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].

  • Big day.

    On Wednesday we had reserved a spot for our daughter to paraglide off the mountain. We left the other kids in the apartment and took her over to the Brévent lift. She was warmly dressed and very excited.

     

     
    We bought her the one-way ticket to the top, and waited for Sandie, the same pilot who had guided our oldest down from the mountain, to arrive.
     
    But when Sandie showed up, she told us that the wind was coming from the wrong direction to fly from Brévent, and we would have to send her off from the Midi instead. So we all hopped into the van from her parapente company and drove across town to the other lift. Sandie arranged for the money we’d paid for the other lift to be applied to this one. And we sent our daughter with her, walking across the plaza.
     
    The van took Mark and me to the landing field where we had a chance to examine a mock-up of the parapenting harness, hanging there for the parapente school.
     

    There was a nice view all around the valley. We chatted with the driver of the van, who had such a strong British regional accent that I thought for sure must be a UK expat. But he had trouble with some English. After I complimented him on his accent he said that though he was raised here in the valley, his dad was British. He had a French-speaking chestnut-colored dog who ran free, snuffling and digging holes in the ground: “For the flyers to break their ankles on,” he said, kicking a divot back into place with one foot.

    He offered us coffee, which we drank from a blue plastic camping mug, warming our hands while we waited for our daughter to come flying out of the sky under an orange wing.

    + + +

    But then the driver’s phone rang, and it was Sandie: the air was too moist, it was not safe to fly; they would be coming back down on the téléphérique.

     
    He offered to drive us over, since he would be going to pick up Sandie, but we elected to walk across town instead, and decided to take her out for a pastry afterwards.
    We waited and she came out with Sandie. “Are you disappointed?” we asked her, and she said not really; she had not expected she would really be able to fly today.
    “If you think it won’t really happen,” she said, “you won’t be disappointed if you can’t, and it will be a nice surprise if you can.”
    Everything is weather dependent in the mountains. It is a good lesson, even if a little sad. She still has a chance to try it again when we pass through France next week, but you never can tell.
    + + +
    So, back to the Best Bakery In the World (TM) where she asked for an apple-filled turnover and a bottle of green tea.

    Mark had a petit pain au chocolat and an almond-paste-filled, sugar-dusted confection. I had a perfect plain croissant, and a cappuccino.

    + + +
    Then Mark got in the rental car and drove away. I went back to the apartment and crashed, with a long nap.
    Mark and our oldest were gone all day. The 17-year-old had quite the windfall. Jeff the guide had invited him to come along for free as the “guest” (re: guinea pig) for a climbing certification. A Dutch guide was about to take the test to become an aspirant guide, and he needed Jeff (the instructor) and also someone to play the part of the client. That would become our son.
    We decided not to let him go on a multiday trip where he would stay overnight, but we agreed to allow them to take him out of the Chamonix valley into Italy, where the weather was much better. I sat down and wrote a note in two languages stating that he had permission to travel across the French-Italian border in the company of Jeff the mountain guide, for climbing, with our Chamonix address and phone numbers; and we gave him the note and his passport, and sent him off in the morning.
    He sent us some photos.

    Clearly the day was working out better for him.
    + + +
    Me, I was tired, and Mark was gone too. The trip isn’t entirely leisure; Mark planned five days of work in total. He had a meeting in Switzerland, and had taken the car.
    The meeting was a teleconference back to the States; his employer has a facility in Switzerland, so he went there to have the teleconference. An unusual meeting: he was set to appear before the promotions committee. Much of the previous evening had been spent preparing for it.
    I let the 13yo and then the 11yo take turns walking in the town. The rest of us stayed in the apartment. With Mark gone, and me tired, we had warned them that it would be a “down day,” a work day. If they bothered me I was authorized to teach them math or something.
    Eventually I had to put some food on the table, so I put on my coat and walked down into town and found easy food at the grocery store: bread to make grilled cheese sandwiches, and sliced turkey for my turkey-sandwich-loving daughter, and a box of surprisingly tasty and sweet tomato soup, and a take-and-bake pizza.
     

    Eventually both Mark and the 17yo arrived home, around the same time. Mark was in a good mood, feeling that he had done well in his interview before the board. There was an amusing story involving the conference room booking and a misunderstanding concerning the time change and a wild goose chase in the Swiss facility, booting people out of the unbooked conference rooms they had been squatting in, ending with a Skype connection instead of a teleconference that was set up merely seconds before the interview was supposed to begin.

    But we opened the champagne anyway (Aldi champagne; it had a Concord grape nose, but it was pink and bubbly and we gladly drank it). And the 17yo told about his multipitchclimbing day, and Mark told about the questions he was asked and how he answered them, and we planned what to drink later if we got something to celebrate.

     

     

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  • A not-many-things day.

    I am more used to one-week vacations, or a week plus a weekend. The kind where, to maximize the value of your trip, you pack things in one after another, and you may come home mentally refreshed (because you did things that are different from the usual) but physically tired.

    But when there is a long vacation—even a vacation broken up by some work days, as this one is—you get down time. Days where you don’t plan much at all.

    Tuesday was like that. I barely even took any pictures.

    The weather has taken a turn for the dreary; snow fell the night before, up high. We are thinking of bailing from Chamonix and heading for Italy sooner than we thought we might. Mark was worried I would not be happy about changing plans, but I told him, look, we’ll be in France for a while, then Italy for a while, then France again; I don’t need to know how long each part will last.

    Anyway: we mostly stayed around the apartment. In the very early morning Mark took some of the children to the crag to climb. I had yogurt for breakfast, with cereal stirred in, and some green plums, and then for lunch I boiled pasta and mixed it with sauce and cheese and baked it, and set out a fruit plate, for the hungry climbers. And then I rested some more.

    A friend (expat met on a previous trip) came by with one of her sons, the same age as our second-oldest; and he stayed to hang out with our kids while Mark and I and she went out for coffee.

    Two coffees, actually: the first café allongé in a bar, seated at a too-high table (my feet dangled from the banquette) that had its own beer taps in the center of the table, with a sort of digital flow meter to know how much you should pay. The second in a very American-feeling coffeehouse, with comfy modern low chairs, people using laptops, and bagels for sale instead of croissants.

    By now my caffeine buzz had grown formidable, so I went with the decaf americano.

    We chatted about homeschooling and living in the valley. After our friend took her leave, Mark and I stopped at the grocery store and bought pain complet and pain de mie, grated gruyère, vacuum-packed steamed diced potatoes, salad vegetables, local jambon cru, plain yogurt and little flavored yogurt, pasta, wine, and melon.

    We went back to the apartment and I rested (apparently I need a lot of resting) while Mark did some work on his laptop at the long table and the kids took turns going out to spend money in the town. Then I stumbled out and made dinner: green salad with thin-sliced raw turnip and red pepper, in a dressing of lemon and pepper and olive oil. And an omelette savoyarde.

    The omelette was very basic, like a Spanish tortilla in style. The potatoes already having been diced and steamed, it was also quite fast. I melted a chunk of butter, maybe 2.5 tablespoons, in a nonstick pan, and cooked 250 g of potatoes until they were a bit brown and with some crispiness to them, but still soft, turning a couple of times. Then I beat 8 eggs and mixed in about 100 g shredded gruyère from a bag. Emmenthal would also have worked. I added a dollop of liquid cream and then dumped the potatoes and butter into the egg, mixing well, and seasoned with salt and pepper.

    It all went back into the hot pan. I stirred and cooked gently for a while, lifting up the cooked egg to let the uncooked egg run down underneath, until it began to firm up; then I turned the heat down and put a lid on the pan until it had mostly cooked through. I inverted it onto a plate and cut it into wedges.

    I think a bit of onion and parsley would have improved it, but it was quite good as is. Mark and I ate about half of it with salad and a bit of jambon cru and white wine. The kids were skeptical and ate leftover pasta. More omelette for me for lunch tomorrow!

    After supper I rested (again) while the kids cleaned up the dinner. I was keeping tabs on an Internet friend who was in the midst of having a baby back in the states. As for Mark, he planned to meet our expat friend’s expat husband for a beer, and so after a while he put on a coat and set out. The kids finished dinner and settled themselves in front of computers to watch the Apple keynote and later some weird Spanish-language sitcom dubbed in French.

    Mark came back late at night and settled down with me, gave me a kiss and reminded me how very lucky we are, lucky to have work that supports our family without ceasing to serve it, lucky to have shared values, something outside ourselves to believe in, and well-worn language for working out our differences; lucky to have each one of our five children, lucky to be raising them surrounded by other like-minded families, lucky to believe in each other, to believe in taking what we have and always looking for the way to make it work even better. Lucky to be acutely aware how lucky we are. It is impossible not to be grateful for everything, our material success obviously that lets us be here and having this time together, but most of all for the strength of these relationships laid down over years and years, days, mornings and afternoons and evenings, glasses of beer after dinner and cups of coffee before work.

    Some time on vacation is worth spending doing nothing at all, nothing visible on the outside anyway.

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  • Hiking the high road.

    Monday, with the days of fine weather growing shorter, we decided to hike at the mid-level of the mountain from the Aiguille de Midi lift (not the second lift that takes you to the needle, but the first lift) across to the Montenvers train at the Mer de Glace glacier, taking the train back down to the town.

    Had to dress a little bit more warmly.

     

    Mark went to buy the sandwiches, and I went to buy the tickets. Being in France is a little bit weird because we often have to reverse our well-worn roles. For years it has been my job to keep a passel of children quietly waiting while Mark does things like stand in line to buy the tickets. Here, though, since Mark doesn’t speak French beyond well-practiced useful phrases, I have to go buy the tickets. There is no problem with this, it just continually surprises me.

    “What? I am supposed to go buy the tickets? Again?”

    “You want me to order the pizzas? On the telephone?”

    Anyway, I went to the ticket window (passing on the way a woman who warned us that it was bad for the 3yo’s ears to go up on the gondola) and worked out that I needed to buy a family pass plus an extra adult pass for the 17yo because only kids under 15 could be included on the family pass, and also that the 3yo needed a ticket even though it was free, and bought the tickets. The cashier warned me about the 3yo’s ears. I said, in French, I know, I know, everyone says this, and she repeated the warning.

    This also happened last time, when he was eight months old. The only one who had in the end had ear trouble had been the then-14yo. I got a lollipop for the 3yo out of my shoulder bag, intending to brandish it as proof that I was prepared to defend his ears against the dangers of what is essentially a big ski lift. But nobody else bothered us about it.

    Up we went, crammed in tightly. When the gondola went past one of the support towers, it swung deeply, and a gasp and a “whoooaa!” went up from the crowd.

     

     

     

    At the top it was much colder, and we put on extra layers. I took the 3yo off my back so I could go to the bathroom, and the 17yo put him on his back; we decided we would switch again after lunch.

    We hiked around a bit till we found the trail we wanted, beginning above this refuge (Mark has spent the night here:)

    The trail is narrow and rocky, and on either side there are many myrtille bushes. The berries are very much like blueberries, perhaps a little more tart.

    At lunch we ate our sandwiches. Tuna again for the 11yo, also for Mark and me, and lyonnais for the teen boys. The little boys ate homemade sandwiches on pain de mie again.

    Orange-colored processed cheese is working pretty well for the 3yo, and butter-and-jam for the 7yo, and I won’t complain.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    The trail turned more rocky as we got up into the cloud layer.

     

    It was amazingly well-maintained, almost a pavement or a staircase of broad flat rocks. It was eerily beautiful, but I couldn’t help feeling nervous about the weather. I knew the forecast called for clouds and no rain, so it was exactly as expected. But the quality of light was so much the sort that, where I come from, heralds a coming rainstorm, that I could not shake the feeling that we ought to get down to the treeline.

    I knew better, but it made me anxious.

     

     

    Finally we arrived within sight of the once-magnificent, still-pretty-impressive Mer de Glace.

     

     

    The clouds lay spread heavily over everything, but we could see sunlight up the valley.

    We found a leftover trail race marker, from the UTMB, I think, its little flag flapping wildly in the wind.

    And eventually reached the Montenvers refuge.

     

    There were a series of historical illustrations of the glacier.

    It hardly looks like a “sea of ice” anymore at this point. Really, it is sobering how much it has shrunk and retreated.

    Rather than spend money in the restaurant, since we were so tired, Mark passed out Snickers bars to everyone. And then we took the train down.

     

     

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  • Sunday.

     
    Sunday morning I dug the Magnifikids out of the bags. We cleaned up and dressed up a bit—thankfully my ballet flats did not hurt my blisters anymore—and walked down the hill to the sound of clanging bells from the église Saint-Michel.
    Perhaps I will wander in and take pictures of the pretty little church outside Mass time. It is pale blue inside with wooden pews and some very nice statuary. There is a colorful St. Michael behind the crucifix, and large paintings for the Stations.
    My 3yo was more interested in the art than he usually is at home and wanted me to tell him all about things, so I whispered in his ear and couldn’t listen to the homily. Which was too bad, because the priest was fairly loud, clear, organized, and slow; I bet I could have understood it.
    I was a little bit amused because I have been here exactly three years ago and the readings were the same readings. The priest was the same priest. I wonder if it was even possibly the same homily.
    + + +
    We had expected rain, and had therefore planned a day of resting. But somehow Mark had read a forecast that was completely wrong, and it had turned out to be gorgeously sunny. He had taken the younger kids to the crag the day before; today he wanted to take the older ones; but not all day. My turn first!
    So we left the kids in the apartment with all the tasty food in the fridge and all the cookies and such, and went out for a walk and lunch.
    I wanted my favorite, most reliable French restaurant meal: salade avec chèvre chaud. So we went to a crêperie that has such things: La Ferme. It is a little too chilly for my taste or Mark’s, even though many coat-wearing people were happily eating and drinking on the patios and terraces in the sun, so we asked for a table in the intérieur.
    Because I was jonesing for a salad, I suggested we not drink wine, but have cidre brut instead.
    It came in a 50-cL pitcher with broad, handled porcelain cups. Given that there was a cidre doux also on the menu which we didn’t order, I was surprised at how sweet this turned out to be; “dry cider” at home is pretty dry! This was nicely balanced, with noticeable apple to it, and it was going to work perfectly well with my salad.
    I got what I wanted: a big green salad with a luscious vinaigrette, prettily and deliciously garnished with sweet, thin-sliced raw beets, the kind with a pink-and-white bullseye pattern in the slices, and long pared ribbons of yellow carrots. It had a few slices of salty, glossy air-dried ham, and three slices from a 3-inch-diameter log of goat cheese, with the friable texture in the middle and the creamy texture around the rim, each on a slice of toast. I dug in immediately, forgetting once again to take a picture. Sorry.
    Mark ordered a sprawling buckwheat crêpe with lardons, cheese, and a bright yellow-yolked egg in the middle; it came folded in on three sides like a triangle, with a little pile of green salad in the middle. He ate about a quarter of my salad, too.
    I got a few texts from kids wanting to know when we’d be back. “Still at lunch,” I texted.
    “Mom it is almost 2”
    “See you later”
    + + +
    We elected not to order dessert and to walk around a bit and have coffee elsewhere. Many stores are closed on Sundays, but the town seemed to have been transformed into a giant end-of-season sidewalk sale for outerwear. I had to stop and let Mark do a little window shopping.
     
     

    I didn’t need any gear, and was only briefly saddened because a few days ago (lacking our luggage) I had bought a pair of approach shoes at full price, and now there were some really nice ones in front of Arcteryx, of all places, in my size, and an awesome color, for €50. Drat!

    Mark didn’t find the ultralightweight hooded windshirt he was seeking, so we went to the bar nearest the road uphill to our apartment, went inside (it was warm; I took off my scarf and my cardigan) and ordered two cafés allongés.

    I like these because they take longer to drink. Mark thinks he prefers his espresso stronger.
    We got more texts. I was ready to go home. And the teen boys were ready to go climbing with Mark.
    (Incidentally, my daughter had had a fantastic climbing outing the day before. I didn’t blog it because I wasn’t there and didn’t take the pictures. But she was so proud of herself for finishing a difficult route that she had tears of joy and probably relief when Mark lowered her down.)
    Today that girl was ready to go for a walk on her own in town. We coached her on where to cross the big street and what to do if she got lost, then gave her some money and the spare iPhone we use for such purposes.
     
    She texted me back a photograph of what she had obtained:
    Pistachio and raspberry something.
    Then she texted me a picture of a tiny, one-item playground:
     

    She made it back safely, and she and I and the smaller kids spent a quiet late afternoon in the apartment. Taking turns doing whole-family outings, fun things with just some of us, and resting: that is how it has to work.

    + + +

    Dinner was prepared food from the Italian grocery store. I set out some cured meats, mozzarella balls, and olives to have with our wine, a Valpolicella Ripasso.

    Ignore the licorice in the background. Doesn’t go with Valpolicella.

    We snacked on this while we waited for three pots of water to boil our fresh asparagus ravioli, meat-filled tortellini, and long egg noodles.

    And set three bottled sauces on the table.

    With a little grana padano cheese, it was just fine for everyone. Mark and the boys relived their climbing adventure of the day. We drank wine and Campari-soda, and the children shared their candy (how is Italian sugar candy for children so amazing?) and we laid out our things for the next day too.

     

    Good weather tomorrow!

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  • Drizzly day in Italy.

    We woke up on Saturday to rain here in Chamonix, so we decided to drive to Italy for the day. We would find a place to have lunch, then if we felt good we would drive into the Aosta Valley to tour a castle, and then we would go grocery shopping at the big store in Aosta, buying food for the next two dinners.

    Unfortunately, our big hike from the previous day—and my decision to hike hard and fast with the 3yo on my back—had left me with major blisters. Mark dressed my wounds and then I tried to get my feet into some decent walking shoes. But the only shoes that didn’t hurt my heels too badly to walk were my high-heeled ankle boots. (Not really surprising as gravity drives your foot forward.)

    Oh well, I was going to Italy after all. Might as well look stylish.
     
    We headed out in the rain toward the Mont Blanc tunnel. (The golden-colored flame sculpture is part of a memorial to the people who died in a fire in the tunnel in 1999.)
    This is a pretty long tunnel. We bought a ten-trip pass, since we will go back and forth quite a bit, and there’s a discount.
    They have blue lights every so often on the tunnel wall. The space between the blue lights is the minimum following distance. Pretty easy; you just have to keep two blue lights between yourself and the car in front.
     
     
    Sometimes the weather is completely different on the other side of the mountain, but today it wasn’t. Still: Italia!
     
    We passed the big lift that goes up just outside the tunnel (Skyway Monte Bianco)…
     
    …and many houses with slate roofs. Sorry they are so blurry.
     
    Our goal was lunch. I found a list of restaurants that were certified to carry specialties local to the Val d’Aosta, which is an A.O.C., and we found a town that had several. We didn’t have to go to one of the certified restaurants, but we figured we’d find something there. The town we chose was Pré-Saint-Didier. We switchbacked down the mountain a bit, my oldest navigating for restaurants on his phone, and when we passed a pleasant-looking one Mark made up his mind; he went past the end of the switchback, turned around, and we headed back up to Ristorante Emma.
    There seemed to be an odd parking spot by the kitchen door (there was a man in a chef’s toque smoking a cigarette outside it); we parked and Mark made me ask about it.
    “Buon giorno,” I said, then, blanking out, I pointed at the car: “È okay?”
    “Si, si.”
    “Where do we go?” asked Mark, and this time I remembered, sort of: “Dov’è il entrata?” I swallowed the “il” a bit just in case I should have been saying “la.”
    He pointed, and I went around the corner and found the lovely little entrance. Perfetto.
    The menu.
    + + +
    Inside I remembered how to say there were seven of us, a family with five children, and we got a lovely big table by the window. The 3yo cried for a high chair. My mind blanked on the word “chair” and then I forgot how to say anything else, so we sort of gestured blindly until they brought us one.
    In Italy last time people of all types and ages absolutely fawned over my bambino (che bella testa!) and I can report, sadly, that he seems to have grown out of it. But the waiters were still very quick to bring a basket of bread and crackers for the table.
    We got English menus, and quickly decided to revert to our pattern of ordering six things and sharing them. Seven, now, since there were hungrier, bigger children.
    Due antipasti (beef carpaccio and a plate of cured meats) to start, and then, with the help of a French-conversant waiter
    , we asked for four different primi piatti (pastas) and a secundi piatti (roasted pork belly) to come all together for sharing.
    As for the wine, Mark pulled out his well-used phrase, “Che cosa mi consiglia?”
    And we waited a bit.
    And red wine appeared. And it was very good. We had a lovely view out the window, which I photographed
    … but sorry, I didn’t get the food. I hope you understand. It was gone too quickly.
    The carpaccio was different from any I had had before; it was not sliced super thin, but it had been pounded super thin. It had little dollops of a creamy pungent sauce, almost like a horseradish, and also of a gel-like fruit sauce, and big fat caper berries. I loved it, and so did our oldest. The kids devoured the charcuterie plate, which came with little pillows of fried dough that the former bambino gobbled up.
    For pastas, there were different raviolis, which were good, and a penne with lamb ragù especially requested by the 7yo, which I thought was the best of all the pastas. But the real star of the show was the pork belly. It didn’t look like much, but it was melt-in-your-mouth tender with a chewy, caramelized crust. Mark and I stared at each other and grinned over it.
    With a little help from Google Translate, I practiced the sentence: “Generally, we share several dishes.” Condividiamo diversi piatti. And then we got ready to order dessert. Three desserts: strawberry sorbeto with something something cocoa, a peach tart with amaretto gelato, and cannoli.
    “Metta i cannoli qui,” I added, pointing to a spot directly in front of my plate.
    And indeed, that is where the cannoli ended up, much to my pleasure, although Mark preferred the peach tart.
    My oldest, however, was with me on Team Cannoli.
    + + +
    After that great success we were off to Castle Fènis. Into the rain again.
    Not a very far drive past Aosta, Fènis came into view. This excited the 7yo very much.
    We bought tickets for a 4 p.m. entry, and had to wait a bit. We walked around the castle grounds, on a path between two fields. Old-fashioned irrigation canals ran swiftly alongside the fence; I pointed out to the 7yo where the sluice was gated with a wooden board set in a slot, and asked why he thought it was there.
    “To make the water all go that way,” he said, “but it’s leaking!”
     
    Back in the castle courtyard the kids jostled for control of the cameras, and we realized too late that we should have brought a dummy camera for the 3yo.
    Fortunately, I had a lollipop in my pocket, which we used to bribe the 3yo away from the camera and into the cloth carrier.
    The castle tour was pretty cool, except that the children had hoped to be able to roam freely around, and this was definitely not allowed. Only following the guided tour was possible. There was an Italian-speaking docent, who tossed a little English our way, but far too many people for her to give us the whole spiel in English. And my receptive Italian is enough to catch words I am already expecting (“castello”), but not new ones.
    So it was a long slow hour for the younger children, with a few treats along the way, like being invited to crowd into the big kitchen fireplace—the size of a freight elevator—and look up at the chimney far above.
    There were some lovely frescoes, and a collection of wooden chests for brides’ trousseaus, and a very cool courtyard with gutters overhanging cistern-drains that went into a central water collection system.
    But the kids were glad to be done with the castle, only because the tour was slow; we could have seen it all ourselves in ten minutes. If the tour had been in English I think they would have liked it better.
    + + +
    On to the Gros Cidac grocery store in Aosta.
    We chose cured meats, fresh pastas, cookies, yogurt. This weird tube of paste called “flavor tuna and ketchup,” which I had irrationally fallen in love with last time. Square bread and slices of orange cheese, which it is abundantly clear we had better not run out of. We let the kids buy a bunch of candy because they wanted to go pick something out themselves.
    Somewhere in the cheese department my head began to spin.
    Also the 3yo was melting down. So we got the heck out of there and drove back to France. My body said to me: “You want to lie down and not get up again for a while.”
    So I did.
    And while I lay there going “uuuuuuggggh,” Mark set up the dinner, mostly things we had bought at the Gros Cidac, and opened a bottle of bubbly wine, and miraculously when it was all on the table I felt well enough to get up and sit there and demolish a plate full of it.
    Including half a tube of tuna-and-ketchup-flavored-paste, squirted onto boiled potatoes.
    Italy food is definitely best.
    I slept very, very well that night.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    k,k

     

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  • Hiking day, and a date night.

    Because kids can’t go go go forever, there is some down time in the apartment every day, in which I can blog. I am falling into a pattern of uploading my photos to Blogsy right before bed, then getting up and writing my blog post in the morning with my coffee before we all get moving. I wonder if I can keep this up daily. I am going to try. Today Mark went off early with three of the kids and I stayed in with two others who are still sleeping, for now.
    + + +
    The weather was to be especially fine on Friday, so we planned a family hike.
    Our first idea was to hike across the Midi-Plan, taking the train up on one end and the lift down at the other. That really would have been a good hike, but we didn’t get ready fast enough; we wouldn’t have gotten up there before 11, we estimated that the three-hour hike would take our family five hours, and the last lift goes down at 4:30.
    This would not have been very relaxing, even though the worst-case scenario would have been spending the night in a fully staffed French mountain refuge with beds, food, and beer.
    So we decided to go for something that would require less commitment.
    + + +
    Three years ago we attempted to hike to the Refuge de la Pierre à Bérard from Le Buet, through the Vallée Bérard. It was a gorgeous hike, estimated to take 2 hours up for a fit adult; but difficult and slow for our then-four-year-old, with nearly 600 m vertical gain (most of it in the first third and the last quarter or so). Rain threatened, and we eventually turned back.
    So we decided to give it another go on this sunny day.

    We parked in the train station lot at Le Buet. I carried the 3yo on my back in the Boba, plus I carried a crossbody bag that works well with the Boba and that gave me quick access to my phone for its camera. The teen boys had one big backpack between them, because I intended to transfer the 3yo to one of them later. The two younger walking children each carried a daypack. Mark has a brand new lumbar pack that he is trying out, since shoulder straps seem to exacerbate his upper back and shoulder pain.

     

    This hike begins by winding through a little town, right past farmhouse windows, and then enters a forest. You pass a gorgeous waterfall, the Cascade de Bérard, where there is a little buvette (restaurant selling drinks, desserts, and small meals) that does a brisk business extracting euros from people who walk that far to see the falls. Then you keep going up… and up… and up.

     

    Hiking upward with my 35-pound child on my back, I hadn’t enough breath to engage in conversation and had to pay close attention to where I put my feet. My oldest offered to take him, and Mark asked, “Don’t you want to trade off a little bit?” But I didn’t. I may not have looked like I was having fun, but climbing a steep hill (for real, not on a machine at the gym) is one of my favorite strenuous exercises. I don’t get to do it very often, and I was enjoying the challenge.
    Besides, I intended to do my time now, and make someone else carry him later.
    The one thing I had to concentrate on, besides setting my feet down securely, was alternating my legs. For some reason, I tend to lift my weight with my right leg more often, and that can wear me out early if I forget to climb with my left some of the time.
    + + +
    After about an hour and fifteen minutes of steady climbing we came into a flatter, grassier place with scattered, lichen-dotted boulders and a tufty soft turf. Lunchtime!
     

    We walked a little off the path to where some scrubby little trees cast some shade and there were rocks to sit on. I let the 3yo off of my back and gratefully eased myself onto the grass. Then we distributed the sandwiches from what is, according to Mark, The Best Bakery In The World (TM).

    (It is the sandwichmonger closest to the lift that takes you up to the Aiguille de Midi).

    Mark and I do meatless Fridays; this being optional, we don’t require it of the kids. The 17yo had a leftover sandwich from the day before; the relatively selective 13yo had a sandwich lyonnais (sliced rosettes de porc—-think hard salami, but French—on a chewy baguette with butter and little French pickles); Mark and our daughter had the most excellent sandwich pecheur (tuna in mayonnaise with sliced egg, lettuce, and tomato on a very soft kind of long bread); and I had the panini végétarien (soft rectangular bread, toasted, with sun-dried tomato spread, a shredded provolone-like cheese, and slices of grilled eggplant).
    I also had an apple, which I ate first; and I gave half my panini to my still-hungry 17yo, who declared it a delicious pizza sandwich.
    The two little boys, who needed to be fed even in the event that they might refuse strange food, had homemade sandwiches on grocery-store pain de mie. For the 7yo, lots of butter and confiture de fraise, with a Babybel for protein. For the 3yo, butter and three (individually wrapped, processed) slices of “orange cheese” that had been labeled “Cheddar.” I had also impulsively bought a small can of Pringles (paprika flavor) which were much appreciated.
     
    The 17yo took the 3yo for a brief frolic down by the river (before we stopped him; the valley is full of warning signs about sudden flash floods even in good weather due to an upstream hydroelectric plant), and then we strapped the 3yo onto his back for the rest of the hike. The 17yo is fresh off of Boy Scouts hiking high adventure, and used to carrying a heavier pack than the 3yo. My workout was over.
    Off we went.
     
    About that lumbar pack of Mark’s: Apparently when he took it up on his glacier traverse with the boys the other day, a couple of climbers from other parties (British, I think) made fun of him for carrying a weird pack. It bugged one of their guides enough that he said something to one guy, about Mark having had a shoulder injury.
    I don’t think it bothered Mark — assholes are assholes everywhere, even on top of the mountain — but it got me to thinking quite a bit about manners, and also about invisible disabilities, and also about young and fit people not being able to imagine themselves older and broken and still wanting to go places and do fun things.
    My thoughts boil down to this: Wherever you go, don’t be that guy.
    + + +
    Lunch helped, and the long flat trek across the valley was refreshing, but the 7yo still struggled with believing he could make it that far.
    I took pictures of some end-of-season aster-type flowers that had petals that glimmered like silver.
     
    Soon we could see far ahead of us and partway up a steep slope, the refuge nestled into the side of the mountain, with a bright white dome as part of its roof. The 17yo told the complaining 3yo that we were headed for the white building, and repeated it over and over as we climbed the twenty or so switchbacks.
    And… we made it!
    (We had started 5 km away at altitude 1350 m.)
    The 3yo cried because we had not reached “the white building;” the 17yo had to take him up a little farther towards the pass so he could see the domed roof.
    Then we settled in for the promised snacks and drinks.
     
     
    Coke for our daughter. Juice for the 3yo. Sirop de cassis for the 13yo. Perrier and un petit café for me (it turned out to be a tiny but welcome espresso). Tarte des myrtilles for everyone else. Fantastically buttery crust.
     
    I wandered around the refuge a little bit. There are bathrooms, and a big dark room with a couple of bunk beds visible through the open door, many more inside, I think. They serve one kind of draft beer and two kinds in cans. They make their own ice cream and tarte.
    The waitress here was the first person on our trip to comment on how, as we only have one daughter, she must feel very protected by all of her brothers.
    In our experience, she will hear that again.

    Flush with success, caffeine, and tarte, we headed back down the trail.

    I took more pictures of flora…

    and fauna, of the sort that carries the supplies up to the refuge…

     

    …and we made it down by about four o’clock.

    + + +

    In the car I hatched a plan for Mark and me to go out to dinner by ourselves. We stopped at the big Carrefour outside of town, and the 17yo and I went in for supplies.

    I boiled two kinds of refrigerated ravioli for the kids and gave them two kinds of bottled sauce (tomato-basil and arrabbiata), a baguette, and boxes of kiwifruit and sweet green French plums. Then we left the apartment, with the 17yo in charge.

    Partway down the hill Mark got a text from him announcing that the 7yo had locked himself in the bathroom and couldn’t get out.

    “I am trying to instruct him”
    Mark texted back: “Should we come back?”
    Reply: “Not much you could do if you were here”
    I couldn’t even remember seeing a lock on the door in there, as I had only gone in to do laundry. “Ask if he is panicking,” I said.
    Mark started to type that, then stopped. “I don’t want to distract him.”
    We paused.
    “Let’s just keep going down. We can come back if he wants us.”
    So we kept going down the hill, and a little while later we got a text saying “It’s ok, he is out.”
    + + +
    An interlude: This is the bathroom door from the inside. The tiny slider latch is 5 ft 3 in off the floor, out of his reach. The 7yo, concerned about privacy, had jumped up and smacked it closed with his hand. Then he couldn’t smack it open again, because of the wall.
    This is the one that contains a toilet, laundry machines, and handwashing sink. It has only glass-block windows, not even to the outside, but into the shower in the other bathroom.
    The 17yo had gotten him to tell him, through the door, all the things that were in the bathroom that he might be able to use to help himself. It was like Apollo 13, if Apollo 13 had been set in a French W.C. Eventually he talked him through using a tall t.p.-roll-holder to reach up and manipulate the latch open.
    I feel like my babysitter deserves a raise.
    + + +
    Anyway, our desired restaurant wasn’t ready for dinner yet, so we stopped at a wine bar, drank reds (Côtes du Rhône for me; Bordeaux for Mark; mine was better), and hungrily watched people chowing down on piles of cured meats.
    We took our first European date-night selfie.

    And then we went to the restaurant, which we had eaten at three years before with the kids, but which looked very different, less down-homey, more hip. I don’t think we would bring five kids with us into a place like that for a dinner which didn’t start before eight.

    Mark encouraged me to try asking the waiter what had happened to the restaurant (my desire to practice my French is always in tension with my introvertedness) and so I did. I gathered that there had been a change in ownership due to the previous owner becoming ill, and that the new décor had only come on line a couple of weeks ago.

    The menu was the same.

    Mark started with a French interpretation of a Caesar salad, with shredded lettuce, strips of grilled chicken that had not been documented on the menu, croutons, and a couple of medium-boiled eggs with soft, deep-yellow yolks. I started with salmon “façon gravlax,” which was delicious and came with two little toasts, dill crème fraîche, and a small salade mixte.

    Then we had fondue savoyarde. Because if you are going to go meatless for an evening in the land of cured meats and cheeses, a half-liter of bubbling melted cheese is the way to go.

    We split 25 cl of the recommended local white wine and walked back to find nobody trapped in a bathroom and everybody just about ready for bed.

    This time, however, we got stuff ready the night before so that we could make an early start if we chose. Lesson learned.

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  • Rest day for little ones and me. And a lot of food.

    On Thursday Mark had scheduled an alpine climbing day for himself and our two teen boys with Jeff the guide. More of a traverse, really, to the summit block of the Aiguilles Marbrées and back from the lift in Courmayeur, Italy. (Route is pictured here, and described in French.)

    My job was to hang out with the younger kids all day. I planned two outings: the grocery store in the late morning, and a trip to buy macarons for afternoon snack. In between, we would rest. The kids are still fairly jet lagged, and Friday would be a bigger day for them.

    Region 2 DVDs and chill, you might say.

    + + +
    Let me introduce you to our apartment.
    The first thing I noticed when we went in is that it is well stocked with Duplos, toy trucks, stuffed animals, and some kind of plastic fortifications-building set with little plastic soldiers. Also lots of board games and children's books (all French of course, but some of them recognizable). This was also the first thing our 3yo noticed. He has been happily playing with Duplos and toy trucks since we got here.
    It has a washer and a dryer, plus a big folding drying rack, which is important because European clothes-dryer technology is apparently not very advanced. The first load of laundry I did (immediately after getting our suitcases containing something else we could wear while our traveling clothes washed), I ran through the dryer 3 times—the last time on the hottest and longest setting—and they still were damp to the touch. Finally I gave up, found a place in a corner of one bathroom to set up the drying rack, and hung them all up to finish the job.
    I have a theory that Europeans believe strongly in the health effects, or possibly the environmental virtues, of airing out one's clothes such that they distrust a clothes dryer that would take the clothes all the way to dry without the vital final step of hanging them up for a couple of hours. That the sole virtue of the clothes dryer is its ability to speed up the process so that you can have a bit less of your floor space taken up by the folding rack should you wish to do more than one load of laundry in a day.
    I completely made this theory up, but I like it, so I am going to quietly go with it until I am corrected by someone who knows better.
    We have three bedrooms, plus a daybed couch in the living room, where our daughter has been authorized to decamp in the middle of the night in the event that her roomie and next-younger brother bothers her. There are a couple of trundles under some of the beds; we took one of the mattresses and put it on the floor in our room for the 3yo. There is a full bath off Mark's and my room, with a soaking tub and a rain shower; and two separate washrooms, one with a tiny handwashing sink and a toilet (also the stacked laundry machines) and one with a shower and a vanity sink (also just enough room to fit the drying rack).
    The galley kitchen is tiny but serviceable with enough counter space to work. It has a dishwasher and a small fridge and an electric stovetop. No oven, but there is a combination microwave/convection oven thingy; it is capable of crisping a take-and-bake pizza. There is a nifty toaster with one wide slot and two little metal wings that rise up over the slot at the turn of a dial, which are apparently for warming a whole loaf, say a ciabatta or a small baguette, from the underside. There is a drip coffeemaker and a fondue pot and a raclette set.
    I brought my own chef's knife, paring knife, and bread knife. This was the right decision. The bread knife here is okay, but the only other knives I can find are steak knives. I wonder if rental properties lose knives a lot. If Mark and I are going to travel more often, I may need a travel knife case.

     

    There is a tiny balcony off the boys' room facing west, and a larger balcony off the great room facing east. Mark refuses to say "north" or "south" around here and only says "up valley" or "down valley," which works when I am dealing with Google Maps in the passenger seat if I can remember which way the river Arve runs. Still, it makes sense to get your bearings primarily by the landmarks that rise up impossibly close and tall on either side, every day stretching out the dawn, every day hastening the sunset, the first and last points glowing with the direct daylight.
    Anyway, we can see the gondolas of the lift rising up out of town from our large balcony, and the spire at the top of the Aiguille de Midi, perfectly.
    We have a long dining table with a mix of chairs and benches, a TV with a DVD player (there is a collection of DVDs; we brought our small collection of British Region 2 DVDs with us), and a fireplace we are not supposed to use, with a madonna-and-child hanging above it.
    The apartment is more than halfway up the steep hill that leads from the town center to the base of the lift. By the time we have hiked with the groceries, we are always sweaty and hot. It is steep enough to make it bother your knees on the way down, at least if you are carrying a 3yo on your back.
    + + +
    I let the kids sleep in and have a slow start, figuring that my biggest challenge would be passing the time. In late morning we walked to the grocery store. I promised them they could choose things for their lunches.
    The 11yo was instructed to navigate to and from the store, because she has to prove she can do it reliably before we let her go by herself.
    I bought coffee and milk and cream and vegetables and wine (Graves, just about my favorite white, €6) and pain complet. The 11yo chose sliced turkey and Lay's potato chips, "moutarde et pickles" flavor, and asked for a Coke, which I allowed. The 7yo chose a new kind of Babybel that was like string cheese coiled up in a little sealed cup, and juice. The 3yo asked for "salami" (rosette de porc). I also bought a couple of toy trucks and pens and a notepad. We piled it all into the backpacks and hiked back, the 11yo in the lead.
     
     
     
    I made the kids' lunches, with buttered pain de mie and tiny yogurts.
     
    My lunch was part of a leftover proscuitto sandwich and a salad of leftover greens and cubed cooked beets with vinaigrette.
    Then we relaxed for a couple of hours. I read. The kids played with toys and read and watched a DVD. And then we cleaned up the lunch and swept up the toys, and went out again, this time for snack.
    Goûter, I mean.
    + + +
    I instructed the two older kids on how to order, and forbade them from ordering more than one flavor each. "You can get three macarons of one flavor, and then you can trade them with each other; I don't want to make her have to get you nine different kinds."
    We looked in one shop, then the other, and examined the flavors. The 7yo is intrigued by the mysterious name "passionfruit" but afraid to commit to it in the presence of so many others. Café, "equatorial" (dark chocolate), noix de coco, framboise, myrtille, fraise, citron vert, vanille, chocolat-mangue.
    Finally we went in, and I greeted the proprietaire. I nudged the 11yo, who recited: "Je voudrais trois macarons framboises." (Actually she said "frambois" but it was ok.) The woman smiled and took a silver tray and a pair of tongs and carefully picked out three brilliant pink macarons with deep-pink paste filling.
    And the 7yo nervously followed: "Je voudrais…trois…" he paused, panicky, hyperventilating.
    "Merci de votre patience," I said to the woman with the tongs and the silver tray.
    "You can order in English," she said to him.
    He exhaled with so much relief that he nearly fell over. "I would like to order three blueberry macarons, please," he said, and she nodded and began adding macarons to the tray.
    "Et pour le petit, trois macarons 'tarte de citron,'" I added, "et trois petit sacs, s'il vous plaît, parce qu'il y a trois enfants."
    Soon we had our three little sacks with three macarons each, and I set the 3yo down in the plaza where he could watch pigeons to his heart's content while eating.
     
     
     
     
    I am more of a protein snack person myself. Behold, the magic that is the petit saucisson sec:
    + + +
    For dinner I sautéed onions and lardons in olive oil…
    …added cream…
    …and stirred in cooked crozets, a local buckwheat-semolina pasta in a square shape.
    For the salad: Chilled cooked broccoli florets and raw, thinly-sliced red peppers, mushrooms, and zucchini, in balsamic vinaigrette with grana padano cheese.
     
    + + +
    Mark and the boys returned tired and happy. The 13yo went straight to bed, still jet-lagged and suffering a bit from the altitude and a blister. The 17yo was nothing but pleased (and hungry).
     
    Good wine, good food, and a good rest.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

     

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  • Climbing day and pizza.

    Up early on Wednesday for our first family day of climbing at Les Gaillands, the magnificent crag just outside of town.

    Mark dropped me and the 17yo off in front of the bakery across from the Aiguille de Midi lift, and I bought six sandwiches and a bunch of pastries and a couple of quiches. (I did a fine job ordering the sandwiches according to the placards that were posted in front of them, but we discovered later that the placards had not been placed in front of the corresponding sandwiches, so we had different ones than we wanted.) For pastries: two petit pains au chocolat, one croix de Savoie (a local specialty), a fat brioche chocolat-orange, and something with nuts on it called a “canadienne” (maybe it had maple? I don’t know, I didn’t get any).
    The quiches Lorraines for breakfast between Mark and me, even though the women behind the counter at the bakery will laugh at you if you commit the faux pas of thinking that it is all right to eat a quiche for breakfast. Quiches are lunch food in France as far as I can tell and only weird people and Englishmen would think of having so much protein before noon. You are supposed to have something healthier, I guess, like black coffee and a cigarette.
    But I think the little quiches make a marvelous breakfast.
    Mark picked us up after stopping at the grocery store for drinks and snacks for the next day’s outing, and we were off — only a ten-minute drive.
    + + +

    We have been here before. It is a great climbing place for a family, because there are often children there; not French children now, because they just started school, but there was a large passel of British children climbing next to us. There’s a big grassy field with boulders here and there to climb on, and a little lake for fishing, and some caves and interesting old building foundations. Also a little café/concession stand thing that sells drinks, snacks, and crêpes, and public toilets.

    Also, the ground by the crag is covered with interesting small rocks. Which is good when you are a three-year-old with a toy dump truck, and your siblings are going to take turns supervising you. My daughter took the first shift, and was promised more climbing than she could stand later in the morning.

    Jeff (green shirt) is an American who splits his time between Colorado and Europe. He couldn’t believe it had been three years since our last trip. I think he’s great with our kids, and Mark has been out with him several times. Nothing we will do here at this crag will be very technically difficult, so we don’t really need a mountain guide for this; but we do need another adult who can belay, since somebody has to be watching our younger boys all the time, and Jeff needs to get an idea of how well our older boys can take instruction since they’re going out with him on the mountain the next day. So he spent some time taking them through a few drills which he suggested they could practice at home.

     

    Meanwhile, the rest of us put on our harnesses and shoes. Mark prepared to belay the 7yo. He is quite small for his age, so we still have him in a chest harness; flipping upside down is more of a possibility for small ones, and so you want them in a harness with shoulder straps.

    After the 7yo came down, Mark belayed me for a quick and easy warmup climb; and then when it was my turn to be lowered, which entails leaning back into the rope and “walking” backwards down the rock, I was surprised to find that it was kind of scary. Surprised only because I have spent enough time in the climbing gym on auto-belay to not find that scary; but it turned out the comfort didn’t transfer very well. I got used to it, though, and found my feet.

    The 11yo girl got her chance soon to have some instruction from Jeff and then to start climbing.

    Meanwhile the 13yo, looking cool, was to take over the 3yo (still not a difficult job; he was making avalanches by piling small rocks on top of the boulders and pushing them down). The 17yo, a member of the high school climb team at the local gym, earned his keep by belaying the 7yo.

    I don’t belay. Most of the time, there’s no need for me to do so. I have learned how (theoretically) but have not practiced enough for it to become second nature. Mark showed me how with his easiest belay device and practiced with me for a couple of hours, and then declared me competent enough to pass the belay exam at the climbing gym, which he said was just a formality because you only had to be good enough to get started and then you could get better by practicing in the gym. I wasn’t sure I believed him, but I went along with him anyway and we got a gym employee to give me the belay test. I failed immediately and humiliatingly, humiliatingly enough that I think Mark was embarrassed on his own behalf.

    Anyway, I am not sure that I want to belay my own kids; it seems like the sort of thing that would make me very nervous. I also don’t like very much to have my oldest belay me, although I have, a few times. Oddly enough though, I am completely comfortable with the 17yo belaying the other children.

    Which is handy when you are all out at the crag.

    + + +

    The lit
    tler ones did not like the sandwiches, and they did not like the petit pains au chocolat (it is a dark and bitter chocolate, perfect à mon goût but not to theirs), but they did like the croix de Savoie and so they ate it for lunch. Along with some fruit snacks that were left over in the 3yo’s back pack from the supplies I had packed for the plane.

    My daughter is fond of tuna subs, so I had made sure to order one sandwich de thon. She was surprised how much she liked it. “The tomato and lettuce are good,” she said. “I don’t like how the hardboiled eggs are sliced instead of chopped up into the tuna, because you get a lot of egg in every bite, but it’s okay. The tuna part tastes amazing.”
    I tasted it too and thought about it. “I think there’s more mayonnaise, possibly better mayonnaise, and it’s probably different tuna than you are used to. We might have to try recreating it at home.”
    The other sandwiches were proscuitto-and-goat-cheese on ciabatta and ham-and-butter on baguette. Very nice. We also had some lovely green plums, “reines claudes,” a fruit I cannot get enough of when I am in Europe. They are sweet and apricot-sized, and the skin is tender, without the jaw-clenching tartness that you sometimes get with fat purple American plums. They are juicy enough to be flavorful but not juicy enough to drip down your chin or to fall apart into mush as you eat them. The stone is free so you can eat all the lovely pale green flesh in a few bites.
    + + +
    After lunch everyone had a chance to climb a longer and more interesting route. The 7yo is not frightened at all anymore.
     

    The wall had a long smooth section with very few toeholds, good for technical practice; but practically had stairsteps on either side. I really can’t overstate how marvelous the rock is. It is very rugged and steppy, easy to find footholds and handholds almost anywhere you look, with ledges here and there on which grow spiky grasses and tiny tufts of mountain flowers. The rock glitters with mica in places and in other places so iron-red and smooth you wonder if it would attract a magnet. And yet there are smooth sections where you must “step on nothing and trust it will hold you,” as Jeff put it. There are bolts fixed in places to practice lead climbing; in the afternoon, my oldest would get some practice and instruction with those, after I went home with the other four kids for a rest, to let Mark and the 17yo profit from the afternoon with the guide.

    Before I left I wanted to get some vigorous exercise, so I asked to be belayed several times on the same route one after another. First Jeff belayed me, and then after a while, Mark took over the belay. I watched from the top as they transferred my rope from one to the other, and Jeff teased me: “You’ll only be off belay for a couple of minutes. I think. I’ve only done this a couple of times.”

    I got the 17yo to take some pictures of me climbing. I swear I am better at it than I was three years ago, even if I still kind of look like a dork.

    I am not at all happy with what the harness, under load, does to the abdominal material left over from my pregnancies. Good thing it is not a fashion show.
    After I went up and down quickly a few times, I felt ready to take the younger kids home. We intended to let the 13yo climb more, but he still suffered pretty terribly from jet lag, and wanted to sleep. So we loaded most of the stuff in the van (as well as the 3yo, who had to be dragged weeping away from his beloved pile of little rocks), and Mark drove us back to the apartment. Then he returned to finish the day out with Jeff and the 17yo.
    I snapped this picture of the Bossons glacier from the car. It’s one of my favorite views from town.
    We rested all afternoon, until Mark and the 17yo returned, pleased with himself for having had lots of lead climbing practice. And then we all got dressed and headed out for pizza. Our walk took us past the field where the parasailers land and through the town to a little pizza place that we had eaten at before: a sort of a wooden train-car-shaped shack, cash only, with a Neapolitan-style pizza oven inside and a couple of picnic tables outside.
     
    I ordered a pizza margherita with black olives on top; a pizza “quatre saisons” with capers, mushrooms, cheese, and ham; a spicy pizza with a tangy tomato sauce, hot peppers and spicy pepperoni; and a pizza “di parma” with proscuitto, herbs, and white sauce. Also some Sprites and two plastic cups of red wine.

    The only other party dining on the premises was a group of about seven Brits, one of whom had come up to the window next to me as I was paying, carrying a bottle of wine to ask after a corkscrew and some plastic cups. “Oh, you speak French, that’s lucky,” said the nice British lady. “I got him to sell me a whole bottle of wine but we haven’t any cups, can you ask?”

    He came back, I asked, he showed her a single plastic cup and said, “Last one, no more.” (I had already been given my two cups of wine). She was perplexed and stammered.

    I peered into the window and saw a tall stack of black-and-white-printed styrofoam cups, the sort you use for coffee. “Est-ce que vous pouvez lui donner ces… uh (the word for “cup” momentarily escaped me, darnit)… choses-là, pour les boissons chauds? Les noirs et blancs?”

    He looked irritated and came back and pulled a few of them off the stack. “These are not for wine.” He handed them to her and as she went away, pleased, explained to me rapidly something that might have been: “How was I expected to know she would be willing to drink wine out of a coffee cup?” and might also have included: “She should have asked for the cups when I sold her the wine.” and definitely included an explanation that he was closing up shop tomorrow to go on vacation for ten days so he was letting his inventory run low on purpose. I am not sure whether he was being defensive or whether he was complaining about the bizarre willingness of the nice British lady to (a) ask for a whole bottle of wine or (b) drink wine out of an inappropriate container.

    Anyway, we waited quite a while for the pizzas, as he was doing a brisk takeout business, but it was a lovely night and the little boys were pretty well-behaved. And when they arrived, the pizzas were delicious, and just the right amount of food; and my wine tasted lovely, perfect with the pizza, so that I was glad I had managed not to drink it all while we waited.
    Even from a plastic cup.

     

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  • Plans that didn’t require our luggage.

    We still didn’t have our seven checked bags when Tuesday dawned, so we needed to make new plans. Plans that did not require any of our gear or more layers than the clothes on our backs.

     

    Mark walked down to the place where you can pay an expert parasailer to take you flying off the mountain in a sort of tandem rig, and signed up the teenage boys for an eleven o’clock flight. Then he and I went to one of the stores in town to buy gloves for them, since it’s cold up there, and approach shoes for me, just in case hiking became necessary. (I had picked great versatile shoes for airport sprinting and for urban walking around — comfortable black leather flats in a sort of sporty mary jane style — but it wouldn’t do to hike in them.) The boys got dressed to fly.

    Then Mark took our daughter up on the gondola to watch them take off, and to find out if she might want to go flying, too.
     
    She wasn’t sure before she went up, but once she saw the boys take off, she really wanted to go. The parasailer who took my oldest down suggested that our daughter, being relatively lightweight, would do best on a day early in the morning with calm winds, and said she would call us when the weather was just right.

    I stayed at the bottom with the two little boys. The 7yo begged to be taken to a French McDonald’s to find out if it was the same or different. I thought this outing might be best if it was gotten out of the way as soon as possible, so I packed up a backpack with spare clothes and the child carrier, and ventured down into the town with a little boy’s hand in each of mine.

    We found the Golden Arches with no trouble, and I ordered two happy meals with the touchscreen kiosk with no trouble, but when it came time to pay I had trouble: the machine would not take either of my credit cards, and it displayed a command to pay cash at the counter. I had neglected to get cash from Mark that morning, so I rushed out the door (one perplexed child at each hand) to ask directions for the nearest ATM; upon arriving, I found that my cash card did not work either.

    So I had to explain to the two children that we couldn’t buy any food, and did they want to walk around and look at things instead? No, they both started to cry. So back up the hill to the apartment.

    On the way up, towing my two sad little boys by the hands, I bumped into an Englishwoman who exchanged pleasantries with me and then asked, “Have you been up on the gondola yet?”

    “Yes,” I said, “well, not this time yet, a few years ago. But my kids are doing parasailing from there right now,” and I gestured with my head at a few colorful sails which were circling down at the moment from the sky. (Probably not them, although it could have been.)

     

    “Oh my,” she said, “that must be scary to watch.”

    I thought about it for a moment. “No,” I said, “they are seventeen and thirteen. I am sure they are having fun.”

    When Mark arrived with two happy teenage boys, I made him take the small kids back into town for their Happy Meals. The 11yo went too. It probably made their day.

    Our oldest had taken a GoPro on his flight. I hope to post it later when he sends it to me.

     

    + + +

    We had been told the bags would arrive that evening, either by 6 pm or at 6 pm, so someone had to stay and wait. We took turns heading out on little errands. Our 13yo went out looking for gear with Mark. The 17yo went for a run. I took the 11yo out window shopping and to a bookstore, where we browsed for a long time and where I bought her an Asterix book and myself a cookbook.

    When I got home there were still no bags, and it was time to make dinner. The TV was on, where French news covered Hurricane Irma, paying closest attention to the French islands. We were listening too, because we had friends staying on St. Kitts that night, and were hoping for the best for them.

     

    I made chicken noodle soup, with a cold rotisserie chicken; carrots, onions, parsley and celery; and egg tagliatelle sold rolled in little nests.

     

    And I made a first course with olives, cured meat, and last night’s haricots verts tossed in vinaigrette.

     

    We had a good family dinner, alt
    hough the teen boys had to take it in turns, alternating with waiting outside in case the bags arrived. And then we walked into town for ice cream, except for the oldest, who stayed behind to keep the same vigil, but was brought a cone on the way back.


     

     

    (I had rhum raisins. And those raisins were really, really rhummy. Perfect. Although I think I spilled some on my new approach shoes.)

     

    + + +

    Not long after 10 the phone rang, and Mark thrust it at me, saying, “I think it’s about the bags!” I took it and said “Hello?” and was greeted with a bad connection, a static-and-gaps-punctuated stream of absolutely incomprehensible rapid French, with what sounded like the wind roaring past the window on the highway. I tried to reply. I told him I couldn’t hear him well. I asked him to speak more slowly. He didn’t slow down. I tried again and he hung up on me.

    “He hung up,” I said.

    “Call back!” said Mark.

    I called back and he picked up, sounding irritated. Something something — and a string of numbers that I thought might be our street address. Was he asking what address to deliver to? I ran and fetched the paper with our address written on it and repeated the address back. “Okay, okay,” he was saying, but then there was more. Was he out there trying to be let in at the automatic gate? I struggled to hear and understand, running barefoot outside, and finally I heard him say “SMS.”

    Which left me wondering why I didn’t think of that. “Oui, bien sûr,” I said, “ce sera bon, envoyez-moi un SMS.”

    He hung up, this time I did not call back, and a second later Mark’s phone pinged in my hand. J’arrive en 50m.

    “He’ll be here in fifty minutes!” I said to Mark, who was reading over my shoulder.

    “He’s just now leaving the airport, maybe,” said Mark.

    “I guess he was only trying to confirm the address.”

    I tapped back, slowly because Mark has autocorrect on and it kept “fixing” my French: Qqn vous attend devant le numéro 269. “You have two q’s in that word,” said Mark, and I irritatedly explained that it was an abbreviation for somebody.

    So Mark and I sat outside on a bench and waited. And checked our phones for news of the hurricane. And took selfies.

     

    And finally a van came up the hill slowly, and the driver stopped, and it was the driver we wanted to see, with all seven of our bags in the van. I apologized and explained that I was no good on the phone, and he said it was no problem, and I signed for the bags and Mark counted them, all there. Did we need help carrying? Non, nous avons deux grands fils, I told him, and indeed Mark had already texted the 17yo who was jogging down the long driveway to help us with our bags.

     

    We had to stay up at least another hour divvying up pajamas and toothbrushes and laying out climbing gear for the next day. And Mark and I finished the bottle of wine. And then, much relieved, we went to bed.

     

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  • Day two: shopping and cooking, mostly.

    I didn’t take many pictures on Monday, but here is a brief rundown.

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    Even before our luggage got delayed, we had planned to make a trip down the valley to the big sporting goods store, to buy some fleeces and jackets and shoes that we would take home. So, after coffee and breakfast (cereal for kids; plain yogurt with apples for me) we piled into our rented Citroën Picasso and hit the road.

    t

    The Decathlon is like an REI, except that the selection is a little smaller and the stuff is more affordable, though still well made. No fancy American brands like Patagonia or North Face; instead it is Quechua and XPM. Great kids’ clothes. We bought something for everyone: climbing shoes, fleeces, soft-shells, approach shoes, neck gaiters, water bottles.

    I bought underwear.

    And then we were hungry, so we ate in the little cafeteria that was attached. Panini with eggplant, tomato, pesto, and a couple different kinds of cheese for me and my 17yo, plus salads of cucumber, haricots, and tender lettuces. A thick, bready pizza with tomato and potato slices for Mark. The smaller kids were alarmed by the strange food; but there were Babybels in the grab-and-go case, along with mini baguettes. So they ate bread, familiar cheese, and fruit.

    The next stop was to be a sizable grocery store to stock up for the week. Mark suggested an Aldi, thinking that here in France it would be more like a normal grocery store; but no, it was as haphazardly laid out and oddly stocked as any Aldi at home. So I couldn’t get quite everything I needed, but I got most of it: milk, butter, cream, olive oil, cheese, cured meats, bread, onions, little yogurts, cereal, a cold rotisserie chicken, pasta, fresh pork cutlets, coffee, flour.

    Then after we got back to the apartment, Mark and I walked together to the Super U in town to buy a few remaining items. Carrots and celery, wine, fresh vegetables, little golden potatoes, parsley, mustard.

    We rested awhile and I finished my blog posts while Mark tried to get information about our suitcases (no luck) and tried to get our guided climbing rescheduled for later in the week (we were lucky there; another client wanted to climb in our prepaid slot, so the guide was willing to move us). Then I settled in to make dinner.

    I boiled the potatoes and tossed them with butter, salt, and parsley. I coated the little pork medallions in egg, flour, salt, and pepper, and sautéed them in a mix of olive oil and butter; then made a pan sauce with white wine, cream, and mustard. I steamed green beans and tossed a salad with vinaigrette and cubed, pre-cooked beets, then topped the salad with shaved apple and a few cubes of Comté on each plate.

    After dinner, well after sundown, Mark and I went out for a walk around town, looking in the shop windows, people-watching. We stopped in a wine bar called Bar des Sports, and indeed there was a television above the bar displaying a soccer match, England vs. Slovakia. I had the house Bourgogne, Mark tried the Rasteau (I didn’t know it; it turned out to be a slightly sweet, fortified red wine from the southern Rhône valley; mine was better) and we talked about soccer, and about the articles on the front page of the well-used newspaper lying there on the bar. Special edition for the rentrée scolaire (back to school): should the French copy these educational practices from other countries? The highlighted American was a high school student who said the most useful thing about his school was that he met with his guidance counselor every week. I am skeptical that this is representative.

    Back to the apartment, and back to bed. Clean in the morning,

     

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  • Travel day.

    And we’re off!

    Saturday we cleaned the house, piled up our twelve bags (six to check, six to carry on) and headed for the airport.

    My nerves were beyond jangled. I love traveling, but the parts that take place in the airport are my least favorite when small children are involved. Mark kept grinning at me and telling me everything would be fine, and I kept saying, “I will be fine when we are all on the plane. The second plane, come to think of it. And who has the 3yo?”

    One of the carryons turned out to be too big for Icelandair and had to be checked; before relinquishing it we pulled out two climbing helmets, a little backpack for 3yo, and spare traveling clothes for the two youngest children. In the end we checked seven rolling suitcases, packed with climbing gear, warm clothing, guidebooks, kitchen knives (yeah, I travel with the three essential kitchen knives now), toys, and shared full-size toiletries.

    We flew Icelandair, which was pleasant; it had a sleek Euro feel about it, and the option of watching Disney movies dubbed into Icelandic. I did this for a while (verdict: Brave is amusing in Icelandic, because of the Celtic accent, and because people shout “hvað!?” a lot) but then switched to reading and drinking wine

    Both activities went a long way toward de-jangling me.

    Once arrived in Reykjavik there was a disconcerting rush to make it to our connecting flight (always fun with a 3yo strapped to your back), but they held it for us and we made it onto the plane and to Geneva.


    The very worst part about flying with young children is the part in the airport where you wait for first your baggage and then the rental car. In our case it was especially long because the seven bags (including, you’ll remember, some stuff that we had planned on carrying on the plane) had not made it onto the connecting flight with us. Not a single one! So there was an interlude of waiting to talk to the baggage claim office.

     

    After nearly nineteen years of marriage, Mark and I work together quite seamlessly most of the time; we each have the roles we have settled into and know what to expect from each other. I supervise the three youngest children’s packing and he supervises the teen boys’. He makes sure we have all the gear, I make sure we have all the clothes and toiletries (and we check with each other at the interfaces of the categories, like “fleece jackets” and “sunblock.”) Normally, travel crises are Mark’s department. But it turns out that if the baggage claim people don’t speak English very well, he wants me to help. Fortunately our 17yo could watch over the bags and small children, who were not going anywhere.

    The Swiss airport agent conversed with me in a mix of French and English (I don’t know what the quality is that make some bilingual conversations work smoothly like that without slipping at the boundaries, but this one did; maybe because he was Swiss and probably had to deal with switching a lot). Icelandair had not perdu nos grandes valises, but knew exactly where they were, and they would be delivered, but no sooner than mardi soir. I remembered to turn to Mark and translate “Tuesday evening,” upon which his “relax, everything will be just fine!” mien cracked–just a little. (He had pre-reserved a climbing guide for us Tuesday morning and afternoon, and of course all the gear was in the checked bags.)

     

    Mark canceled the van transport by which we had been planning to move the teenage boys and some of our bags to the apartment (it would not all fit in the rental; European minivans are designed to carry people or cargo but not both). He bought wine at the duty free shop in the airport, a Swiss rosé, and then we schlepped everything to the train station attached to the airport, where we had been promised was a full grocery store.

     

    The three smallest kids stayed behind, on the floor, with Mark and the oldest.

    I went in with the 13yo and we filled two shopping baskets with enough food for dinner and breakfast: Charentais melon and some pre-packaged apples (neither of which required us to navigate the self-serve produce scale), dried beef and jambon cru, a take-and-bake tomato focaccia, Saint-André and Comté cheeses, bread, butter, milk, yogurt, and jam, and of course coffee.

    We had another long wait before we got our seven-passenger van, which we had to locate in the rental garage by wandering around and pressing the unlock looking for the flashing headlights, and finally we were on the road.

    Chamonix is not very far from Geneva, so in only an hour or so we were pulling into a little gated driveway, and the caretakers were waving to us and welcoming us in to our apartment. Between my French and their English we came to understand how to access the weefee, how to find the washing machine, and how not to get locked out of the apartment by accident. But long before Mark and I had absorbed all that, the kids had gotten absorbed on their own.

    .

    I got dinner on the table as fast as we could and we devoured it. The star of the show, by far, was the Charentais melon, which didn’t surprise me at all; it is ripe, bright-orange, and deeply sweet without being mushy. But the smallest children were content to eat bread and butter and jam, and I was very inclined to let them.

     

    Later we went out in search of glace, and ordered too much and got very full. And then we walked back to our apartment, me with Simon on my back, almost all the way uphill to the lift that takes you up the mountain.

     

    .

    And that was arrival day, Sunday.
    + + +
    Next morning I finally got enough coffee and drank it with this view out the window.
    I will have to end here for now…

     

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  • Riverfront.

    One of my pre-trip errands was to stop at the Guthrie Theater box office to pick up some tickets that I’d ordered over the phone.

    It was sunny on Wednesday, and I left the kids at home with their to-do lists for the morning. I parked and put money in the meter, enough for thirty minutes, in front of the Guthrie, and went in and got my tickets; but on an impulse, instead of turning around and retracing my steps through the cavernous entry hall, I walked out the back door, where an expanse of green grass met me.

    + + +

    The river, and especially the waterfall, is Minneapolis’s raison d’être. Flour mills and saw mills, and later hydroelectric power, all congregated here. There are still tall grain elevators; you can see the old Stone Arch Bridge that curves in a long arc across the river.

     

    A number of apartment buildings have gone in where warehouses and mills used to be. I admire this one with its red-painted balconies facing the river, most of them bedecked with plants and flowers. They look like good places to sit and drink a cup of coffee.

    The Mill City Museum, run by the Minnesota Historical Society, is built among the remains of what was once the world’s largest flour mill. If you ever find yourself in Minneapolis and want some local history, I recommend it; it is not too big, and it is very child-friendly, with a hands-on water lab (build the stone arch bridge across the river! make a log jam!) and a ride in the big elevator with a boom from a simulated dust explosion. Groups can have field trips that include a farm-to-table baking lab and recipe testing of chocolate chip cookies. The tour takes you through remaining parts of the mill, which famously exploded in 1878 and burned again finally in 1991.

    Since then the historical society has turned the whole area into a park. In some places down by the river, walking trails wind around the crumbling limestone. The tallest mill remains, nearest the museum, are this summer covered in scaffolding, marked with signs advertising a masonry restoration firm.

    I walk a little farther and can see the observation deck on top of the museum, which I know commands a grand view of the riverfront. There is a group of children in matching bright tee shirts on top, jostling and waving. I wave back.
     
    The caution sign speaks the truth. Many pointy bits below.
    The “Pillsbury’s Best Flour” sign, on the other hand, doesn’t really, because it is owned by a developer who turned the building beneath into artists’ studios and apartments. The sign is a sort of Minneapolis landmark, along with a few other historic signs on the riverfront (North Star Blankets, Gold Medal Flour, Grain Belt Beer) and was refurbished a couple of years ago, so that it is lit up at night once again—now with LEDs instead of neon.

    Before climbing back up the steep street that leads away from the waterfront, I turned and took one last picture up the river, towards the rebuilt 35W bridge.

    This past summer the aforementioned Mill City Museum hosted an exhibit commemorating the tenth anniversary of the evening rush-hour collapse, which killed 14 and injured 145. They even one of the infamous inadequately-engineered gusset plates on display (photo at the link).

    I am kind of sorry I missed the exhibit. At the time, Mark (along with who knows how many other locals) usually drove across the bridge twice daily on his way to and from work; it was an upsetting afternoon. Fortunately, I learned relatively quickly that Mark had left work well before the collapse and was at the gym and not in the river. The twisted remains of the old bridge were left in place on the banks of the river for a disturbingly long time, even after the new and very sturdy-looking bridge went back up.

    Just a short break in the middle of a busy day to take in some of the views of my home city.

    Next: pictures from somewhere else, I hope.

     
     
     

     

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