Living Our Best Lives

Today, tomorrow, and how lucky we are.  

I love this picture.  This was one of those amazing days in Lyon, France.  It was June, 2015.  The weather was perfect, dry and 73 degrees.  The kids and I decided to walk and walk until we came to The Confluence, where the rivers meet.  First we came to a beautiful shopping plaza.  Not like an American plaza.  There was no parking lot.  I seemed like everyone walked or bused there.  We sat outside and had “the best Chicken McNuggets ever,” according to Todd. If you know Todd, you know how classic that is–delicious McNuggets in France.  I was just happy we found something he would eat.

Why Lyon?  Because when my sister was in high school, she was friends with an exchange student from Lyon, so I had heard of the city.  Yes, sometimes it is that random.

The year started with Katie moving to Italy to live with a family and teach them conversational English.  She was there for two and a half months when Todd and I arrived.  This was no coincidence.  Americans can only stay in the “Schengen Region” for 90 days.  Most of the countries in Europe are members of the Schengen Region.  It’s sort of like the United States, in that you don’t have to show your passport when going from Italy to France, just as you can drive from Florida to North Carolina with no stops.  (Wiki says Schengen began in 1985 and now includes 26 countries.)

So we spent a few days in Milan, taking trains to Bergamo and Lake Como; it was incredible and wonderful to see Katie.  On the last evening, we took the train her “family.”  They were simply lovely and welcomed us into their home.  You can see from this picture that within 2 hours we all felt like family 🙂

The next day Todd and I took our Katie with us on the train from Milan to Lyon.  If you look at the map, you can see we cut through beautiful northwest Italy.  It was so pretty, with hills and forests.

In Lyon, we wandered into a magnificent cathedral–all cathedrals are incredible in Europe.  With my meager French, we determined there was an concert there the next night, playing a Beethoven piece.  Todd wanted to watch an important soccer (a.k.a. football) match.  We were able to reserve a seat for him at an small outdoor bar near the cathedral.  The next night we dropped Todd off with all his new French friends and left for the concert.  It was lovely, echoing throughout the old stone cathedral.  Katie and I met a woman who had an exchange student (!!!) from the USA.  She was darling and she and Katie and Todd went out the next night, which was so great for all of them!

Lyon is a city of a half million people.  They are known for high level cuisine, although we are not really foodies so we did not search that out.  This amazing fountain was in the fashion district, covered in thousands of fresh roses.  The scent was incredible.

From Lyon we took the high speed train to Paris.  The countryside was so beautiful!  It was more than 200 mph, but it didn’t feel like we were going that fast, and within a couple hours there we were in Paris.

  Paris to London  

After several amazing days eating eclairs (we are chocolate foodies!), visiting the Louvre, Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, and roaming Paris from our fifth floor apartment, we took the Eurostar which links Paris to London and BAM! we were out of Schengen!  The UK is not a member (and this is before all the Brexit stuff).  We were exhausted when we arrived.  The train station was in Kings Cross, so we stopped to see Platform 9 3/4’s for you Harry Potter lovers!  Then I told the kids if they could figure out how to get an Uber I’d pay for it.  Though I had mapped out where we were going everything seemed so complicated–especially because this was our first time in an area where they drive on the other side of the road.  Todd got us an Uber and I was relieved–we would NEVER have found our AirBnb.  The guy weaved in and out of the crazy traffic like he owned the city.  I gave him a 5 pound tip.  It is not customary to tip in an Uber and he was so grateful–so were we!

After 3 days in London we took a train to the west coast crossing through Wales,  We saw a train stop for this town (yes that’s all one word!):

From Holyoke, Wales, we boarded a ferry to Dublin, Ireland.  The ferry was nearly luxurious, with a huge t.v. screen with auditorium style seats for about 25 people.  All the men, including Todd, watched another important football match.  Katie and I sat at the window and ate Pringles, which are everywhere in Europe!  We arrived in Dublin and stayed at our first AirBnb that was staying with someone, rather than our own apartment.  Frankly I was dreading it.  But I should have known better.  The lady of the house simply tucked our tired selves into the guest room and left us alone.  There were three twin beds and we were so cozy.  However, it occurred to me during the night that we had no food and the townhouse was in a neighborhood–no 7-11 here.  I was pretty worried about how to get food in the morning.  Again, I should have known better.  We awoke to a table with cereals, fruit, bagels, muffins, coffee, tea, toast……we were fine.

The man of the house was there so we got to visit with him. We mentioned that we were tired and he suggested going to Howth, a seaside town not far, and then go to Dublin the next day when we were rested.  In Howth, we saw seals in the water and we laid on the rocks just warming up in the sun and watching the fishing boats.

Everyone in Ireland was so friendly.  Literally if you were just looking at a map, someone would stop and ask if they could help.  And so many of them looked like me!  It was like I found my tribe!  It was the first time in my life that I “blended in.”  After a few days, Katie and I took Todd to the airport so he could get home and enjoy the rest of his summer before his semester started.  Meanwhile, Katie and I took a bus 4 hours south to Kinsale–another fishing village on the southern coast of Ireland.

Why Kinsale?  Because I found an incredible AirBnb right on the water.  It was so beautiful and Ireland was lush and green and full of wildflowers.  Our house was right on the water, and this meadow next to the house.

We stayed there a whole week, hiking and visiting nearby the towns.  One day it was raining, so we stayed home and watched Netflix the entire day.  If we followed a trail along the sea, we came to Charles Fort, which was built in the 1600’s and is star-shaped.  Definitely worth a look on Google!

This time Katie put me on a plane home and she left to work several weeks on a dairy farm, literally milking cows, driving the tractors, and helping with the beehives through a company called WorkAway.

I write like it was easy and we basically had a tour guide, or that we are all so adventurous that nothing bothered us.  But that is not the case.  I stress out on travel days.  The kids and I would argue because I would always want to get to the airport, train station, or ferry 3 hours early.  The kids were so disagreeable about taking pictures that I finally declared that as their mother and financial backer I could require them to be in 3 pictures each day without complaint.  On our first day on the coast in Kinsale, again Katie and I had no food and since it was remote, no transportation.  We walked into Kinsale, which was 2 miles.  Walking 2 miles home in the hills with groceries was such a bummer that after that we paid for a taxi and it wasn’t cheap there.  In France, we decided to visit Perouges, a medieval town in France.  Because we didn’t research, when we got there the whole town was hosting a medieval festival.  We were already there, so we paid quite a bit to get in.  It was really hot and crowded with tourists.  Shoulda planned.

When we were in Milan, I asked Todd to go to the corner bakery and buy some pastries and drinks.  He looked pretty apprehensive.  I told him he only needed to know 3 words:  please, sorry, thank you.  I’ve really lived by that, sometimes rattling off all three in quick succession!  And if they have any English I say, Sorry, I am from Florida, and we deal with tourists allllll the time so I know how annoying it is!  The percentage of nice people and grumpy  people is the same as in our local Walmart.  (Actually I think they are more likely to speak English in Europe than our Walmart!).  Even in France, it was late one night and we were trying to figure out which subways to get home.  A very handsome 30-something man stopped and showed us the best route.

Could the 3 weeks I described above be my life for a couple years?  A few weeks ago, I got a SnapChat from Katie.  It was a picture of a beach at sunset in Japan, with people hanging out and I knew she was there with her friends.  She had written: Living Our Best Lives.

Yes.  That’s what we do.  The best we can.