FRANCE ROUND DEUX

I have a thing for the chimneys in France. The way so many of them reach out of the beautiful old buildings into the cotton candy clouds at sunset. It makes you feel cozy and romantic and maybe like when the wind blows through them it could whisper to you stories that rose from their hearths long ago. Nostalgic for something you’ve never really known. Amazing how something as weird as a chimney can do that.

After leaving Scotland, we caught a few trains back down to France and stayed in the city of Lyon which served as a nice home base for a handful of day trips down to the French Rivera. We smelled a lot of lavender and toured a lot of castles and ate a lot of great food and then caught a few more trains that wound right up the sides of the Swiss alps and into the most absolutely epic ski town I have ever visited, Chamonix.

As per usual it was equally exhausting and exhilarating. To tell you the honest to god truth, I am freakin whooped. But also as per usual there were so many moments that made it all worth it. Here are a few of ‘em.

There was the first day in Lyon. Strolling through the open air market, holding juicy red tomatoes to my nose and fumbling my way through sentences about their beautiful smell with old farmers in overalls and colorful scarves and tortoise shell glasses. Being told by a man with kind crinkly eyes that I speak French well (which is absolutely one thousand percent false but made me smile all the same).

There was the morning we accidentally wandered into the Vieux district where the walls are high and the roads are crooked and little restaurants speckled with warm white lights line the streets. And it was a warm autumn day and we sat on a bench and ate melty ham and cheese sandwiches with sweet fig jam in the sunshine.

There was the night we ate dinner in a tiny bistro that had stone walls like the inside of a cave and was so crowded and loud that we spent the entire meal bumping elbows with our neighbors and scooching our chairs in and out for waiters. The food was mediocre but the music was loud and the conversation was louder and everything was buzzing and alive. And we drank wine and tried to figure out how to eat the shrimp Ketch ordered with their long tentacles and gooey eyeballs and laughed and laughed and laughed.

And the afternoon we spent in Annecy with its giant mountains and glacial lake and ice blue rivers that run through town and wrap around castles. Where flowers spill out of high shuttered windows and the the old streets look just like a movie set. And we played on the playgrounds and rode the carrousel and sipped espressos with Ketch when West passed out in the stroller. A rare and precious moment in a beautiful place alone with our biggest kid.

And there was the train ride home from who knows where one afternoon where we bought convenience store baguettes and cheese and salami and tiny bottles of wine and beer and I remember staring at my husband and my boys and looking out the window and thinking to myself, I’m pretty fucking certain it doesn’t get any better than this.

There was the day I thought it would be a good idea to take Ketch and West to a medieval town I had read about and ended up pushing the stroller a mile and a half into rural France and straight up a giant gravel covered hill. But when we finally reached it, after huffing and puffing and sweating and cursing under my breath for an hour and a half, we walked through the ancient stone gates and immediately understood why it had earned the title of “one of the most beautiful towns in France.” It was off season so we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves and the boys ran through the streets and traced their little fingers over the old stone walls and played in the gardens lined with grape vine covered lattices. And we sat and had hot cocoa at the only open cafe in town. Alone and together in awe.

There was the night (after a very long day) that Brad took bedtime duty and sent me down to the restaurant below our apartment. And I bellied up to a candlelit bar and sat by myself clinking large ice cubes around in my fancy french cocktail and watching fancy french humans enjoying their fancy French evening.

There was the trip up to Chamonix that felt like a page of the Polar Express brought to life - the one where the train wraps up that magical corkscrew mountain in the darkness. Except that it was daytime and you could see for miles and the four of us sat with our noses pressed against the cold windows gazing up into monstrous pointy peaks and down down down into the valleys below blanketed with pine trees dallopped with snow.

There was the gondola ride up to Flégère. Watching the boys look out the glass…watching Brad look out over what he loves most.

There was the night the giant snowstorm came. I had taken the boys swimming at the rec center in town. We bundled ourselves up and walked outside into a winter wonderland. We danced the whole way home humming Christmas music and catching snowflakes on our tongues. And even though it was cold and we smelled of chlorine and our hair was crunchy and our feet were soggy we stayed outside and stayed up late making a snowman in the moonlight.

There was the dinner our last night in France at a pink bistro called Rose du Pont. That had perfect warm lighting and a huge wall of green glass bottles and a corner window booth where the boys could look out over the river that rushed by. And the wine was good and the food was glorious and it felt like the perfect way to say goodbye to France.

There was the snowball fight on the way home that night. Listening to the sound of the boys giggles ring through the air as they tried their best to pelt Brad with giant snowballs.

And there was the day we left. Walking out into the cold dark morning, stars still glittering over the giant mountains illuminated in the twilight. And the way everything in that magical landscape turned a warm pink and orange as the sun rose and our train chugged back down the mountain.

But perhaps my very favorite memory of this part of the trip - one that is almost too cheesy to share, but I’m going to go ahead and do it anyways - was the afternoon I took the boys Switzerland. It was freezing cold and raining and I was pushing them down a busy city street ducking every so often to avoid the splashes of cars passing by trying to find this little fondue restaurant I had read about. It was utterly miserable. And this is totally a read-too-much-Glennon-Doyle-millennial-parenting thing, but since they were little, when they’ve been doing anything hard or scary - like trying to scale the monkey bars at the park or jumping into my arms at the pool, I’ve had them repeat the words “I’m brave. Im strong. I can do hard things.” And so here we were walking through this super shitty moment together and so I just started saying it. “Im brave. I’m strong. I can do hard things.” And West, riding on the back of the stroller was repeating each phrase. “Because we love to live.” I said after that. “BECAUSE WE LOVE TO LIVE!” he screamed into the air after me, his little toddler fingers outstretched, his face covered in rain looking up at the sky. And it was just one of those moments that stood still. And gave me goosebumps. And felt like, in the grand scheme of moments, it would stick out forever.

I hope that dragging these two kids around from country to country has shown them that sometimes shit gets miserable. That sometimes you have to tell yourself that you can do hard things. Sometimes you have to travel to all the way to France so that you know the way a chimney can make you feel. And sometimes it’s worth it to take a train to Switzerland and walk around in the cold and the rain just to taste the fondue there. Because man does that stuff make you love to live.

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