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 13 THRU 16: A BREAK IN BERLIN

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BERLIN — Turns out that somewhere around Day 13, it hits you that this whole thing is more than just a fun little family vacation and it crosses your mind that you might be ready to head home...except you don't actually have a home and your furniture is still floating on the ocean, and when you do get home, it will be in a new country where you don't speak the language and have to start all over again anyway. And then you get really tired and realize you need a little mental, emotional, and physical break. Which, the depleted mother wrote gratefully, is exactly what Berlin has afforded so far. 

We got to the city late on Monday night after a 50 minute flight from Copenhagen and two trains in from Schonefeld Airport. It was well past their bedtimes, but the kids got their fifteenth wind and way outpaced us on the trek in. Surrounded by a dozen humorless train passengers, Owen asked which country we were in, and upon receiving his answer, excitedly shrieked: "Germany! That's where HITLER is from!! Can we go see the Hitler statue?!" (Two fun facts about Owen: (1) he thinks everyone who dies turns into a statue that is on display somewhere in the world, (2) he is fairly certain Hitler is responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs.) Needless to say, we put the kibosh on that pretty quick.

We checked into adjoining rooms at the Westin Grand (thank you, Starwood points), relieved to spend a few nights in a place where someone else would tidy up after us and we wouldn't have to worry about being publicly reviewed after our stay. The kids were happy about the change of scenery (Owen: "Since we're not in someone's apartment, does that mean we can mess everything up?"), and we took a little hiatus from touristing; Tuesday and Wednesday were Real Life Days, where we went shopping for car seats, had the screen on Aaron's iPhone replaced (because, as I conveniently omitted from the last post, I dropped and shattered it at Tivoli), and dealt with a suitcase full of dirty laundry. (Travel tip: if you're in Berlin, London, or Paris, there is an awesome service called ZipJet — the Uber of dirty clothes — that sends someone to your door to pick up your laundry, washes and folds it, and brings it back 2 days later.) Today we went on a bike tour of Berlin, and given the rainy forecast, are planning to spend tomorrow at a museum.

We found cheap Ryanair flights from Berlin to Bologna for Saturday and will spend a week in a Tuscan farmhouse outside of Florence (Eliza: "We're going to Hitaly!"). We're renting a car for the first time on the trip (hence the car seats, which we'll also need in Barcelona) and are hoping to do a little non-city exploration. It's hard to believe that we're not yet to the halfway mark of this trip, but after taking it easy in Berlin, we're excited and ready to tackle the next 3 weeks!

DAYS 9 AND 10: ON TO DENMARK

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COPENHAGEN —I was falling asleep last night and randomly started thinking about my childhood obsession with the “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego” game show. I didn’t care much about the game itself — three school-aged contestants battling it out over geography trivia — but I was totally obsessed with the finale: the last "gumshoe" standing got to play in a bonus round, and if she won, take a trip anywhere (well, within the 48 contiguous states…it was budget programming) she wanted. If victorious, she’d ceremoniously flip over a card and reveal the Dream Trip Destination she’d written down. I’m not sure why, but that moment was nothing short of enchanting to my 10-year-old self — the idea that you could just pick a place, any place, and go there.

Two takeaways: (1) maybe, from an early age, I was fated to take a trip just like this one, and (2) Inverness, Scotland would not have been my Dream Trip Destination.

Inverness was fine but dull; I’m fairly certain the Loch Ness Monster was the brainchild of a brilliant and forward-looking marketing agency from the early 1900s. On Thursday we took a pleasant 3-hour cruise around Loch Ness and were force-fed “fun” facts better suited for mass murders and sadists than small children with follow-up questions (e.g., you could fit 80 billion human bodies into the volume occupied by the lake’s water; a Wellington Bomber sank to the bottom of the lake when it lost power and crashed in 1940; 1952’s land speed record-holder tried to break the water speed record on Loch Ness but died instantly when his boat crashed and disintegrated). The weather was nice, though, and the scenery was impressive; it was a laissez-faire alternative to venturing out and trying to see the sights on our own.

Our rental apartment surprised us with a very large terrace overlooking the water where the kids could romp around and feed the hovering seagulls. It also provided an ideal and picturesque meal location (provided said seagulls were monitored and didn’t snatch our food). Since embarking on this trip, we’ve aimed to eat 1 (but ideally 2) meals at home every day — it’s healthier, cheaper, and much less stressful than eating out with two antsy kiddos — and the terrace inspired us to stay at home for every one. We even got to watch a beautiful sunset…at 10:12PM; last light in Inverness is at 11:20PM and first light is at 3:13AM, so there wasn’t much “night” to speak of.

This morning we took a 10:45AM train back down to Edinburgh, arrived at the station at 2:45PM and took a bus straight to the airport for a 6:45PM flight to Copenhagen. Accounting for the one-hour time change, we arrived at our Copenhagen AirBnB at 11:30PM. This traveling circus covered a lot of territory today.

The apartment is great (from what I can tell in the dark). But unlike the three previous apartments, which were strictly vacation rentals, this one is actually someone’s primary residence. That someone's name is Anne. Anne left for her country house after we arrived (an hour’s drive away) so that we could spend the weekend in her home. She is also, incidentally, 37-weeks pregnant. Now I think that AirBnB is the greatest thing ever — it is enabling this trip in a way that hotels absolutely could not — but displacing a soon-to-be first-time mother on the [near] eve of her delivery seems like something that should be explicitly against rental policy. I felt horrible watching her go and had this nagging urge to spend the next 3 days nesting instead of sightseeing. I’ll let you know if we get displaced before Monday by the arrival of a newborn.