Rambly stream-of-consciousness here's-how-our-week-was post

April 21

Coolest thing of the day: there was a snail in the water barrel outside the glass house and it was all swollen up with water. I thought it was probably dead but I pulled it out and put it on a rock. And guess what? It was fine. It managed to live. I wonder how long it was in the water for? That's pretty cool. Sorry, no photo. Just the kind of thing one sees while workin' away in the walled garden (see my Facebook page for photos of that).

One sees a lot of buggy life in the garden. Lots of sow bugs, which used to make me squeamish until I worked beside this really cool  biology teacher from the Caribbean (when I worked at Lower Canada College and was teaching chemistry), and he laughed his big deep laugh (kind of like Disney's Uncle Remus I guess) and told me that  it was only a little sow bug and they're good for the soil. So now I am happy when I see them, squiggly little roly-polys that they are.

There are also an amazement of earthworms. Since I was moving huge areas of black plastic and big rocks today, I sometimes saw them all naked of dirt. One of them went amazingly fast scurrying across the plastic.

It occurred to me that I saw at least a half dozen escargots today while gardening (they make a cool sort of sound/feel when I pull them off the black plastic and stick them to a rock, say) and I have garlic in my pocket, but... well. I guess I've never cooked them up before!

Why do I have garlic in my pocket you might wonder? I think I have some kind of fungus on my thumb. It could just be dry skin too but I'm not sure, so I'm putting a slice of garlic clove under a bandaid on it just in case. Last year I had two spider bites. The first one swelled and swelled and after a couple of days the fever wouldn't go away, and I had to go to the emergency room and get antibiotics (well, I chose to). The second time it happened, I strapped garlic on the bite right away. It took away the swelling and I didn't get a fever or have to go to the hospital. However, it did eat the skin away! I am prepared  for that. Better to do that just in case it is some freaky fungus. (April 22 update: I'm betting on dry skin. I left so much cream at home when I packed! Ack.)

It could just be dry skin. But the most terrible thing I saw on someone's hands this week was chillbains. Like real chillbains in this day and age. Why on Earth wouldn't you buy yourself an electric heater or wear mittens, I ask you? Like seriously! Instead she had purple bruises all over her fingers and complained about her house being cold. I think she mentioned that they hurt (my ears might have gone fuzzy as I stared in horror).

Yesterday was lovely, lovely. After work our house-mate Alexi and I walked to the pub. It was really sunny and gorgeous. At the pub they said "there you are" like they were expecting me. When we left they told us we'd better be back tomorrow (we didn't though. Other things to do today like quizzing Yarrow on his science work so far and writing this blog and playing boules and pool and... there are so many things to do). Alexi is a francophone so he tries to understand Irish people but honestly, I had to stand really close to all of them at the pub (they mumble) and usually ask them to repeat themselves two or three times before I understood anything too. But it was fun.  (April 22 update: it's the day after tomorrow but I made sure to stop in tonight to write you this blog.)

It's nice to be welcomed and remembered and chatted about and chatted to. Canadians really ought to do it more often.  For example the electrician on site yesterday told me that the owner down the pub mentioned that I'd been in. :) It's sweet. When we went in yesterday she teased me about having a new man (ha, Alexi is 17 or 18 years younger -- I don't think so!) and the Californian guy who got enchanted when house-sitting here and just stayed forever says that he talked to some other folks about our van insurance situation and told us what he'd learned (upshot: nothing new, really, but yet another person who says "it must be possible. It can't possibly be impossible!").
(April 22 update: when I walked in with Yarrow tonight the pub owner lady (whose name is Frances, I've learned) told me that a tall dark handsome man had been in looking for me. :) Ha. Mysterious and hilarious. Maybe even possibly true. Who knows. It is Ireland, after all.)

The pub owner lady wasn't actually behind the bar when we went in yesterday, her son was. He is nearly impossible to understand, I tell you. A nice fellow though.

There are two pubs open in town (and a bunch of closed ones). There's Eily's, which has no heating whatsoever and is the drink-alot place. It's preferred by the wwoofers here it seems. Jimmy the can-do-everything main hired man and boss, his daughter works there and also goes to college. She came by the garden yesterday, showing a friend of hers around the place, because this place is really like a museum, and that's not even including inside the manor of the lord of the manor, which is a whole 'nother museum that I mostly have only peeked into.

The other pub, the Glenannar, is my preferred one. First, it has food, which we were looking for the first time we went pubbing (we started at Eily's as Jimmy dropped us there, but only had a glass and moved across the road, where we asked for soup, and got it, and tea, and free apple pie afterward, all for 10 euros for both of us). Second, it's full of friendly oldsters.  And third, and equally important, the fireplace is usually on! And now fourth, they seem to expect us to show up with some regularity, so we'd better, eh?

Yesterday Alexi and I didn't ask for soup, but I did notice a cardboard box behind the bar that said Cheese Onion so I asked the barman what that was so he gave us some potato chips. They went well with the Murphy's so they did. I had a wee taste of Guinness too just to make sure that I really do prefer Murphy's and yes I do. To me Guinness is very watery from the second taste onwards. (April 22 update: They have a Scotch whiskey behind the bar that's called Black & White, and having never heard of it I gave it a try tonight. It's very smooth, like an Irish whiskey so it is.)

While walking to down Alexi and I happened upon Lord Doneraile's house, which is a mansion much larger than the huge mansion on our property. It has a tea shop that we're resolved to try out on Saturday. See, Lord Doneraile or his family donated the estate to the public at some point so it's a public park. Since that property was joined to our 101 acres, we can get to town by walking through what is now Doneraile Park.

This is the little Zen garden I made today. The lord of the manor had assigned me to remove a lot of black plastic from beds, but when moving rocks around I decided the gravel around this fish pond was a good spot for a Zen garden. Strictly speaking (according to Wikipedia anyway) Zen gardens ought to have a wall around them... also, I wish the ripples were more visible but so far they're not).

It is amazing, like a dream come true (a dream I never even knew I had) to have such a HUGE garden to play with. There are all the beds in the walled garden, and the orchard and the berry cage and the glass house and the potatoes and the flowers and the rhubarb and the fish pond and the roses and the... it's amazing.

I twisted up the rose vines too.

Here's a picture of the blue side door and a giant magnolia tree that hugs overtop of the 12 foot wall.  Pusskins the handsome rangy cat who lives here went up on the top of the wall this morning while Conrad was showing me what to do with the black plastic and to plant an extra squash plant that he'd gotten from his brother's polytunnel and water the glasshouse and... so on. Berry cage weeding from yesterday only half done. 

Yarrow reminded me today while typing up his blog of the cool thing we did on Monday: we painted a stone wall "magnolia" colour (inside one of the upstairs converted-barn retreat rooms). This is not as easy as it may sound, but it was fascinating and fun. There were dozens of decades of dirt on it at first. Cobwebs too, and nooks and crannies in the rock and concrete and plaster, and crumbly bits too. A challenge, we might say.

Here's a photo I took on the walk to town yesterday, with the settings played with. There's so much scope for cool photo taking here.

On the way back from town, we took a wrong turn somewhere (there's a tricky bit where you have to duck through the forest) and ended up meandering back through the Lord of the Manor's childhood home (now his brother's farm).  It's also enormous, very enormous and stone and old, though it doesn't have a castle like this property does.                

We happened to bump into the brother, too, and he showed us how to get back to here from across the river. I took this neato photo of our bedroom from there. (It's the two white doors at the front there).

Megalithic architecture and County Cavan

We went to visit Brendan O'Brien in County Cavan up northwest of Dublin there and went to visit the megalithic site near his house. It's the biggest passage chamber (about 5,500 years old) that I've ever been in. It had one spider, which I discovered while I was inside one of the chambers. It had a central area and three small chambers with these carvings all around. Pretty neat.

Here it is from a distance.

There were a few other smaller stone circles and passages scattered around nearby. Here is one of them.

With Yarrow for scale, you can see they aren't that small...

And we had a lovely time visiting Brendan. I could write a lot about that trip... the slow internet has really been limiting the writing. We'll have to try to get on top of that better this week.

Creagh Castle

I see it's an entire 7 day week since I wrote, so it is (note the putting of extra words in the sentences, there, that's the Irish effect).

We are staying now at a WWOOFing place where there is a castle. As we were hanging about yesterday morning, they gave us the key to look inside. Look at the size of that key!

There's Yarrow holding the key out in the courtyard of the converted dairy where we are staying. The work boss and the lord of the manor play boules every Friday, starting in the courtyard and continuing on wherever they take the game. (When you play boules, you throw a white ball to serve as the goal post, then each person throws three balls each.) 

We went first up to the front door, but we realized our giant key didn't fit the (admittedly, also extra-large) lock. 

Then we went around to the side door, and the key worked, so we went in. 

Here's the view up from the door.

And when we went inside, we saw a great arched hall. To the left side, we saw this staircase, so we went up. 

This is the arched hall on the second floor. All three floors were almost identical, with enormous halls. The second floor also had two small rooms at the east side -- maybe the boss' bedroom? It was hard to tell. The rooms must have been beautiful once. We could see a few scraps of several thicknesses of painted plaster leftover. Really all it takes to glory up these places is lots of drywall mud, like we did with that old farmhouse we moved into and renovated back in the day.

As you can see here, it seems like there was also a balcony room above part of the hall, made of wood. There's just a closed off door now, and a ledge.

There was a giant fireplace with a bread oven in the side. I don't think that this castle had a separate kitchen, maybe they just cooked in the main hall. Maybe there was another kitchen outside the castle building? I don't have enough castle experience to know really. My photos here aren't great but with Yarrow standing in the fireplace, you get an idea of the size of it.

The back screen has a Bacchus on it, perhaps? I wasn't certain. There weren't any tourist guides around. :)

Here are some views from the top of the castle. The house below is the mansion that the boss lives in.

Leaning out a little (it was superscary up there so I did not lean as much as I needed to get a great shot) I caught the first courtyard, where our house is in, off to the left.  It's a converted dairy. There's another courtyard behind that (we're getting it ready to house 100 Buddhist monks). Then there is about a 2-acre walled garden with a ten or twelve foot wall around it beyond that, and the other worker house/kitchen.

Can't resist the spiral staircase shot on the way down. 

I wonder how many hands used this post for support on the way down too? Yarrow was marvelling that anyone could get down those in a long gown without tumbling head over heels. 

Here's a shot of the view from our accommodation. As you can see, it's very nice in the sun. 

A slightly less romantic fact about it is that it's very very cold, which is to be expected as it's an old dairy building. Of course it would have been designed to be cold, being the dairy. (Mind you almost all the buildings are cold inside around here it seems). 

In church and in the pubs, people tend to keep their coats and boots on all the time. I took my coat off in church this morning but that was just craziness. I guess the 40-minute walk up to town from the farm warmed me up. Anyway I put the coat back on so I did.

It's funny to see ladies up at the front doing the bible readings in a coat.  The organ player was a very nice man who actually never had lessons to learn how to play the organ or the piano. He played slow and people sang slow and kind of patchily but it was the old familiar sings and an organ filling up a church is a lovely thing isn't it.

We asked the lady behind us how old the church was and she said about 800 years, which we knew couldn't be right as Protestantism only came about with Henry VIII.  We later found out (Yarrow asked, and was given a paper typed up by someone) that the church dates from 1633.  We've had two people this week tell us something was "a thousand years old" when we asked when the thing in question couldn't possibly. I guess "a thousand" means "really" here. :) 

As my old landlord Clarence just told me, "sift through the blarney." :)

Anyway it was nice to go to church for the music though I like the United Church of Canada sermons, where they tie in current events and history lessons, much more than the Anglican one here that was just reciting and reading the exact same texts over and over again. 

Jumping topics again, just to be through: the other wwoofers at the place were: three Americans and a French guy. The French guy left and another French guy came. Conrad, the lord of the manor, told the new guy to meet him at an obscure little Thai ceremony in Cork, which is kind of funny. We went along to Cork for the amusement

I should be more complimentary and explanatory  about the Americans. One is a woman from North Carolina who we have enjoyed some gardening time and talk with. Her boyfriend is from Southern California and just got accepted (yesterday) into the mathematics PhD program he was hoping for. They're a neat couple. The other American is a sort of super-wwoofer named Max. He has long  clean blond hair (clean, nicely brushed, not dreadlocky). He carves wood and cooks and philosophizes and has opinions on lots of stuff. Even on bugs in ears, with experiential story (he did not actually ever have a bug in his ear, as it turned out, but he had the knowledge of how to get  rid of one by pouring water in your ear). 

The French guys both came to Ireland to work on their English. As you do. For that reason, we'll need to get back to France soon!

Update on our van situation: no update. We went and met her and put our stuff there, and have realized that really we will not be able to insure her. We have spent the week getting used to the idea of being backpackers or maybe even bikers. We'll see. Yarrow doesn't think his cat would be wild about the biking idea. We're not sure if we are either. Certainly not with Irish drivers on the road (who are worse than Italians). Maybe in France (but they're worse drivers than Italians too). 

Anyway, the trip is evolving and the trip is good.

It feels good to be on the road. 

As to the schooling, Yarrow's been doing well with doing his half hour of math a day, that's easy enough. He has been reading the chemistry book I found several years ago and saved for this year. And when we were working in the garden on Friday, he noticed a lot of botanical things. The kind of things about how plants grow and reproduce and deal with bugs that you'll never learn the same from a book.

We're eating lots of potatoes (there's toast and pasta too but we're trying to stay off the gluten a little). The lord of the manor also gets us the most delicious aged Irish cheddar, and lobster soup and fish soup and tapenade and aubergine sauce and just about everything you could want, really. 

topsls and turvls.

Now, to those of you who are efficient, you may be marvelling at the ridiculous inefficiencies of our journey.

I mean, who flies into Luxembourg to go to Ireland? And who buys a van in Ireland when they really want to be in France? I can see that it's all a bit daft, but that's how travel goes.

See, we bought the van because we fell in love with it after I'd read online that it's good to buy your campervan in the UK. Now, Ireland is NOT the UK. And it really never occurred to me that  it would be so incredibly nearly impossible to insure a van in Ireland, but I'm finding out that it may, actually, be nearly impossible. I mean, who came up with these daft plans?

Ah well, it's called following my heart, I suppose. Our hearts, since every decision has been discussed with Yarrow (don't tell Clara, but though we pretend to take her opinion into account and obey her as much as possible, actually, we didn't understand her opinion at all).

So now we have the epic experience of transporting 300 pounds of luggage including two cats from Canada to Germany to Luxembourg to Metz by plane plane bus and train within 24 hours, and then of hauling it across France as well -- without arguing. Yarrow's a dream to travel with, he really is. We've both determined that this is what we're going to do and so doing it is a proud strong happy thing to do.

And then we had lovely friendly help hauling it which was lovely lovely too. When you get to practice your French and being a traveller in a place you want to be in, everything feels really, really good. Like today I was walking back from the ferry to the hotel to return the key we forgot to give back, and some people asked me where they could buy bread, and having spent a couple of days in town, I could tell them. In French. :) Which felt nice. I think they must have sailed in on a boat and were looking for some nosh.

It's just so nice to interact with people.

And it's so nice to see people parenting WELL. Dignified little kids out in pubs or dinner, with the adults, expected to behave like adults. Just like I raised Yarrow, but which is so rare in Canada. And nicely raised dogs too, mostly.

I just loved watching the people and being in France. Loved it.

Having said we're cheerful lugging the luggage... backtracking with said ridiculous amount of luggage would be less fun. I sure hope that Yarrow's optimism pans out and we find a way to insure Gigi. Anyway, tomorrow we're renting a car to take the ridiculous luggage to the van and find out the state of her. Maybe the man who's storing her will know some insurance miracles, or the nice wwoofing man who said that he would be willing to help. I talked to an Irish dad on the way over who said his son went off to Australia for 3 years and is now having a miserable time getting insurance himself, and that one possibility would have been for the dad to own the van and name the son as a driver. So maybe some solution like that will work out. We shall see so we shall.

After renting the car, the first thing will be to get a better potty accommodation for the cats, who have gone on strike against the some-litter-on-pee-pad arrangement. This is a bit of a serious worry actually. Their poor wee bladders must hurt by now.

The second thing will be to try to get an Irish SIM card for the telephone. And the third thing is to go see Gigi and pay the man who has been storing her for us.

FOOD:
It needs to be said, eating in France was heaven really it was. I was rather incredulous at the pictorial menu when I boarded the ship, showing meat pies and synthetic-looking jellies. Just yesterday we were restraining ourselves from buying too many delicious provencal sausages and fruits confits (Because there's only so much one can eat, even when it's French food, as we have learned in the past when we bought too much food at a market.)

The ladies at the cafeteria gave Yarrow his pork chop dinner at kids' price of 7 Euros. He came back saying it was quite good but was incredulous that they ACTUALLY had mushy peas, and not by mistake but on purpose they had made the peas mushy and neon green. I told him I loved mushy peas (perhaps exaggerating) and saying he ought to have tried them, but, really, French food heaven is officially over as I've eaten the little pack of stinky cheese with baguette and rose wine.

oh -- just before we left the Ambassadeur Hotel in Cherbourg, I had some Normandie... um, something. With apples and calvados. I had asked the friendly hotel woman what the red aperitif was that I saw so many people drinking last night, she suggested maybe raspberry syrup in cider. Ick, sounded too sucre, but knowing the French it probably tastes great. Anyway, the apple stuff with Calvados, regional Normandy specialty, was splendid.

And. French food heaven officially over for now.

French delights

Yesterday I said that we had a goal of heading to the gaufres Liegeois... which we did, first thing in the late morning (we stayed up late last night and slept in like crazy this morning. I felt guilty and unvirtuous for not demonstrating to Yarrow that we could beat jet lag by adhering closer to schedule, but then I thought, hey, we just crossed France by train with all that luggage. We're tired. Why not sleep?)
Anyway then we went streight to the Bonne Liegeois. Verdict? It ain't Jean Galler.

Jean Galler is the waffles you want to have. And the chocolate you want to have. It's in Belgium. And they make waffles with chocolate inside that are To Die For wonderful. I mean maybe not worth death, but really, really, really good.

The ones here in Cherbourg were not that good. I've just been discussing this disappointment with Anne-Christine, my friend from Liege, and she said she has just stopped trying to have "Belgian waffles" outside of Belgium because people just don't get it.

Good advice. After this morning, we will know better. :) No more Jean Galler waffles unless we are actually in Liege.

Anne-Christine says she'll go take one for the team and have a Galler waffle this week so we can show you. Update forthcoming.

So anyway, the not-amazing waffle (mind you, it was still good, just not AMAZING) was the worst experience of today. Pretty good day, eh?

Big Omission here: we found a lovely, lovely bar last night, which we didn't go into until today. We went twice today. It's the kind of cafe you make home. Warm yellow walls and plaid carpet and plush red booths and a wooden bar and history all over the place... I'll try to get some photos of it in the morning.

After the waffles, we went to the Thomas Henry museum. This was awesome. This dude Thomas Henry was a painter, but when he went up to Paris to paint, he also became an art dealer. And he made a fortune, and he donated a whole whack of paintings to his home town, Cherbourg. It was only 5 Euros for me to get in, and free for the kid.

The museum is divided to educate people on Dutch, Italian, Spanish, and French painters. It was great. 

They had a nice bathroom sign. More French humour: Yarrow noticed the garbage cans in the mall were marked with dead fish. :)

Here we have a fine example of a legendary female assassin. Details below. Her method looks pretty effective, eh?

Here's another mighty girl for you. She looks sweet, doesn't she?

Don't you wish fashions were still like this? I do, sometimes. I mean, why not?

Crazy stuff men used to do because they could get away with it.

Yes, that's right. That's them, on the yard arms (or whatever you call those cross-pieces on the masts).

There are a few girls in that shot, too. 

This was my favourite girl statue in the museum. Of alabaster, I'd guess. Girl wearing clothes and reading a book. Well, she's not reading it, she's holding it. Still lovely.

And then, some other around-towning happened...

Seriously huge chunks of steaks at Carrefour. About 10 bucks each. Cheaper than home for sure.

I have a new appreciation for slate roofs after watching the water gush off them. For some reason I've really been noticing the slate in this town. Verdict on Cherbourg: I love it somehow. I just love France, et c'est ca.

This was dinner, steak and ratatouille for Yarrow, and sausages and potatoes for me, starting with escargot and ending with something called an Incroyable Merveilleux, which did not look impressive when it came, but did, indeed, taste impressive and marvellous. noisette cream covered by good chocolate, over a meringue. Yum.

And back to the hotel room for some time with cats and to write one blog.

Metz to Paris to Cherbourg

It took two grumpy taxis to take us to the hotel last night and two to get us to the train this morning (last night they charged us 10 Euros each, and this morning it was 8 each). In Paris though we had a very very nice driver. More on him later.

We arrived in plenty  of time for the train and a French guy we asked reminded us how to find out where our car will stop on the platform -- 18 was shown to stop at W so we went to the W sign.

We got hyper-lucky as we were about to board and a man offered to help with our many bags. He not only helped us get our bags loaded, but he sat with us and chatted the whole way to Paris and then helped us get to the taxi stand too! We could have bumbled around and managed on our own but we didn't have to and that was so lovely and relaxing.

I also want to send out a special thanks to the friend who gave us a futon, which we since re-free-cycled, but the futon was wrapped in 4 excellent black straps with tightenable clips. Those straps have been invaluable in lashing our heavy bags to their wheel contraptions. Thank you, thank you, Morrigan. We've now lugged the luggage Calgary to Luxembourg and by train to Metz (and Metz hotel) and through Paris (aargh, with its 6 train stations) and to Cherbourg. Just the ferry to get over and hopefully we'll rent a car in Ireland and get the luggage to the van and that will be the end of lugging luggage for quite some time to come. However, I am sure that the straps will still be excellently useful.

The taxi driver we found in Paris was cheerful and friendly and only mentioned once that he's a taxi and not a transporter. :) He wished us bon courage (good luck) many times.

Alazha hypnotized me into doziness on the train which was lovely, and we got a minivan taxi here to the hotel, then walked the cats to the vet. The cats are TIRED of the boxes and would rather not get back in them yet again. The vet place was on afternoon dropins and the waiting room was full of dogs, one of which was a massive black "mechant" one as his owner said -- a very strong lady who Yarrow admired every time the thing started snapping and snarling and trying to lunge at the other dogs. The cats somehow endured that in their boxes and then got their microchips read by the vet, who made them passports. They didn't need any more medicine, unlike the vet in Canada told us. The vet here says that's only for dogs, but she also assured us that the ferry company has her emergency number and she'll be happy to straighten them out if there's any question when we catch the ferry Sunday.

We enjoyed more walking around in old, old streets. Marvelled at the slate in the walls and the slates on the street, and thought the pavers, oddly cut, looked like recycled building stones probably. Or something.

Yarrow wanted kebabs for dinner, which is a good budget option so that's what we did. It was nice. It is so very very nice to enjoy the manners of the French. They are in general very kind and helpful to each other and it's nice to see and be part of. We've had umpteen casual conversations today -- the exact thing that my soul so longed for in Alberta, and missed. It's also very nice to watch how nicely the French wear their clothes. I'm not sure why it's just so nice, but it is.

Last night, we had a very nice walk in Metz. Yarrow gave me the photos so I might as well post them.

Here is me in the bus in Luxembourg, which the driver let us ride for free rather than explain the ticket machine. We took the whole luggage area (did that on the train today too! -- the biking area).

One of many, many, many beautiful buildings in Metz. We couldn't possibly take pictures of all of them.

And when I saw this building, I realized we'd stopped to change trains in Metz before, probably when Yarrow was 6 and we visited friends in Luxembourg (the same friend, Kim Rubaek, who very handily told us the bus number to take to get from the airport to the train. Luxembourg is small and lovely and easy). I am fairly certain that the last time I was in Metz, it was the first time I discovered the wonders of fruit confit -- fruits in sugar that are just vibrant and divine and like nothing else.

These are purple horses. Kind of a Metz chuckwagon shot.

Wait, let's get it closer up for you.

Here are the luggage and cats in Paris (reduced down to 7 bags from our previous 8 by the expediency of loading about 80 pounds in my backpack and stuffing the extra carryon size backpack in the giant suitcase). There's an extra blue backpack behind the green one on the right -- Boy took  photos and I didn't check them so you'll just have to squint at the grey strap poking out on the far right there and take my word for it. :)

It was pretty easy getting them to Paris and through Paris. Phew. I was very anxious about that.

Then there was the dozy pleasant French-people-filled train to Cherbourg. I didn't take photos at the veterinarian. I really should have. Blue and white tiles,  a waiting full of dogs, some not happy, some remarkably quiet, and people, and a few cats. And people generally spoke easily to each other. The guy next to us didn't have a pet with him and I remarked on it and he said he was waiting for his pet to get out after surgery this morning. When we were back in the surgery room I saw a couple of cats zonked out in their boxes.

Anyway Clara and Ala didn't even have to get out of their boxes. Just got their chips scanned for their Europassports. So there. 8 of the 12 feet in our family now have French passports. That's a start, isn't it?

This is in Cherbourg. Palm trees, old streets, old, old buildings, and all.

I like France. I like French people and speaking French and just being here. Kinda makes me not want to go to Ireland but we want to meet Gigi and I know I like Ireland too.

Hypno-cat is dozing beside me and making me think maybe I should go to sleep too. Or maybe a hot bath. The bath does seem tempting... what wonderful choices. When we wake up tomorrow we have absolutely nothing to do but

a) have a chocolate Liegeois waffle (we found a shop that has them -- this is one of the most legendary foods from our 2009 trip. Liege is the place in Belgium we meant to be right now but skipped for reasons of sanity -- schlepping luggage is no mean feat!) Anyway a chocolate Liegeois waffle is a thing to be had. Incredible. Unlike any I've ever had anywhere. To start with it has Belgian chocolate, and secondly, the chocolate is miraculously IN the waffle.

b) some homeschooling stuff of some kind. Kiddo got in some grammar practice online today and some blogging; we may approach a little math or something.

c) walking and walking.

Ah, much relief. Clara finally did potty on our arrangement. They both gratefully used it last night in Metz, but Clara has been letting us know it's insufficient here. I mean, Clara, how much cat litter do you want us to carry? We brought a couple of kilos and have been giving them a little pile of it on top of the pet-pee-pads we bought just in case. Last night Yarrow said Clara did everything but put a little bow on it, she made such a tidy package of it!

Anyway, glad she finally used it here, after about 7 times of folding it into a package and letting me know it was insufficient. Ala is still to use it, but she's been eating sparsely and is now still hypno-cat trying to make me sleep.

Yes, sleep instead of bath. Sigh. One must conquer le jetlag with a will. :)

All 12 family feet are on European soil

Thursday April 7, 2016

My computer says that it's 8:43 a.m. but here en route from Luxembourg to Metz, It's 4:44 p.m. (I guess it took a minute to write that sentence.)

Holy exhausting day. However, thanks to our best friend Henry's booking genius, not an impossible day. 

This coul perhaps use some editing but never mind, I wrote it on our last train bit and we're going to head out to walk in Metz. That seems more important than editing just now.

Itinerary:

Calgary to Frankfurt, air: 9 hours 10 min.

Frankfurt to Luxembourg, puddle-jumper plane: 30 minutes, but that much time and more again to get the bus to the plane in Frankfurt. We actually had that "passengers on the flight to Luxembourg, your flight will be closing very soon..." just as we rushed up with the cats and all. Anyway, we got there. Thank goodness. (we took a detour through a totally unnecessary security line -- sleepy mistake)

Bus, Luxembourg airport to Luxembourg train station -- free, because the bus driver thought it was easier to be nice to tourists than try to explain the ticketing system to us. :)

Luxembourg to Metz, on the train, about an hour. Hopefully we can find a taxi to the Cecil Hotel though it's only 3 blocks. We're all wheeled out. Here's how we have it: mom, backpack on back and backpack on front, wheeling one, carrying one cat. Boy: backpack on back, carrying one cat, wheeling two. It's doable except when the wheels tip over and when the wheels tip it's superhard. Contemplating getting duct tape and wrapping it round and round to make it stay. :) Just dragging it in a great hurry as had to happen a bit today isn't completely ideal. :) But it's okay if the bags are trashed when we arrive, provided Gigi can take care of it all when we get there! (Gigi is our van, if you're uninitiated.)

At 5:45 last night (so, 15 hours ago only), we left Calgary airport. Inventory: 2 cats. 2 carry ons. 2 people. 1 50-pound backpack full of schoolbooks. 1 70-pound suitcase full of kitchen knives and cutlery and games and household stuffs. 2 green duffel bags each full of 50 pounds of stuff. Me, mostly clothes, and cut back I had to alot! Yarrow: all the clothes he owns that fits, plus sports stuff like footballs and volleyballs and badminton rackets. As you see, we're packed to live, not just holiday. We still had to cut back a ton on stuff we wanted to bring, but we haven't done too badly.

8 bags and 2 people is bordering on nearly impossible, particularly since the wheels that we bought for the duffel bags easily limp over sideways. We lost a piece of metal at the Luxembourg train station and a skinhead kinda looking guy ran after us to give it back to Yarrow but Yarrow said don't worry it's garbage as we rushed along, which is kind of too bad as we might have duct taped it back on. 

Money spent today:

12.60 at Starbucks in Luxembourg on a venti hot chocolate (there called a chocolat viennois) because they didn't have Yarrow's favourite green tea latte, and a venti honey macchiato for me. Honey... honey something. I forget the name now. It's really funny for the Starbucks menu be kind of in English and mostly speak in French. A lot of people asked if we speak German today too because we came through Frankfurt.

14.40 + 16.70 = 31.10 Euros on train ticket to Metz.

Cecil Hotel, cat-friendly (so they say, we hope it's true!): 60 euros

We had nice Air Canada employees all the way through -- they even let us preboard with the cats, after the little kids, and the baggage lady was patient with us when we needed to rearrange a bit of our weight so the bags would all get in under the wire. (One was over by a pound, but she said, let's change it to kilos, and then it wasn't over by much so it squeaked through). 

Then we found the people in the Frankfurt airport nice too. The guys in the security lineup that we didn't have to go through got a lot of fun out of our Star Wars laptop speaker which keeps playing epic star wars music any time the button gets pushed (which has been a lot today).

When we ended up running like crazy for the plane in Frankfurt, the speaker kept blaring star wars music and we were running too hard to stop and turn it off. 

The cats have been megachamps. They've also been really good conversation pieces. The airline attendant on our last leg even let me keep Ala on the seat beside me, and gave Yarrow an extra row for him and Clara, and showed me photos of her cats. The airline attendant on our first flight also got us a row to ourselves, which was absolutely wonderful because originally we were squashed in with this old guy who kept elbowing Yarrow. 

Anyway poor kitties have put up with being squashed under seats, and worse, swung along as we ran to and fro. We did get free to the train station in Luxembourg, but then we had to schlep our luggage quite a way. Some kind guys took the time to help us carry it about a block, for which we were very grateful as one of the duffels was off its wheels and 50 pounds is a lot when you're tired.

I think, tired mistake, that I put my iPhone in my pocket of my dress in Luxembourg and it might have fallen out. Well, I did say i wanted less internet! It may be that we're now smartphoneless. I can get a small phone in Ireland I guess! We are going straight to our first farm when we arrive, and we'll sort out details from there.

Lots of stress around fetching the van and trying to insure her. Hopefully it will be figure-out-able once we arrive. However, today's been all about just getting from point A to point B, and tomorrow will be about that, and about getting pet passports from the vet. On the map, it seems that Hotel L'Ambassadeur is pretty close to the train and then to the vet, but we will see! They sent us a nice welcoming message when they got our booking, which is lovely.

Before we took the plane with the scream-all-night toddler (I guess the parents don't believe in soothers), I was really looking forward to Metz and walking around. Maybe we still will a little, though Boy is TIRED and so am I. We've also been both sick, me to the extent of using the airplane sick bag as we were landing and then throwing away my white shirt because it was grossed up. So maybe we'll rest a bit first, brush the good kitties and feed them some Fancy Feast. But we must stroll around Metz a little at least!

Oh -- iPhone not lost! good.