BARCELONA — AT LAST

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The road to Barcelona was a long one, and as it happened, the fun didn't end after we arrived.

It's Thursday afternoon. We're cheerfully rushing around getting logistics done — signing bank documents and our lease (all of which were in Spanish/none of which I understood), getting the keys to the apartment, letting the kids see their new home — and having an "ahhhh" moment of happiness at the thought of finally settling in. We tell the kids that tomorrow morning they'll see all of their favorite toys. We toast to the very last night of living out of suitcases. I fall asleep with visions of home dancing in my head.

Aaron leaves the hotel first thing Friday morning to meet the movers at 9:00. As he's walking up to our block, he stumbles upon ones of those you-can't-make-this-shit-up scenarios: a water main half a block from our building has exploded overnight. Literally, blown up. The force burst windows in the building across the street, buried their parking garage (and the 20 cars in it) under 3 meters of water, and then — because we live on a hill — sent a tsunami-like volume of water down to every block below ours, which led to the inevitable closure of 15 streets. Our doorman confirms that in the 20 years he's worked here, he's never seen anything like it. Obviously this happens on move-in day, and obviously the moving truck isn't getting anywhere close to our apartment. No Friday move-in after all.

Because I'm starting work tomorrow (Monday), I was needless to say less-than-enthused about this news. (Maybe naively, I didn't pack one shred of work-appropriate clothing in my Grand Adventure carry-on bag.) But we did have three new mattresses delivered to the apartment on Thursday, so we loaded up on bedding and some other essentials, and there we found ourselves again — living in an all-but-empty apartment, just as we had done in Brookline. Full circle. How lovely. 

But the universe smiled later that evening; the moving company would make an exception to their normal operations and deliver our things on Saturday morning. Luck!

Six guys who collectively spoke 10 words of English showed up right on time to finalize the move. Because I couldn't communicate with them whatsoever, we spent the day playing charades. (Me: "Futon goes here. Futon...is like a sofa? Couch? No? Umm...like this? [Squatting] No, not table. [Mimicking arm rest] Ahh, yes like chair...but [waving arms frantically] longer, longer!") They successfully got all of our stuff up, unpacked the boxes and reassembled the furniture, and took away the trash. By 1:00pm, they were gone and we were home. At last.

DAYS 31 THRU 36: THE LONG WAY TO SPAIN

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LISBON — The trip-we-never-meant-to-take is rapidly drawing to a close; we fly out of Lisbon tomorrow morning and will officially be Spanish residents when we touch down in Barcelona at noon. After 37 days of taking planes (6), trains (3), and automobiles (1686 km) to visit 9 cities in 6 countries, these four bodies will finally be at rest.

I’m conflicted about this journey’s end. On one hand, all four of us are so ready and excited to settle into our new apartment and our new city and our new lives. We’ve been homeless since May 27 and without virtually all of our material possessions since the cargo container left Brookline 68 days ago. I can’t wait to use shampoo that doesn’t come from tiny bottles and to deviate from my 4-outfit rotation. Moving to Spain — and not wandering aimlessly around Europe — was, after all, the original goal, and one that we postponed only grudgingly.  So in that sense, landing in Barcelona will be a start and not an end: the accidental adventure will be over, but the more deliberate one will just be beginning.

But this trip has been special — so unbelievably special — and not just because of the amazing places we got to visit; never have we ever all been together for 38 days straight, all day every day. It was a little social experiment for our family: could we survive without the interludes of school or work or social lives, without the psychological space afforded by a house full of toys and devices and rooms? At the outset, Aaron and I thought it was going to be a patience challenge like no other. We agreed we’d need to take 30-60 minutes each day to do something on our own, be it reading or running or taking a walk to the grocery store. But as it played out, we didn’t end up executing that plan — I can count on two hands the number of times the foursome was separated for any length of time — and “alone time” became increasingly less necessary as we settled into our routine of nonroutine. We all became closer and figured each other out and settled into a new rhythm that has really worked. Of course I knew all along it was finite, but it’s still hard to have it end.

And once it’s over, it’s not entirely clear which — if any — concrete memories Owen and Eliza will get to keep from our last 5+ weeks. There were many moments when I paused and thought, “Gee, it would be so great if they could just remember this…” — the charming play we went to see in London, the freedom of outdoor baths in Tuscany, the triumph of catching tadpoles in a lake in Switzerland — but as the unreliable Luck of Parenting would have it, lasting mental snapshots are just as likely to include things like tediously boring car rides or the trauma of being forced to sleep in a new strange bed every few nights.

That said, I’m not too worried about whether or not they remember the specifics; I’ve kept a travel journal and taken a zillion photos and I will happily recount any number of stories for them — like how Owen refused to be seen without his fingerless biker gloves throughout the entirety of the UK, Denmark, and Germany; or how he went “commando” for several weeks because we realized (too late and too far from home) that all of his underwear were too small; or how Eliza could never be without one of her three pink (but progressively dirt-gray) bunnies; or how after finishing one particularly difficult mountain hike, she declared that she’s a superhero and no longer a princess. The specific memories are so fun, but also in some ways, irrelevant; I can tell that the trip has already changed them — they’ve acquired a love (and a bit of the skill) for traveling and exploring new places and trying new foods and being an outsider on someone else’s turf. And Aaron and I have come to realize that they (and maybe we all) are more adaptable than we otherwise would’ve guessed.

The trip we didn't want to take turned out to be the best gift we never would've asked for. We had to take the long way to Spain, but what a surprisingly rewarding way it was.

DAYS 27 THRU 30: SWITZERLAND

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VIGNOGN — This has been the week of outdoor adventuring in what has to be the beautiful place I’ve ever been. We’ve spent every possible minute outside and have gotten the kids hiking for 3-4 hours at a time. Owen didn’t take much convincing: give him a few oversized snails and slugs to count, plus a rock to pick up every now and again, and he’s in heaven. Eliza, on the other hand, is far more skeptical about the point of long walks in the woods (“I wanna go in the car”), especially if said walks involve any kind of incline (note: we’re in the Alps). But after four days, we’ve finally figured out how to push her Motivation Button: plenty of hand-holding, an occasional ride atop Aaron’s shoulders, and the promise of French fries with our post-hike lunch.

We’ll be here two more nights and then drive to Zurich (about 1:45 away) on Saturday. We’ll spend one night there, then fly to Lisbon on Sunday afternoon, where we’ll spend the last 4 nights of this Grand Adventure. One more week until Barcelona!

DAYS 22 THRU 26: ON THE ROAD AGAIN

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VIGNOGN — Six weeks ago, we had no idea we’d be taking this trip, period. Four weeks ago, we knew only that our non-existent itinerary would need to come together on the fly, and on the fly it has been. London became the point of departure solely because our Boston-to-Barcelona flight happened to connect through Heathrow. We picked Edinburgh and Inverness based on a combination of BritRail train pass accessibility and weather forecast. We chose Copenhagen and Berlin because they had the cheapest flights out of the prior location. Tuscany was a more purposeful choice because, well, who doesn’t want to spend a week in Tuscany? But midway through our week there, the enduring question arose again: where to next?

After selecting based on transportation and weather and destination, this time we chose based on accommodations. We searched Kid & Coe, the AirBnB-equivalent for families (they list properties equipped with ever-important things like plastic dinnerware and toys and bunk beds), and found a spot that looked amazing in Themiddleoffreakingnowhere, Switzerland. The owner told us he’d give us two nights free if we booked five, and Google Maps told us we could drive there in under 7 hours, so voila, the next destination was on the books.

We loaded up the good ol’ rental car and hit the road first thing Saturday morning. I’d just read about The Floating Piers, a really cool temporary art installation at Lake Iseo in Northern Italy, so we decided we’d make that our waypoint. As it happened, half of Italy had the same idea; it was too crowded, so children and the disabled were not allowed to walk the piers when we got there. No piers for us – but Iseo was a fabulous little town (go there) and the perfect place for afternoon pizza- and gelato-eating.

Around 3:00PM, we set off for Switzerland. Google Maps gave us three route options, two of which were fairly direct and went through Milan, and one of which hugged the eastern side of Lake Como and then seemed to shoot straight up through the mountains. The latter added about 40 extra minutes but seemed to have the most scenic potential, so we took it. (Naïve Navigator Kate thinks to herself, “Oh, a highway through the Alps! How quaint. Let’s.”)

Welp, the “scenic route” had neither a shortage of scenic-ness, nor a shortage of petrifying hairpin turns on distressingly narrow roads. It did, however, have a shortage of guardrails between the roads and the cliffs they overlooked. Had I simply zoomed into the route, the zig-zagginess would’ve become abundantly clear. Or had I Googled the route and seen its description on www.dangerousroads.org, I may have thought twice. But nope, I didn’t. So up over the 6900 foot mountain pass we went.

I spent 2 hours becoming intimately acquainted with the handle of my door as I clutched it for dear life. We had to pull over once because Owen almost had his inaugural bout of carsickness. But the views were the most breathtaking (in every possible sense of that word) I’ve ever seen in my life. Because I know the ending of that particular story (we lived!), I don’t regret doing it. But next time, I might take some Xanax first.

As my blood pressure returned to a more acceptable level, we drove to Chur, the biggest town nearby (about 45 minutes from where the house is in Vignogn), to load up on groceries. As we anticipated, the grocery stores are closed on Sundays here. As we did not anticipate, the grocery stores close at 6:00PM on Saturday night — and of course we pulled in at 6:30PM. We found a gas station convenience store that had passable food and bought as many normal-looking staples as we could find (e.g., peanut butter, jelly, Nutella, cereal, wine) and we’ve basically spent the day rationing food. We’ve gone through an entire box of Special K (sharing each other’s leftover milk) and several PB&J sandwiches. As the bread and most of the milk is now gone, Aaron just made a Hail Mary trip to another gas station 10 miles away to see if we can get something for dinner. The good news is that the kids think cereal and PB&Js are the pinnacle of gourmet eating, so I’m quite sure we’ll survive till the stores open Monday.

DAYS 17 THRU 21: TUSCANY

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SAN VINCENZO A TORRI — If Day 13 is when you get a little burned out, Day 21 is when you shut your mouth and feel only absolute gratitude for this unexpected adventure. (Or maybe it has nothing to do with the day and everything to do with Tuscany.)

We woke up early on Saturday to take a train to catch a plane from Berlin to Bologna. In addition to our usual 4 carry-ons/4 backpacks/1 stroller payload — the packing and hauling of which we’ve now gotten down to a science — we added those two pesky car seats, which threw off our collective balance; however, Owen is increasingly eager to prove his Big Boy Status, and pulled his own weight and then some.

We picked up our rental car in Bologna and then spent an embarrassing amount of time reading and re-reading the car seat installation instructions in the parking garage. After 4+ years learning to master the U.S. car seat installation system, the European standards are ever-so-slightly different enough as to make us novices all over again. But once settled in to our funky little Ford, the hour-and-a-half drive south was lovely; besides the splendid vistas, we also got the benefit of two kids snoozing in the back seat — a perk of car travel that is not to be underestimated.

We pulled up to the walled villa having absolutely no idea what to expect. This trip epitomizes “last minute” everything, so we pick among the accommodations no one else wanted. This place, Villa Colli Fiorentini, was literally the only spot left on the Tuscan booking site we used, so that decision was an easy one; we were prepared for it to go either way.

But as soon as the iron driveway gates opened, it was like a little Garden of Eden was revealed: a 180-degree view of rolling hills covered in grapevines, a hammock strung between an olive tree and plum tree teeming with ripe fruit, a garden with zucchini and tomatoes and lemons and mint and basil and arugula, and an old stone home dating back the 11th century. I couldn’t have dreamed up something more perfect, and the last few days have been heavenly.

Besides enjoying good wine and cooking (wannabe) Italian food and spending lots of time outside, we’ve also been able to do some cool day trips. We spent Sunday (Father’s Day) in Siena, about an hour’s drive away, and Monday (Eliza’s third birthday) in Florence, about 40 minutes away. The kids were excited about exploring the cities, but surprisingly even more interested in touring the cathedrals (who’d a thought?).  We’re planning a trip to Pisa and Lucca tomorrow and a beach on Thursday or Friday. Pretty great stop on the Grand Adventure.

As one final thought, it’s been quite entertaining to watch how the kids settle in to each new place, and one of the more interesting aspects is what, exactly, a 3- and 4-year-old find to play with when they have virtually no toys in tow. In Edinburgh, it was a stack of coasters that looked like old records. In Inverness, it was a roll of paper towels that they used to “clean” every surface within reach. In Copenhagen, it was a 3-foot-tall basket into which they stuffed every item they owned. In Berlin, it was drink stirrers from the mini-bar. And now in Tuscany, it’s empty 1.5 liter water bottles that they can fill and dump at will. The sheer amount of time they’ve spent playing with and joy they’ve gotten from each of those things boggles my toy-consumer mind. Moral of the story: we spent far too much money shipping their playthings to Barcelona.