France 1

Starting two or three weeks before we left for France, people started asking me if I was ready. I’d laugh. Other than the absolutely necessities, airline tickets, hotel & car reservations and passports, I didn’t really start getting ready until two days before we left. While we are here for month, we have laundry available (albiet pricey laundry - €2.50 to wash and €1.50 to dry, about $5.50 per load), so packing for this trip wasn’t very different from packing for a week away.

Thursday and Friday before we left around noon on Saturday, I washed every item of clothing we owned and tried to use up the perishable food in the refrigerator. I boiled eggs and cut up cheese, packed hummus, crackers, dried fruit and nuts – you’d have thought we were heading into deep wilderness, not the consumer-happy world of airports. Of course, airport food consistently makes me feel oogy, so I feel justified. I’m also constitutionally unable to waste food, so I really HAVE to bring it along. Usually I end up throwing most of my stash away when we arrive at our location. This time we ended up needing it. More on that in due time.

Freya flew as a lap child. We were fortunate enough to have an extra seat next to our three seats. The young woman in the final seat in our row probably didn’t feel quite so lucky, but I think, in the end, we didn’t bother her much. I don’t recall much of the 15 hours of flying and layover time very well. We checked the larger Britax Marathon car seat and brought the smaller Britax Boulevard on the plane. Mo is still within the weight and height limits for the Boulevard, and he is the one we hoped to have sleep in it. Freya can still sleep in-arms. Freya ended up sleeping in the car seat for an hour or so and Mo for two or three hours at the end of the overseas flight. None of us got much sleep. Mo had his only real meltdown when we woke him up to get off the plane in London. I went ahead off the plane and Mo and David were the last ones off, with poor Mo crying hysterically. Like most people, he doesn’t appreciate being awakened before he’s had enough rest. Like most three-year-olds, when tired, he occasionally reacts to strange and or upsetting situations with hysteria.

We hadn’t realized (or David wouldn’t have allowed Mo quite so much leisurely hysteria time) that our just-less-than-two-hour layover in London was going to be barely enough time to get to the gate from which our London Lyon flight was scheduled to depart. We had to catch a bus, and then stand in a rush-hour security line. Near the front of this line, we were informed that our six carry-ons, two book backpacks (one normal and one Mo-sized), two laptops, David’s violin and my purse were no longer allowed. In the US, the laptops and the purse are considered freebies. Upon arrival in the UK, those three items ceased to be freebies and David’s violin became one. Go figure. This left us two bags over. We managed to cram my voluminous purse into one of the backpacks and they let us slide being one bag over.

Upon arrival in Lyon, we waited in a long customs line while poor Mo ever more urgently stated his need to use the bathroom. When we finally got through, David sprinted off to find the bathroom with Mo in his arms. They made it in time. We had too much luggage to go without a cart, but discovered that acquiring a cart required a Euro coin, of which we had none. I never get cash before going to Europe because there are always cash machines in the airport and the convenience is worth the conversion charge to me, but even if we’d acquired cash ahead of time, we would have lacked coins, so it wouldn’t have mattered. I set off to procure the needed coins. I easily found an ATM and bought a bottle of water to get change. When I attempted to return to the luggage area, however, I found that I had passed through a one-way, unmanned security gate and couldn’t get back in. I had to call a customer service person from the airline to come and lead me through the back way.

We loaded up our luggage, found our way to the rental car bus stop and procured our car only to discover that we were short one car seat. We had not collected the car seat we checked along with the rest of our luggage. We bucked Mo in and drove to the terminal where David and the kids waited in the car while I ran in to attempt to retrieve our seat. I rang the customer service people again and the same woman came out to retrieve me. I was too tired to be very embarrassed. We had initially assumed that we forgot it, though in retrospect that was virtually impossible since we were the last people to leave with our luggage (thanks to my epic coin acquisition mission) and would certainly have noticed our huge, cow-spotted, car seat going around alone on the luggage carousel. I checked the luggage area and then spoke to the representative about lost luggage. She looked in the system and immediately informed us that the seat was still in London. It would be delivered to our hotel the next day. Problem solved.

When we attempted to leave the terminal parking lot, we had exceeded the free 20-minute grace period and hadn’t realized that we had to prepay our parking at a machine in the airport. People behind us had to back up to let us out of the exit line so we could re park and I could run in and pay for the parking. This was accomplished with no further excitement. We exited the terminal and started trying to follow the directions we’d been given. This went poorly at first, then better, and then to complete hell. We left the airport around 1pm and didn’t arrive at our hotel until 4pm. It should have been a 45-minute trip. In France, road names are not very important and are poorly and infrequently marked. The signs on intersections indicate places the roads go to, rather than the names of the roads. Our directions primarily dealt in road names. It was unbelievably confusing and frustrating, especially for people who’d had no sleep in nearly 23 hours. Eventually we did locate our hotel.