Well, we finally got the kids to Europe! This is something we’ve had a general desire to do since before we had kids, and a specific intention to do since before Covid hit. It took a little longer than we’d hoped, but this summer we pulled it off.
It helped — more than a little — that my parents decided to move to England last year. That gave us a landing pad to start our adventures from. I have memories of walking tours of European cities from my own childhood, and dad didn’t disappoint, with two very full days exploring London, and another touring a castle outside of the city. The kids got to see everything, and then some! The grandparent’s even sprung for theater tickets, and we got to see both parts of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at the historic Palace Theater in London. It was a fantastic experience for the kids, and we still managed some time for my own goals for our stay: having a beer in a pub! The “local” was right across the street from my parent’s place, and had a lovely garden, and a decent menu of typical British fare (which is exactly as mediocre as they say!)
Most of our travel was by train, which was a great experience (but only because we missed the strikes by a week). But on castle-exploration day, dad rented a SUV and we got to wind round the country-side, stroll through a little town, and eat pastries. I’m convinced the kids will remember the desserts more than the legendary sights they saw!
At the end of our first week, we caught the Chunnel train to France, again thanks to my parents, and arrived in Paris, where after a series of issues, ended up with a very expensive rental car and a less-than-stellar hotel outside of town. Perhaps we’ll be able to extract some of that money back from the car rental company (seriously, we could almost have bought a car by the time it was all done), but whatever. We got to see Paris. We did try to take the walking a little easier — especially since the first day was a literal 100 degrees — but in the end, the step count ended up close to London. To beat the heat that day, we spent most of it exploring the Louvre, seeing all the famous art (Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo) and lots of other art that I’m sure we were far too ignorant to properly appreciate. But we also visited the sadly diminished Notre Dame, stopped plenty of times for light French dining (and expensive bottles of water), and saw the Eiffel Tour from afar. Somewhat worse for wear the second day, we took a more tactical run at the city climbing to the second floor of the Eiffel Tour for pictures, before getting out of town.
We spent two half days driving to the next stop — a little town I used to live in, nestled in the Black Forest of Germany. Hot from the drive we stopped for Spaghetti Eis then hit Schwimmbad for a frigid dip (and were reminded that in Germany, men are required to wear skimpy bathing suits!) Our home for this part of our stay was a B&B at the top of a small mountain. The switchbacks up and down were challenging for all involved, but we mostly only slept there. We spent the next day exploring Kandern, including two castles (and an unexpectedly rough hike to find one!), eating German food, and ended back at the pool.
Not content to visit only three countries, and with a rainy morning in the forecast, the next day we set out for Switzerland with hopes of finding a gondola to ride. We stopped in Lake Lucern for a bite, but the expensive gondola there went to nowhere that was open, and we weren’t up for another 8 mile hike as a destination. We pushed on for the Alps, with the GPS set to another resort town — only to find that it was closed for the season. With the mountains in front of us, it seemed we had no choice but to drive up! Fortunately, our expensive SUV was sure-footed, and after 45 minutes of twists over sheer drops, we reach the resort and a lovely restaurant overlooking the neighboring mountains.
On the way back to Germany, we took a slight detour to Zurich, where we hopped out for a stretch and some touristy photos in a pretty part of town.
Our last day in Germany we took as a restful one, finishing off our Breisgauer beverages, Schogetten chocolate, and the remains of our brotchen and beer. The return trip home was a 3 long days, capped by a 6 hour drive from the Toronto airport. In the end, we’d walked more than 192,000 steps over 82+ miles. But we returned full of experiences (with our bank accounts a lot thinner!) and we saw almost everything we could have hoped to see, and experienced no significant challenges along the way. No one got sick, no connections were missed, and no flights were canceled. On the whole, it was exactly the experience we hoped to give our kids, and I know (from experience!) they’ll be richer for it.
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