Welcome to France

This picture sums up what it felt like travelling through France with three children.  We were pretty much in a perpetual state of breaking some unspoken rule.  Or spoken, as the case may be.  The funny thing is that Laura and I could not figure out for the life of us what exactly was being prohibited here.  Holding hands with kids?  Kids in general?

We went to France to celebrate my Grandmother's 90th birthday.  We drove to Baltimore on a Saturday to attend her birthday party that night at my Uncle Bill's house.  We dined on crab imperial and baby lamb chops and a giant birthday cake made by my Aunt Rachel that actually had ninety candles on it.  The cake was carried out, all aflame, and the guests began to give tributes.  One man rambled on and on and on until we all thought the smoke detectors would go off before the candles could be blown out.  Little Eric stuck close by my side the whole night, as did Marley,  but Brigham worked the room.  We kept hearing from people about how charming and entertaining they found him.  Lucky us, we get to live with him all the time:).

We caught the 4 o'clock flight to Paris the next day.  The kids did amazingly well on the plane.  The only snag was that they wouldn't let (big) Eric on the plane because he (as usual) wasn't wearing shoes.  It seems that you must be wearing shoes when you board the plane, but you're free to take them off during flight.  (Uh...okay...)  We actually had to have a baggage person dig our bag out from the bowels of the plane so that he could get his flip flops out.  The plane was just about ready to take off and there was a lot of grumbling and evil eyeing directed our way.

We landed in Paris at about 2 A.M. our time and my inner monster- the one that hides inside me and comes out when I don't get enough sleep or food- started to grumble as we navigated the Paris Metro in order to catch a train to the small town of Corbigny.  My brother accurately described this leg of the trip as a death march.  I think his exact words were, "It wouldn't be a vacation with Mama if it didn't include a death march."  My mother possesses the uncanny ability to not eat.  Ever.  Thus we did not stop for food until we reached our departure port late in the afternoon.  Let me just drive that home:  Red-eye to Paris...three children...two metros...two trains...two taxis....no food.  

In Corbigny we settled into what would be our home for the next eight days: a houseboat, that we were to drive up the Nivernais canal to the city of Joigny.  The nice French man from the boat company paced around muttering unintelligible instructions and occasionally doing little pantomimes while Laura and I looked at each other with a mixture of fear and hilarity, and Jeff, who was to be our captain, scrambled to write everything down.  Fortunately, we did comprehend the most important lesson: how to flush the toilets.  It was surprisingly involved...

There was a lot of switch flipping and pumping, so that everyone on the boat was aware when anyone flushed a toilet and would say something like: "Uh oh, Grandmom's dropping bombs again...".

The canal was beautiful.  Along the way we passed through locks, where we had to hop off the boat, tie it up and help the lock keeper open and close the gates to raise or lower the water level.  This is what we saw as we puttered along:

And here is a video of a lock filling up:

It was sort of incredible- the lock keepers lived in these beautiful little cottages with flowers and maybe an apple tree in front, and firewood stacked up against the side of the house.  They would let you through and then drive down to the next one or two locks to open those for you, at which point the next lock keeper down the canal would take over.  I admired the French for staunchly clinging to quaint tradition over efficiency and modernization.  We picked fruit from apple, pear and walnut trees and stopped in all the tiny towns along the way, like this one:

My favorite memory from the boat was on the second morning, when Eric and I snuck off for a 5 mile run that took us through two medieval towns and up a hill to a 12th century church that looked out over the Yonne valley.  I also liked falling asleep at night to the gentle rocking of the boat.  And of course spending time with my wonderful family.  

That concludes installment one of our trip to France...more to come!

*Left to right, top to bottom: Eric, my mom's husband Jeff (the fearless captain), my brother Adam, me, Marley, my Mom, little Eric, my Grandmother (the birthday girl), my cousin Laura, and Brigham.

**Post-edit: I just now realized the irony of writing about how hard it is to live on a student budget and then following it with a post about our two-week trip to France.  I'm thankful for a generous Mom who loves to travel with her family!