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  • Beach day.

    I woke up on the first morning in Andora and got dressed before anyone else was up. First I took some photos on the balcony.
     

    It is really a dream of an apartment, the kind that makes it easy to imagine living a beautiful life surrounded by sun-soaked potted flowers and succulents, drinking wine with friends on the terrace, retreating under an outdoor roof should a shower interrupt your dinner.

    Never mind that I can’t keep a single houseplant alive in my real life. Look, a potting bench with a sink, or maybe it is a wet bar. Either, neither, both, it doesn’t matter. It’s a fantasy, remember?

    I took a mirror selfie on my way out the exterior door. It was a little chilly so I wore leggings and flats and a fleece and a scarf over my little knit black dress.

    We are located on the west end of town, on the other side of a little river with a big marshy bed that flows down to the sea. If you look up the river from the bridge, you can see the low mountains we drove over, and the viaduct for the big coastal highway. There is a sign on the bridge touting the natural beauty of the marshy river, indicating that more than 40 species of birds live in this little valley. We have seen swans and a couple different kinds of ducks in it, ourselves, besides the pigeons and seagulls that frequent the beach area.
    My first order of business was coffee. I found a corner place on the way to the beach and ordered a cappuccino. I had difficulty understanding the barista when she was trying to ask me if I wanted “cacao” on my drink, probably because I forgot that that is a thing one gets on cappucino and I wasn’t expecting it. I hear words I am expecting much more easily than words I am not expecting.
    I took my time with the drink, and watched people come in and go out. An old man ordered a ristretto; I think I know what that is, but I am not sure. Somehow, I have never learned all the necessary vocabulary to order coffee made in different ways, either in Italian or in French, and somehow I find that sort of embarrassing. I want to know what I want, and I want to know how to ask for it, and I still don’t know either of those things. Because at a coffee shop at home I generally order a twelve-ounce dark roast, black drip coffee, or sometimes I ask for half-caf; I don’t think they have this here.
    So in France I order a café allongé (and I am not even sure exactly what that means, but it proves that I know enough to order something slightly more involved than just café), and in Italy in the morning while no one will laugh at you for it I order cappuccino, del caffè più tarde, but I feel like there is a whole world of other ways I could order my coffee that is still closed to me.
    By walking a few blocks from the apartment, I became the first member of the family to see the sea today.
     
    Palm trees and winding flowers everywhere. I associate palms with hot weather, so it was a bit odd to be walking around in a fleece against the brisk wind coming off the water.
     
    In the center of town was a piazza with knobby low trees that children could climb in, public phone charging stations, a play structure, and the parish church. This was a modern, modest, but well proportioned church, with a geometric steeple, and dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. There is a much older and more historic church farther away from the beach, up in the hills, but this is within walking distance of our apartment. It was Saturday; I took note of the posted Mass times.
     
    I stopped at a store as I had promised, and bought things for breakfast: milk and granola (“muesli croccante con pezzi di frutti,” crunchy muesli with fruit pieces), square white bread, plain yogurt and fruity yogurt, and some plums.
    I came back to find Mark struggling with the espresso machine in the apartment. As the children leaped on the cereal and white bread, he served me his latest experimental cup. I sipped and pronounced it warm and brown, and therefore acceptable. “I think this is robusta, not arabica,” he said, and I said that was all right and I would drink anything, and we coul
    d buy better coffee in town if necessary.
    + + +
    The apartment came furnished with a bag of beach toys and straw mats. We collected a few bags of these, with towels and such, and put on our swimsuits and walked to the beach.
    The sun went in and out of clouds. It was cool and breezy when the clouds hid the sun, and perfectly warm when the sun came out. I held the 3yo’s hand and we let the waves roll up and foam around our ankles, and he shrieked and ran away, then back in. The 17yo took the 3yo and swung him up over the water. I went back and transacted to obtain rental chairs with umbrellas, one set in the front row facing the sea, and one set just behind (all the others, though empty, were already rented, some of them by the week). And I settled down, wrapped in fleeces and towels against the chilly breeze, to enjoy the sun.
    And the company.
    The waves were gentle and rolling. All the children ran in, and were whistled at by the lifeguard who explained to me that they were much too close to the rocks, and showed us by pointing where they could be. We redirected them, and then set them loose. The 17yo stuck close to the 3yo (who didn’t want to get any closer to the water than he had to to scoop it up in a bucket, anyway). The 7yo tried to bury himself in sand to get warm. The 13yo dove headfirst into the waves, over and over. The 11yo joined one, then the other, then the next, trying to do it all.
    At one point the 17yo brought the 3yo to us wet, spitting and coughing. “Just so you know,” he told us, “he’s okay, but he fell in the water.”
    “Did you taste the sea?” I asked him. “How did it taste?”
    He pulled a squinty, grinning grimace. “It tastes,” he roared, “like a sugar mistake!” We laughed till tears came. He ran right back to the sea.
    Later, having ventured farther out, he came back shrieking, “A big wave came! And then! Another big wave came! And! They both beat me!”
    + + +
    The beach was starting to fill up. It was no longer high season, but it was a weekend, after all. Everything was still warm and beautiful, but also everything was a good deal cheaper than it had been in August. The beach chair rental was half price.
    When Mark and I got hungry, we gave six euros to our 13yo and told him to find out what sort of food they had, buy some, and come back. He returned with a basket of hot french fries, with ketchup, and some change. “They have six kinds of panini,” he told us, “well, three of them I think they’re out of. One is tuna. They have french fries and something risotto. They have wine and Coke and potato chips.”

    I left the 3yo with the 17yo and went up to investigate myself, promising to buy him something.

    I ordered two panini with ham, cheese, lettuce, and tomato—one for me and one for the 17yo—and got tomato-flavored potato chips for the 3yo and also a Coke for the 17yo as a treat for having watched the little guy so attentively. And we got more french fries, and a glass of wine for me.

    When the man behind the counter brought our french fries, he had a big bottle of ketchup. “You need?” he asked, gesturing.

    “Yes, yes!” said the seven-year-old, pointing, and I said: Siamo americani. È…. necesario? and then thought, wait, was that a Spanish word?

    He laughed, squirting ketchup into the french fry basket, “È indispensabile!”

    My panino was good, hot and crisp with cool lettuce and tomato, and my wine was tart and slightly frizzante. One thing I have noticed about wine here is that if you ask for a glass, or a carafe, of wine, they only want to know: Rosso o bianco? And after you tell them, they might ask if frizzante is okay, as if they’ve been burned by tourists who weren’t expecting their not-champagne, not-prosecco wine to have little bubbles in it. A lot of it is frizzante, and some of the reds are pale and pinkish, almost rosé.

    But nobody yet in Italy has shown me a wine list. Maybe if I ordered a bottle? So far it has all been glasses and carafes. They always bring me wine, red or white according to my request, and il vino frizzante mi piace, so I guess I don’t need to know what I am drinking exactly.

    Around here all the wine, it seems, even the red, is chilled, not cold but cool, and also it all has a vinegary nose: like sniffing red wine vinegar, or sour ale. It tastes surprisingly tart, most of what I have had. But it goes down very easily, refreshing before the food arrives; and when the food arrives, it folds itself smoothly into the dish and seems softer, warmer, luscious, part of the meal.

    + + +

    We went back to the beach and spent another hour or so. I was enjoying just lounging around in the sun, which is a recent development; I have been training for it. Honestly, it is hard for me just to sit and be, a lot of the time; there is always something at home I ought to be doing, and sitting in the sun reading a book or just thinking is hard for me to do. The last couple of summers at home, I made a real effort to go outside for fifteen minutes at lunchtime, every nice day; put my feet up, read a book, feel the sun on my bare feet and arms.

    I put that practice to use.

    While I was there on the chair, wrapping up and unwrapping as the sun dove b
    ehind clouds or came out to warm me again, I got a lot of pictures of the family. This is one of my favorites.

    I am a little sad that I am not in it. But I wouldn’t have the picture if I had been there. I guess I’d have something else, sand between my toes, a memory of whatever it is they were saying to each other in that moment.
    You can make a memory, or you can make a record. You have to choose.
    She says as she sits at the table in the Italian apartment kitchen, writing on her iPad.
    Oh well, you need down time too, and one of my goals—a goal is a choice too—one of my goals for this vacation is to blog every day. I have a hope that it will get me back in the habit.

    + + +

    After showering and resting, we decided to go to Mass on Saturday evening and then have dinner in town.

    Church was at six p.m. We got there on the dot and were astonished to discover that it was utterly packed. We had to stand off to the side, in an alcove where the baptismal font was. The 17yo was carrying the 3yo in the carrier on his back; the 3yo fell asleep, so there wasn’t much for the 17yo to do other than to keep wearing him for the whole mass. He stood, leaned on the font, leaned on the windowsill, made do.

    The 7- and 11-yo had their Magnifikids. They sat on the floor, backs to the wall, which I think was okay because we really were out of the way in the baptismal alcove. Most of the standing people were by the front door (“the back of the church”) where they had a better view. There were also benches along the side walls.

    In case you are wondering why nobody offered our young and tired family a seat: Nearly everyone near us was elderly. There were a few families here and there; this town is not at all devoid of children, not the way Rome was. But there really was nobody around who ought to have offered us a seat! It was fine to stand.

    I would have liked a song book, though.

    When the Gloria started, my daughter perked up, because it was exactly the melody for the same Latin Gloria that she chants in the youth choir in our home parish. “Gloria in excelsis Deo,” sang the cantor, and my daughter jumped up and loudly started in on “Et in terra pax hominibus—” and then shrank back in embarrassment because nobody else was singing, after the cantor started they had all just started reciting the rest of the Gloria. In Italian.

    Oh well, she survived.

    It really is nice that the Mass ordinary is the same everywhere. Except for the homily itself, you know exactly what sort of thing is being said. The language may be different, but you know what is going on. If you want you can keep up, saying your own parts in your own language, or you can listen intently and find out how they do it here: Signore, pietà.

    I concentrated as hard as I could on the homily, and I gathered that today there was some couple in the parish who was celebrating a notable wedding anniversary, perhaps a fiftieth; and the pastor started out his homily talking about marriage and its gifts, especially the gift of forgiving each other many times, and then segued into a discourse on forgiving “seventy times seven” (I am good at catching numbers as they fly by). I hadn’t checked what the gospel was, but just now I am looking at iBreviary and I see that I was correct, that the “how often must I forgive?” story was the gospel for the day. So I caught that. Also that he finished by talking about marriage again.

    Most of it goes right by, but I catch phrases that come whiffing past my ears: “live in Christ and die with Christ,” “the gift of his whole self,” “a large sum of money,” and pretty much all the numbers. Also the priest made a joke when somebody’s cell phone went off for the third time, which made people laugh in the way they laugh to humor Father when he makes a joke from the pulpit; and I am not sure, but I think the joke was along the lines of whether the phone would ring seventy times seven times. Anyway, no more phone ringing after that.

    I coached the kids to go slowly and see what the other people do when they go up for Communion. In both Italy and France, the people have gone up more or less in rows, but oddly enough they go from back to front: the standing people and the baby-rockers in the back come down the aisle first, and then the back rows file up past all the kneeling people, down the center aisle and then after receiving split out to the side aisles and walk back. The front row goes last, and the last row goes first.

    Mark told me later that our mopheaded 7yo, who had his hands folded and was concentrating hard on not messing up or stepping on his sister’s heels as he came down the aisle for communion and therefore looked more angelic than usual, drew all manner of Italian-grandmotherly attention. I didn’t notice, but I don’t doubt it.

    + + +

    Afterward we let the kids play on the playground next to the church.

    It was a nicely appointed playground, with big wide terraced steps for parents to sit, and a long rampy thing down which one child rode seated on a skateboard, over and over and over. It was lovely to sit and feel the cool evening and let them play.

    Mark ran home to get our 7yo a Benadryl. Something about the salt water had made him very itchy.

    Pro tip: Always travel with children’s Benadryl.

    Then we headed off to find a restaurant.

    + + +

    It was about eight o’clock on a Friday night, and many places looked quite empty, so we were a little confused when we kept getting turned away and being told that without a prenotazione we couldn’t be seated. Finally we figured out that it was only eight o’clock, and so of course nobody was in the restaurant yet, because who would be eating dinner that early in Italy?

    But they’d reserved their tables! And when they showed up at eight-thirty or eight-forty-five, they were not going to want to see us in any of them.

    Finally, just when I started to despair (and when the 3yo was starting to tell me, “But they had chairs in that restaurant! They were not full!”) we found the Bottega di Cibo. And they had a table on the patio, under cover and sheltered from the wind, which they were glad to give us.

    With breadsticks right away for the 3yo.

    We asked to have all our food served all together so
    we could share in the family and so that the most small one would not get any more less happy, and that was all fine, and then we started listing pastas, and the waiter interrupted us to explain—Mark figured this out before I did—we can’t order everything to come all at the same time and have pasta for everyone. We would have to order some things that were not pasta.
    Put this in your list of useful proverbs: “Too many pastas stops the kitchen.”
    So I changed my order from the linguine alle vongole to a fritti misti di mare, and my oldest changed his pasta to a pizza “4 stagione.” The middle sized kids got ragù and Mark got a beef filet with green peppercorn sauce, remembering a memorable dinner in Rome. Number two son ordered pesto, and the più piccolo got a simple pasta pomodoro. We asked for wine and a liter of acqua naturale and a half-liter of acqua con gas.
    The waiter gestured toward the children. “Coca? Sprite? Fanta?”
    “No, no, solamente del vino per noi e dell’acqua per i figli,” I said, probably a little bit irritated, but Mark thought he detected in the waiter’s expression some approval of our choice not to give the children soda.
    My fritti misti came with a few more legs and tentacles than I usually find appetizing, but the calamari and shrimp were very good. (I admit to mourning for the lost linguini for which I had been jonesing, but I drowned my sorrows in a very nice glass of wine.) The 13yo’s pesto was perfect. The youngest children were happy with their sauced pasta. Mark’s steak was good and so was the oldest’s pizza, especially the part with the mushrooms, which were tiny whole ones with perfect little narrow stems and a slightly acid flavor.

    Afterward (oh my gosh, it takes forever to get the waiters’ attention for anything, I wanted a second glass of wine and I never had a chance to ask for it, and we should have asked for the check right away, I know there are downsides to a tipping economy but Americans reap the rewards in excellent attentive service) we decided not to order dessert.

    We went for gelato instead. And since the first three gelato shops were closed we were quite happy to find one open. Mark and I were too full, but all the kids got some. The best flavor was our 11yo’s sorbetto, pineapple with pineapple pieces.

    At the end of that day I had no trouble sleeping, let me tell you. We opened the windows and listened to the motorcycles, and fell right to sleep.

    —

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  • Driving to better weather.

    Friday we got up early and packed smaller bags to drive to Italy for four nights where there would be sun.
    “How warm is warm enough to make it worth it to go to the beach?” Mark had asked me.
    I knew the kids could stand it much cooler than me, so I answered: “Sixty-five degrees.”
    And that is how we wound up heading for the Riviera Ponente, the Riviera Levante’s less-prestigious—and this week less-cloudy—western sister.
     
    We drove past Aosta, past all the castles in its little valley. Here is the very impressive Fort Bard, which commands the top of a hill-within-a-valley. We might take a tour of it on the way back, if we don’t decide to go to Turin instead.
    Our 17yo had some impressive views of Fort Bard when he went climbing a few days ago with the guide. He pointed out where he was climbing; you could see the face from the highway.
     
    We stopped in Nebbiolo country for lunch and found a little cantina being operated by a winery. Nobody switched into English there. I managed.
     
    Mark and our 13yo reverse-engineered the breadsticks. Do they extrude them in a long string and chop them apart, or do they finish the ends somehow?
    Reporting on lunch. The place had a menu that changed daily. There were only two choices of pasta (primi piatti) and two choices of main entree (secundi piatti).
    An aside: I know that Americans are supposed to be terrible with our supersized platters and all, but really, you basically eat dinner twice in every Italian restaurant I have seen. First the salad, then the pasta plate (surely enough for an adult), then the plate with the meat or fish, the potato, and the vegetable.
    Anyway, besides a simple rotini with tomato sauce for the two littlest boys, the pasta choices were puttanesca (heavy on the olives, light on hot pepper) and the same tortellini with ham and nutmeg-scented cream sauce that we have seen all over Aosta. We got pasta for everyone, and then we only ordered one each of the two secunda. These were roast beef or fish steak (I don’t know what sort of fish it was; it was mild and white and tasted good), served with herbed well-cooked peas, really delicious diced browned potatoes, and a weird little omelette rolled up with a soft cheese inside.
    I ordered 50 cL of the house red wine, forgetting that Mark had to drive, and was forced to drink a lot of it myself.
    I am blanking on what the kids had for dessert. I can tell you that Mark and I got espresso afterward and they offered the kids more gelato to have while we drank our coffee.
    No, wait, I remember: panna cotta with caramel drizzled over it, and an amaretto-chocolate-peach thing. And something else. I am sorry, I can’t remember.
    + + +
    Back on the road. But first the children have to play for five minutes on the slide out back of the winery.
    And contemplate the grapevines.
    Mark decided that everything would be more fun if it took longer, frightened me, and made our daughter throw up into her brother’s Klean Kanteen, so he took this road.
     
    Why go through the tunnels on the highway when you can drive directly over two mountain ranges?
    When we finally found a place to stop and dump out the soiled Klean Kanteen, we discovered that we were at a trailhead for a long hiking trail that winds along the top of the mountain range that separates Liguria from Piedmont. I had looked into hiking one of the sections as a cold-weather activity.
    Onward.
    Actually, the drive was really quite beautiful, and the road was at least well maintained and signed, with lots of room at the hairpin turns—I have definitely been on scarier mountain roads in the States. We are at the change of seasons here, so the mountains are green in some places and beginning to show autumn colors in others. There are a lot of ferns in the underbrush; the vegetation does not look like what I am used to.
    It is really striking that you can drive from the snowy mountains to a warm Mediterranean climate in just a few hours. I guess it is like parts of California, or maybe Oregon in the summer.
    + + +
    We stopped at a service station/truck stop place, used the bathroom, and went in to buy snacks. The gas stations in Italy have a cornucopia of food and packaged goodies that is similar in scope to what is sold at a better American gas station, but of much higher quality. There is a counter piled high with freshly made sandwiches of all types, and hot pizza, and espresso. There were bags of locally made meringue cookies and hard-pretzel-like snacks. There were plenty of different kinds of candy, and a small fridge of cold tea, energy drinks, soda, and beer. There were jars of olives, jams, pestos, and pickles.
    I picked out gummy bears, Haribo berries, and gum drops for the children, some coconut amaretti cookies, and a Red Bull for Mark’s afternoon caffeine fix.
    “What? Full priced American energy drink? Wasn’t there a cheap weird Italian one?”
    “Yes,” I said, “but it was called ‘Bee Bad’ and contained royal jelly. Isn’t that a little froufrou for you?”
    “If it’s cheaper than taurine, I don’t see how it’s any weirder,” he replied.
    “My favorite energy drink is the giant Starbucks Mexican Mocha,” piped up our 17yo from the back seat. “They didn’t have those.”
    + + +
    Finally we came into Andora, tantalizingly dotted with fat palm trees, and navigated to the coordinates of our apartment. The caretaker, a young woman with two young children at her heels, showed us around. She spoke a little English, but also French and German, and among all those languages we were able to work out where almost everything was.
    The place is really lovely, nice and new inside. Well stocked with toys for the children. Loud and echoey, though, with lots of marble and high ceilings.
    Gas range. Oven. Espresso machine.
    Dining balcony. Gnome.
    + + +
    We got a recommendation for a pizza place and went out, well after seven-thirty, to dine on a covered patio. It was cool out, cool and humid, but not cold. Still, it was nice to be under cover.
    The 3yo methodically destroyed the breadsticks and did not even stop to decide whether they had been die-extruded onto a belt or not. Then, when those were gone, he started in on the basket of baked bread rolls.
     

    We ordered:

    • smoked swordfish with arugula, which came thinly sliced with a half lemon to squeeze over it, and which I adored. We debated whether the greens were actually arugula though; the leaves seemed wrong, more like watercress, and our teenager and 7yo liked them. Unlike all previously encountered arugula.
    • linguine al pesto, which was luxurious and, this being Liguria, local.
    • pizza marinara, which had a lot of parsley on it.
    • pizza cepolle, which despite not looking like more than a cheese pizza with a few strands of red onion, had a deep onion flavor that seemed to be infused into the sauce and the crust.
    • pizza prosciutto, tasty as advertised.
    • pizza diavola, with spicy pepperoni and spicy oil drizzled on top.
    • 50 cL of red frizzante wine, which was not quite enough for Mark this time. I cannot seem to calibrate.
    • 2 L of acqua naturale.
    • Several tiramisu.
    • Mousse frutti di bosco, which our daughter traded for my tiramisu after she discovered she didn’t like it. I liked it just fine. She thought it was like a cheesecake but I thought it was more like an ice cream cake, coated with berry glaze.
    • Chocolate gelato and lemon gelato. Both very good.

    The town was so very quiet, even on a Friday night. The streets were nearly deserted. It is definitely the off season: all the prices go down between August and September. We read later that Andora has a population of about 7,600 which increases to 10 times that in the summer. Many restaurants appeared to be not open at all. But there were bars and pizzerias and shops. “I wonder if it will come to life tomorrow,” said Mark.

    It would.

    —

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  • Two meals.

    The weather wasn’t looking good in Cham for the next few days, so we started thinking about making a break for Italy sooner than we had planned. We had a lot of flexibility, actually, because the Cham apartment is free all the way until we are to depart from Geneva to London later this month. We had already asked if we could leave baggage there while we went on a five-day jaunt to Italy, and stay the last night before our London flight. Now we were thinking maybe we would leave earlier, and come back and stay several days at the end instead.
    I write this as if it were easy for me, but it wasn’t. Here we were thinking about driving to Italy tomorrow and Mark hadn’t even found us an apartment yet. I got upset because there were no plans. Mark decided to calm me down by driving us to Italy for lunch.
    Rain on the French side of the Mont Blanc tunnel.

    Rain on the Italian side of the Mont Blanc tunnel.

    We chose a little town called Morgex, and our oldest and I each mapped out a restaurant. The one I chose turned out to be all boarded up despite the posted hours on the outside. So we got back in the car and drove to the one our son chose, and that one was cheerful and open, and had a table ready for seven.
     
    We ordered seven plates:
    • mozzarella bufalo with local cured ham, sort of like proscuitto;
    • carpaccio di bresaiola with arugula and shaved parmesan;
    • pizza marinara;
    • pizza valdostana, that is, with ham and local cheese;
    • spaghetti bolognese;
    • tortellini with a cream sauce, dotted with ham and scented with nutmeg;
    • and a mixed grill, with tender steak, veal, and split sausage, and eggplant and zucchini and peppers, and a small pile of french fries.
    There is no way we will eat all this, said Mark, but then we did. The small children chowed down on french fries, pizza marinara, and spaghetti bolognese. The rest of us found room for everything else.
    And 50 cL of the house red wine for the grownups, thank you very much.
     
    I think the buffalo mozzarella with the ham was the winner. The cheese was mild, runny, a bit bland, and creamy; with the salty, sharp ham it became perfectly balanced and luxurious.
    I didn’t think we would have room for dessert, but the minute the server said “Affogato” I immediately ordered one for Mark and me to share. Sorbetto for the children, lemon and raspberry, except for our daughter who got gelato with chocolate sauce.
    The affogato—plain ice cream, I thought more likely to be fior de latte than vanilla, doused with a shot of strong espresso—was the best ever. Mark and I fought our way to the bottom of the dish with both spoons. The sorbettos, to our surprise, came in tall glasses with straws, and were drinkable. The girl was happy with her “affogatto cioccolato.”
    + + +
    That is literally all we did in Italy, spend two hours eating lunch and then drove back. Then we packed to go to Italy for longer the next day. Some people went shopping for a new backpack and things like that.
    After it all got sorted out, so that we had an apartment—not east of Genoa where we originally planned, but west, on the Riviera Ponente, where the weather promised to be better—Mark and I set out for a walk and a dinner on the town.
    + + +
    Mont Blanc is the highest peak in Europe, and it is quite close; but from the center of Chamonix it does not look like the most impressive peak. There are other peaks which are closer as the crow flies, and those look pointier and seem to tower higher.
    But just as the sun is setting, you can tell that Mont Blanc is the highest, because it is the last peak to light up pink with the rays of the sun.

    + + +

    Mark and I walked all over town. I had a problem: having had lunch in Italy, I was not hungry at all. Finally I told Mark to pick, and he settled on Le Chaudron on the Rue des Moulins. It had a tapas menu. Mark ordered fries for an entrée, and risotto with shrimp for the plat. I just ordered gazpacho, which came with another ball of buffalo mozzarella in the middle, and drank Argile wine from Savoie.

    The wine cut
    the raw-garlic taste of the gazpacho just right, and it was light enough not to make me overfull. Mark ordered dessert (baba au rhum, something I had seen on many menus but never had; it was pretty good). We walked some more on the way home.

    Next day, to Italy for longer.

    —

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