Carcassonne and Kiddos

The time had arrived, once again, for the Real McCoys to take a short leave of Africa and head my way for a visit.  They were to be the first overnight guests I would have in my new home, and well, I want to be a good hostess.  (And to prove to all my friends with children that I have a kid-friendly and welcoming space!)  So I went to Ikea, and I bought a circus tent.  Who doesn't love a tent?!  (I also bought some blocks, a ball, some finger puppets, and plastic plate/silver ware.  So...kids have a place to sleep, play, and eat chez moi...what else does a kid need?  Bring on the kids!)

For the first few days of their visit, we actually stayed out in Aix at Mr. and Mrs. X's house.  On the first night there, we came up the stairs to find this scene:

We're not sure if she was trying to crawl across the hall to be closer to her brother, who was in another room (they're used to sleeping in the same room), or if she was crawling to where she could hear mom and dad's voices...but wherever she was crawling to, she fell back asleep before she made it there.  This kid makes for some serious entertainment every single night once she's asleep.  One night, she crawled out of bed, turned on a fan, and laid smack down in front of it.  Another night, she was sleeping on her head with her back end up in the air.  My oh my.

And is she ever the morning girl.  First thing her first morning, I'm dead asleep and I feel little hands smack the bed next to face.  I open my eyes and there she is grinning at me.  She crawled up into bed with me, and this was one of the fun photos we took:

We hung out in Aix and we hung out in Marseille.  We made sure they all got to eat pork products every single day.  We introduced the kids to the wonderful world of Looney Tunes and burritos.  But the grown ups wanted to see some of the rest of France (since this was their third trip here), and so I wondered...what part of southern France could we go to with a 1.5 year old, a 3.5 year old, and a 31-week pregnant momma?  Several weeks ago, Pantene provided the answer: Carcassonne!  She went with some other friends who have a 4 and 5 year old, and the kids loved it, adults did too, and so I figured I'd give it a try.

The camelridingcowgirl told me about a special pass we could buy for the train tickets.  Basically, we bought a one year kid pass for Little Miss Thing, (who gets to ride for free), and with her pass, all of us adults get half-off on our tickets as we accompany her.  Little Mr. Thing also got to ride free.  So we got a pretty sweet deal on our train tickets.  Not only that, but--who knew?!  There's a kid car/compartment on the train!  Everyone in that section has kids, and so you don't have to feel so funny about your kids making noise.  And there are special booster seats for them!  And space for them to wiggle!  It was great!  Look how happy they are!

We got to Carcassonne, the main town, and hit up the tourist office to find the best way to get up to the medieval town.  Turns out we had just missed the little touristy train that could take us, so Prego Mrs. Real McCoy said she'd try her best to waddle walk.  She did great!  In fact, she walked all the live long day!

Now let me say something or two about Carcassonne.  I'd first heard about Carcassonne when I was in language school in Paris back in 2007.  I'd seen walled cities in Portugal, Spain, and Italy, so I just sort of wrote it off.  Walled city, blah blah blah.  Once you've seen one, you've seen them all.  (I've got to learn to stop saying that!)  Even after I'd seen walled cities here in France, I continued to think that.  They do all start to look the same.

Carcassonne is no mere walled city, folks.  It's a walled city fortress.  An amazing feat of defense.  It is what you imagine when you dream about Camelot and Robin Hood and Sleeping Beauty.  (You don't dream about them?  Oh, it must be just me.)  This city has legends and princesses and tales of Charlemagne attached to it.  Drawbridges and ramparts and portcullises.  It is all sorts of medieval coolness.

Here was our first glimpse of it.

As we were walking towards it, we didn't know exactly which way to go.  Turns out, (we discovered later), that we approached it from the back side, which was a much more difficult climb uphill to enter it.  But oh so much more grand.  We're glad we went that way.  This was what we saw from the bottom of the hill:

And as we went up the side (with 2.5 children and a double stroller, mind you...):

 (Lesson learned: take the ergo.)

We truly felt like we stormed the castle!  Here we are enjoying the moment. 

Also, for you Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves fans, this is where Robin Hood charges out of Nottingham's castle after having stolen the sheriff's horse.  :)

 There are 52 towers along the walls.

Where the moat once was...

Within the city walls is an actual fortress/castle, called the bastide.  We took a tour of it.  While we were  in there, those pretty blue skies departed and a thick cloud cover blew in.  It gloriously lowered the temperature to around the 70's.

 Little Miss Thing was trying to peak out to see where the princesses had lived.

 I had a bit of an attack of fear of heights right about here...

 In the town, it was chock full of tourists and tourist shops.  Meh.  The shops were fun.  The crowds were not.

 We exited the city through the main front entry.  It was so cool to see this part, we were a bit sad that we caught it right at the end.  I'm glad we came in through the back, it was fun to storm the castle.  But when I go back, I want to spend some more time at this front part.

 This city is 2500 years old!!!  These walls date back to around somewhere between the 4th and 5th century!!!  There have been Visigoths, Saracens, Crusaders, and the French here.

 Looking up through the drawbridge.  There are portcullises.  Which makes me think of the Princess Bride.  Which makes me smile.

 Sort of like she's smiling.  :)  Her name is the Dame Carcas.  The legend says that she, a Muslim princess, was living in the city when Charlemagne attacked, and held the city seige.  When the only food that was left was a small amount of wheat and a pig, she decided to outwit Charlemagne.  She fed the pig the wheat until he grew very fat, and then she threw him over the wall.  Charlemagne thought that any fortress such as this that had so much food they could throw it over the walls could thus never be defeated.  He retreated.  When he did, the Dame Carcas blew her horn (Carcas sonne).  However, since the city was called colonia Julia Carcasso in Roman times, and the Saracens weren't until the 8th century, I'm gonna make a wild guess that the story of the Dame Carcas is a bit of a legend...

 Walking back we saw these awesome murals painted of the city's history.

 One last glimpse before we hopped back on the train back to real life, where there are no towers or drawbridges...

 But where princes and princesses still had thrones to sit and rule from.

So the question is...who's coming next?

August Shutdowns

 I tell you what.  Life in Southern France in the summer is so hard.  Having fun with friends...going to towns like Avignon...jumping around in lavender fields...I'm really suffering over here.

Just to show you how hard life in August in Southern France can be, let me tell you about Aix.  I went with some friends to get away for the weekend, enjoy some burritos, and they were going to see an English movie while I perused the English bookshop.

I arrived on the bus from Marseille, and hopped over onto the local bus out to Mr. and Mrs. X's house.  It went around and around, and I noticed that it wasn't going the normal route.  30 minutes later, I was right back at the bus stop where I'd gotten on.  I hopped off and asked someone why the bus went a different route.  In total frustration, she said, "They've changed ALL the bus routes!  Everything's new. Nobody knows the new routes yet."

Oh man.  I had NO IDEA how to get out to the house besides that bus.  So for maybe only the 3rd time in all my years in France, I took a taxi.  Ouch.  Instead of the 1 euro bus ride, I paid 10 euros.  Egads.  Once there, I checked their mail, and they had a friendly letter from the bus company explaining the new routes...and it included one free ticket included to use to get to know the new routes.  Thanks...but I'd rather they reimburse me the 10 euros it cost me for that taxi!

I walked down to the bus stop, found out the new bus numbers, went back to the house, and looked up the routes online.  I was set to head back into town.

My friends and I were greeted by this sign at the burrito shop.  Let me translate for you: "NO BURRITO FOR YOU."  Boca Loca took a vacation!  The audacity!  Don't they know that they are the main form of gastronomical bliss that we Americans seek out when in Aix?

 So we walked from there over to Crepes à Go-Go, hoping for a good and tasty crepe in place of our beloved burrito.  This is what greeted us: "NO CREPES FOR YOU."  They must have gone on vacation with Boca Loca.

Now, I do have another back up should those two places fail: The Bagel Story.  You who know me well know that I love me some bagels.  But my friends weren't up for trying to find the bagel shop to find it a third strike out.  So we decided to just go to what was open.  We saw a place on the main strip that called itself an Irish pub, and we thought--fish and chips sounds perfect.

Honestly, I have no idea why they called themselves an Irish pub.  There was only one thing on the menu that was Irish: fish and chips.  The rest was French.  So we ordered the fish and chips, and this is what we got.  Let me translate again: "NO FISH FOR YOU."

 Those are fried shrimp.  Well.  It was good, and I ate the whole thing.  But it was not Irish fish and chips.  It was not even fish.  But it was good.  We had a good laugh over that.

The English movie...also didn't happen.  Turns out that Brave isn't showing in English anywhere in Marseille or Aix.  Animated films in original language are tough to come by, since kids (who go see animated films) usually can't understand the English nor read the subtitles fast enough to keep up.  So...we hung out at the English bookstore.  I was happy with that.

Life in Aix in August is just so rough.  Really.  You should feel bad for me.

Goodbyes

So the week of goodbyes was inevitable.  First, all the summer interns left (as they do every summer), and that was hard.  You'd think I'm used to it...after all, this was my fourth time to tell summer interns goodbye...and yet I still bawled that day after they were all gone on the plane.  People always ask if saying goodbye in the states is hard and I always respond, "no, saying goodbye overseas is harder."  When friends and family leave here and go back there, leaving me alone in this place to continue on without them...it's hard.  It can feel like, for a moment, that I am totally alone and have no one here.

I'll cry for a day and then remember TRUTH.  I have Mr. and Mrs. X.  I have the camelridingcowgirl.  I have Pantene.  I have CSI.  I have the Artist.  I have the Superheroes.  I have peeps.  I do.  I am not alone.

But this time around, as I was saying goodbye to the interns, it finally hit me that CSI was leaving just three short days later.  I hadn't really processed that.  I'd been so focused on the work that I hadn't wrapped my brain around the fact that the girl who I'd met in her training, who I'd flown over with, who I'd walked through language school with, and who had become a dear sister over the last two years was getting on a plane and leaving France for good.  

The day I had to say goodbye to her, I still had not finished the quilt I was making for her as a going away gift.  So that day, as we all hung out a friend's house, just eating up those last minutes with her, I distracted myself from thinking about the goodbye, and just zoned in on that quilt.  Here's the finished product.  The blue strip in the upper left corner is a piece of fabric from the last quilt I made, which happened to be for one of CSI's good friends (and mine), Hugs (up in Paris).  

That night, the terrible awful moment came.  I couldn't even say the word.  I just hugged her and then said, "Okay," as I released her from the hug, and turned and walked away.  Rough.

A week later, Hugs left too.  I'd already said goodbye when I was in Paris in April, but still.  Another one bites the dust dear friend returned to the US.  For CSI, I made a sort of storybook photo album on Facebook of our two year journey together.  For Hugs, I made the youtube video below.

I can't even imagine how saying goodbye see-you-soon to Pantene will be like in October.  Gah.  This is the hard part of life overseas.  The good news is: Princess William is FINALLY in England and while I no longer have a friend to visit in New York, one of my best friends in the world is only one-hour time difference away.  That's happiness.