September mourn...

Hey, Summer? It's Bath. Ever planning on heading this way?

If you somehow missed the Weather Channel analysis, the sailboats blowing over during Olympic squalls, the complete absence of any tan lines on Prince Harry's backside in Vegas, let me fill you in.

This was the worst.summer.ever.

If it wasn't raining, it was drizzling. If it wasn't drizzling, it was misting. If it wasn't misting, it was cloudy, and we were quickly slathering on the Nair and pulling on the short shorts because hot damn, it wasn't raining!

Apparently "Europe" also got some of this bad weather (I recently picked up on a tour of Bath Abbey that Britons don't consider themselves part of Europe. This turned into an argument with my husband who demanded to know which continent Hawaii was in. North America? No? I really drank too much in college) but we really, really got it something awful.

We did catch a bit of Olympic fever -- watched loads of diving, swimming, gymnastics, you know, everything that took place inside and wasn't cancelled or postponed 5 times. Josie in particular LOVED the Olympics. When she started school last week she informed the school administrator that when she grows up she's going to be an Olympian and compete in Diving, Cycling, Gymnastics and Speed-Walking. (um, what? BTW who knew that my year-plus of stroller walking in the Palisades Center could have prepared me for Olympic Gold?!?!)

Oh, quick aside - Josie's school had a mini-Olympics this week, and she killed!  She medaled in 5 events, pretty much everything but bean-bag-on-head-relay. She has a really round head. Check out her hurdling event, in which her hurdles are three times the height of everyone else's!

Anyhoo, back to August....while we were feeling the Olympic fever, and rooting for both Team GB and the Americans, we still took the first chance we got to bolt the sodden United Kingdom for sunny Stockholm.

Stockholm, where do I start?  Amazing. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200, just get there. Especially if you have kids as it is the most kid-friendly place ever. And especially if you do NOT have kids b/c it has multiple Michelin-starred restaurants and some kind of IceHotel bar where everything I guess is made out of ice and has hot and cold running vodka. Alas, I will never find out.

Stockholm -- another European destination so expensive you have not only pass go, you also have to pretend everything is priced in Monopoly money. That said, there are deals to be had -- no one under 12 gets charged for anything, and Jeff and I bought a $225 "Stockholm Card" that got us into absolutely every museum, every attraction, every public transportation mode for the entire week. We also had free breakfast at our hotel, though we unfortunately didn't realize that until the day we checked out. 

Yes, that's Tony Bennett sitting behind Hugo. 

I bet he knew brekkie was free.

Our trip started with a teary-but-happy reunion with Josefin "Nonny" Noren Almen, our Swedish babysitter from Paris. We spent the first 2 days in Stockholm with Nonny as our guide, seeing the completely amazing Junibacken, or Pippi Longstocking World, the Gamla Stan, or Old Town, and lots and lots and lots of sun.

Josie and Nonny reunited

 
Our own little Pippi

Villa Villekulla in the amazing Pippi museum

There was a music festival happening on one of the islands, so one night Bjork was singing right into our hotel window. That was pretty freaking cool.

Oh, we also did a self-guided "Millenium" tour which was also pretty cool. We had coffees at the bar where Blomkvist eats all his hundreds of sandwiches. We walked around the uber cool "Solder" neighborhoods.  We'd gone from the original Ville Villekulla to V. Kulla.

It's Berger. Nielssen's been shot!

After a right-wing shooting everyone needs a sandwich and coffee

A lucky thing about Stockholm is we avoided some of those triple-digit restaurant bills by mooching off of friends, like the wonderful amazing Bergmans who have known me literally before I was born, and the Deckers, fellow American expats living the Socialist Dream, who had us to their gorgeous home in the 'burbs for a gorgeous roast chicken and a great play for Josie with their two adorable daughters. 
 
With Maj, Ulf, and their adorable grandson Tom, we toured the outdoor museum, Skansen, toured Stockholm by boat and had an amazing home-cooked Swedish meal (oh, their daughters Carin and Sissi whom I have known since THEY were born, and Sissi's husband Daniel, were there for the last one too).

 Tom, Josie and Hugo enjoying an International 

Delight - Ice cream - at Skansen

 My second trip on Ulf's Boat, the CarMajSis

Some other highlights:

 Josie in Gnome Man's Land

 Drottningholm Palace

Future Geniuses with Current Doofus 

 Absolut Cute at the "SpiritMuseum"

 Narrowest street in Sweden

 Sad to go

Here is how I know this was our best trip ever. While I consistently plan excellent vacations, around Day 5 Josie always expresses her strong desire to go home and sleep in her own bed and play with her Polly Pockets. When on Friday we told her it was our last day in Stockholm there were tears! Real tears! It may have been because she knew she would never see the sun again until next May or June, but I also just think it's a magical, incomparable, totally fun place. It's super-cosmopolitan, a great blend of modernity and history, sunny (when it's sunny), warm in summer (if it's sunny), super-liberal (there were Gay Pride flags flying from every museum, theater, government building, etc).

But we did have to go back to rainy dreary England, and we did, in time for the end of the Olympics (you know we were deep in Olympics withdrawal when Jeff tried to change the channel from Speed-walking and Josie shrieked, "Hey, I was really enjoying that!")

Thanks to St. Claire we muddled through the school-free month without too much collateral damage. We closed the summer with a jaunt back over to Cornwall, to the same kid-friendly hotel we visited with Anne and Lew in May. I booked this bank holiday weekend literally at the checkout desk last May, thinking "August Bank Holiday Weekend will be gorgeous, surely, and there's a Regatta, how perfect!"

As you either know or can guess, I was yet again.... wrong. We did have one lovely summer's eve, which thankfully we seized to go crabbing on the docks. We caught quite a few crabs ourselves, and escaped a complete horror film when the kids next to us set all 5,329 of their crabs free -- on the dock -- at once:

Although, Josie herself had a bit of a tough time saying goodbye...

The rest of the weekend was basically a soggy mess. We did check out a cool shipwreck museum with yet more Titanic memorabilia - along with two 17th-century schooners. We had lots of lovely meals and cream teas and local lagers, but mostly just had to dodge the bucketing rain. **SIGH**

On September 5th Josie woke us by bouncing into our bed at 6:45 a.m. proclaiming, "this is the day I've been waiting for my entire life."  The first day of school - of "Reception" which I guess is like kindergarten though the curriculum - reading, writing, phonics, basic maths, cookery, swimming, gym, ballet, science - looks more like first grade. She has a new uniform and a new outlook on life, though she has proclaimed her new class "absolutely exhausting."  It's really amazing to see how quick she is learning, though she would still rather draw and watch Peppa Pig than do her homework!

We trekked to London to see E, C, Baby Brains and Belgian Dad for C's 5th birthday. We got to see E and Belgian Dad's fabulous new Maida Vale house, enjoy a becoming-habitual roast chicken lunch, toss back a few glasses of champagne, dance to Jessie J and collapse in a heap on the train home. Always so much fun to hang with those crazy Belgiafranglaisers.

 Happy Birthday Mademoiselle C!

We also had a great visit from "Chelle and Butch" aka Michelle and Rich, which included lots of fun sightseeing, local beers, killer curry and an awesome raclette spread. It is a rare friend who is up for all of those elements in one weekend.... which why Michelle is and will always be my girl. We had a great time and Josie always LOVES having an extra man to boss around!

Michelle lounges in Parade Gardens

And last but not least, I got to try my hand at Stage Mothering when I took Hugo to London to film a commercial for Cow and Gate, a baby food company at which my husband may or may not allegedly work. There were dozens and hundreds of adorable children there so Hugo may well end up on the cutting room floor, but we had fun anyway!

In a couple of weeks the whole crazy mishbucah, including Nom, Pee-Pa, Anne and Lew descend for Josie's 5th birthday and our joint 40th birthday -- as one of our guests has pointed out, our "collective octogenarian celebration."  OUCH.

There's a small presidential election coming up as well on November 6th so I may be a bit swamped but will try to check in at least with some pics!  Cheerio!

I'll leave you with some Austen Powers - the JA Festival started this week and all of Bath becomes a Georgian Playland!

Sweet Janes

This babe was made for walkin'....

And that's just what he did.... on American soil!

We had just arrived on gorgeous Kiawah Island to join the rest of the Rothman clan to celebrate Anne and Lew's 50th wedding anniversary, and on Day 2 Hugo just up and walked... like he'd always known how, he just hadn't felt like it.  And thus ended life as we knew it.

We had been not concerned exactly, but a tad surprised that the boy who sat up, stood, crawled, and cruised so early was lagging behind his sister's walking age by 2 months. I guess he didn't have anywhere important to be! And now, oyyyyyy. He walks everywhere, across rooms, in the tub, into the crashing surf of the Atlantic Ocean. If he's anything like his sister he'll soon be RUNNING away from me as fast as possible, so I suppose I should pause and count my blessings while I still can.

But let me back up - it was a crazy exhausting month of travel and activity. In early June we tooted over to Le Beaux Paris for the Queen's Jubilee weekend -- treasonous, I know -- hoping to escape the rain and grey for good friends and great food. Sadly the weather didn't cooperate for long, but we did reunite with les filles Bell (Virginia Mom et famille) in the Luxembourg Gardens for carousel, ice cream, and sand pits. While they initially stood around staring at each other, fingers in noses, they quickly got comfy and chased each other around, sharing ice cream licks and flinging sand at each other. Ah, the good old days.

The Three Horsemen

 La glace! Oh la la!

 Hugo looooves the sand

Good golly, Miss Molly!

We stayed not too far from our old 'hood, on Boulevard Montparnasse, in a holiday flat that was sadly not air-conditioned nor equipped with that modern convenience they call a fan. Still, it was a hop-skip from most of our old haunts, like La Coupole, the Raspail market (where Jeff still had to wrangle hot cakes in a bag from Cranky Potato Pancake Man) and all the great shops around Boulevard St. Germain and Rue de Rennes, which Jeff let me have an afternoon to explore.

We had a great time with C, my British and first Parisienne Pal -- a surreal Sunday afternoon was spent watching the Queen's flotilla on their Sky network dish, eating treats from the new Marks and Spencer on the Champs-Elysees, while her son W taught Josie some classic Jedi maneuvers.

It was great to be back in Gay Paree, but honestly for the first time we all felt like tourists. Lots had already changed as far as shops, etc., a few of our friends had left as well, and Josie really didn't remember anything, which felt so shocking! But I still loved it more than ever. Loved strolling through the Luxembourg Garden -- an especially French afternoon as it was "L'Exposition des Jouets" or something, which was basically all these dorky guys and gals in matching T-shirts demonstrating various sports (Frenchies playing b-ball - something to see, lemme tell ya) to BLARING LOUD horrible French synth-pop. We ate les macarons at every opportunity, yelled at mothers of kids with no socks, and cringed at every loud American in white tennies (which don't get me wrong, in Bath I am happy to be, yoga pants, scrunchie and all!).

(you'll notice I am borrowing heavily from my homegirl MJ in this post, but what can I say, she noticed and noted way more wacky French sh*t than I did!)

Macarons on the steps of the Opera Garnier 

Dinner with Virginia Mom at Hotel du Nord

Without much of a break, we were again packing and trekking to Heathrow for our long-awaited 2-week sojourn to the States. As aforementioned we started in gorgeous (hot! sunny! Thank God!) Kiawah Island. Our 22-hour itinerary looked something like this: wake up at 5:30 am, 2 hour drive to Heathrow, 9 hour flight to Miami, 3.5 hour layover (with Miami Spice and family, thank goodness!), 2 hour flight to Charleston, 1 hour drive to Kiawah Island, arrival around midnight! You can imagine what we looked like when we arrived.

Despite warnings about alligators (and severe penalties for "taunting them"), three-inch "palmetto bugs" (mm-hmm, that's Southern for good old cucaracha, mi amigos!) the resort was gorgeous and comfortable. Our three-building complex  had its own pool, which Josie in particular never wanted to exit.

Both kids had an amazing time with their grandparents, aunts and uncles and crazy cousins.  Anne and Lew were celebrating 50 years of marriage, so we serenaded them to a bastardized version of James Taylor's "Goin' to Carolina in my mind" and they in turn re-enacted their first date, dressed in character.

 

It's true... after this long you do start to look alike! 

The beach was also gorgeous, and Hugo quickly demonstrated a strong and horrifying affinity for the ocean, skuppering as fast as humanly -- or more accurately crably -- possible towards the waves.

Out of my way!!!!

There were no shortage of activities -- we biked all over the resort, got ice creams and massages and painted pottery and generally soaked up all the sunshine we could since it had been about 34 weeks since we'd glimpsed that elusive orb in Merry Olde England. Just what the doctor ordered.

Then after a week of Southern Hospitality (I even got to eat grits!! mmmm!) it was another psychotically early wake up (4:30 this time!) to catch a 7:15 flight to Martha's Vineyard via Washington, D.C.  Other than shop for really cheesy crap in the airport store (I got some awesome Michelle Bachmann Tea Party mints) there wasn't much to do, so Josie cruelly decorated her snoozing brother.

Though we didn't go "home" this vacation, the Vineyard felt pretty close. Nom and Pee-pa were waiting at the arrival gate, ready to whisk us off for our first lobster rolls of the season. We stayed in a great condo complex (where we'd stayed back in '08) with its own pool and tennis court. The weather was super HOT again so as much as we love the Vineyard's gorgeous beaches it was also great to have a pool.

 Gorgeous Gay Head Cliffs (yeah, no lame Aquinnah nonsense for us!)

 Placid State Beach

 Idyllic Menemsha (I took a 2 second break from 

stuffing fried oysters in my piehole to snap this)

 

Hugo loves da pool 

Though it was actually our third Fourth of July on the Vineyard, we'd never before been to the famed Edgartown parade. Edgartown is small, uber-preppy and already kind of a parking nightmare, so I guess we'd never felt it worth the pain and effort, but once you've got 2 kids, you gotta hit the parade! Sooooo glad we did. The day was classic Americana. Bunting everywhere, flags, everyone dressed in their most patriotic Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren shirts (plus one old, weird-looking guy sporting that classic "Harvard: the Michigan of the East" but even my mom thought he looked too kooky to approach with a "Go Blue").  

We had to grab prized and shady curbside seats and chill for about an hour, but with sandwiches from a completely classic old deli and a grassy yard to play catch, it wasn't a terrible wait.

 Edgartown Deli....classic Americana!

 Waiting patiently for the Main Event

Here come the Rebels! (I hope they're not coming for us! 

Cover Hugo's Union Jack T-shirt!)

No one enjoying the parade more than Hugo

Though Josie had been to the Vineyard twice before, this was the first time she could really remember... so we've promised to return every summer that we can! We just love this place. Biking, beaching, lookin' for wild turkeys, shopping for cool folk art and antiques, it's got everything this wacky side of the family needs!

Now it's back to gloomy England, where the rainiest June on record followed the rainiest May followed the rainiest April. Sheesh!!  But between chasing Hugo, work and Olympic fever, the weeks before our next trip (Stockholm!) should fly by.

 

Just like Josie's kite flew high over Oak Bluffs Memorial Park

He is One, going on Two....

April and May involved both mucho miles and major milestones!


After months of breathless anticipation, we finally took our long-awaited trip to Austria in April (the morning after Jeff did a fabulous job leading the Bath Community Seder) -- both to take The Sound of Music Tour and experience the whole Kinderhotel concept touted by many of our ex-pat friends. Neither disappointed!

Although I must say we were quite surprised to wake up on the first morning of our "spring break" to find this mularkey:

Happy.... Easter?

Our hotel was actually right over the border in Germany, and the accommodations were perfect for a family with 2 small children. The restaurant was family-style and Josie quickly gained back the weight she had lost during her illness the week prior. She loved German food; I have never seen the kid eat so much in her short life. Boiled beef, schnitzel with noodles, crisp apple strudel, she loved it all.

The kids' club was a mixed bag -- such a great deal, 10-5pm daily as much as you needed, and lots of great activities like pottery, necklace-making, etc. BUT we didn't really anticipate how few Anglophones there would be. Actually there were exactly three - a Northern Irish dad married to a Luxembourgian mom and their two children, who weren't always at the kids' club at the same time. So that limited Josie's playing and friend-making capabilities significantly. At the beginning she didn't want to go and Hugo was great, but that dynamic gradually flipped until Josie had befriended enough of the teachers to have fun and Hugo, feeling acute separation anxiety, would start to wail as soon as we hit the hallway where the club was!

Pay no attention to the boy behind the curtain.....

Honestly, we were so busy sightseeing we didn't use the club as much as we otherwise might have anyway. Salzburg is a lovely city, super clean, easy to get around, lots to do -- so we went in pretty much every morning to sightsee, starting with the way cool Fortress Hohensalzburg, built in the 800s by the "Prince-Archbishops" who ruled Salzburg when it was still an independent municipality. You'll recognize it from any iconic Salzburg shot (like... from the intro shots in The Sound of Music. If you're already sick of hearing about The Sound of Music, FYI, you might just want to stop reading now!)

The Fortress boasts both the city's most amazing views...

And the slightly cool, slightly creepy Marionette museum, which supplied the marionettes in the Sound of Music "Lonely Goatherd" scene!

We also explored the city's Modern Art Museums looking for a Klimt or 2... sadly, they had all been shipped to Vienna for the birthday boy's 200th celebration, but instead there was a monster exhibit for kids!

Why be content with this....

When you could see this?

But let's get right to the heart of the matter -- THE TOUR. OMG, it was everything we could have hoped for and more. The tour guide was dressed in traditional Bavarian garb. She played all the music and everyone (except a few mortified husbands) sang along with gusto. We hit all the filming locations in the area, including...

The Hills are Alive! (Intro scenery)

Church where Maria gets married

Back of the house, where lake scenes were filmed

 

So, a needle pulling thread (Mirabell Gardens)

 Front of the Von Trapp House

 

I am Sixteen, going on Seventeen....

It was a blast... I think even Jeff would grudgingly admit he enjoyed it. And we even got to re-enact walking up the Mirabell Garden steps to sing the finale of "Do a Deer."

Of course, there IS more to Salzburg than the Sound of Music (though devotees of the film represent 300,000 of the city's 1 million visitors annually). Mozart was born and raised here, and we visited his childhood home, to see his first piano and lots of family heirlooms.

The kinderhotel, as I said was fab, and while we didn't use the kids' club as much as we thought, there were 2 nice perks, one of them being Giant Beers Without Children At 4pm, which we attended religiously:

Ahhh... childless beers. And look at the blanket they bring out in case 
you get chilly.  How cute is this place?

And the other being Josie's really cute, daily semi-private swimming lesson. Here in Europe they appear to begin lessons with the breaststroke, which doesn't seem overly intuitive, but hearing "Frog Josie, Frog! Ja! Ja voll!" was pretty motivating, though half the time she would just break down and giggle because her teacher was really cute.

You want me to do what, swim? (batbatbat eyelashes)

Meaty, on the other hand, had tons of fun crawling around, but he didn't sleep very well. Literally, he slept like a total weirdo:

 And after a week, Josie was starting to sound like Herman Cain: 
"Nein, nein, nein!"

Alas, after about 316 Giant Beers, 127 glasses of Riesling and 563 renditions of "Edelweiss," (not to mention 23 episodes of Rescue Me watched on the iPad because German TV SUCKS) it was time to go home, and celebrate Meaty's first birthday!  Josie and I had originally decided upon a Curious George theme, because every time we read a Curious George Story we think he looks like Hugo, with a banana cake (get it) and George-themed decorations. But Mommy failed to read the fine print on the Amazon website, and the decorations were coming from California and destined to arrive sometime in June.

SO it was on to Plan B: Dinosaurs! But I had already bought everything for the monkey-banana cake, so that stayed in place, along with an attempted "jungle" icing that from the pix I posted on Facebook everyone thought was guacamole.

Prehistoric Monsters on the Avocado Gateau of Death

 Whatever, I didn't hear any complaints....

until it was over!

Hard to believe Hugo is one already! That went fast. He doesn't walk yet, but cruises with confidence. He doesn't really talk yet, but sings, raps, and tickles the ivories. He still probably best loves to eat.

Then the always-adventurous Hanna and Papa came to visit, and we all piled in a Ford minivan (which doesn't exist in America, sadly, because it is way cool and I would totally buy one) for our first trip to Cornwall! Cornwall is on the western coast of England and Fowey, where we were, is home to Daphne Du Maurier, and chock-full of cute shops, fishing boats, cobblestoned streets and sweet little houses. 

Sticking with the "kinder" theme, we stayed at a great hotel catering to families. Josie got to go look for eggs from the hotel chicken coop every morning, there was a play room and a trampoline and all you had to do for a cream tea or puree for Hugo or glass of chardonnay, any time day or night, was snap your fingers. Best of all - they came TO OUR ROOM and collected the kids at 8am that Sunday morning so we could relax, read the paper and have a quiet breakfast.

Wow, we are starting to sound like people who never want to spend time with our children. This is NOT the case. They are delightful little humans. But we will never pass on a real chance to spend time with each OTHER, if offered. We also call that more of a "vacation" instead of merely a "trip."

Josie's favorite activity by far was crabbing. I'm not trying to draw any distinctions here, but when she crabbed with Daddy she caught one and when she crabbed with Mommy she caught three.

Beautiful view of the harbor from our hotel

Rainbow Brite!

We also visited the Eden Project, which is a truly amazing research and education center exploring different ecosystems and obviously hoping to inspire conservationist tendencies among its visitors. It's HUGE - we only had time to visit the Rainforest and Mediterranean biodomes, so we're eager to go back!

 The incredible Eden Project

No rest for Daddy --  he was off to Miami for a well-deserved 40th birthday junket with his college friends, and after a brief return to Bath yesterday flew the other direction to Beijing for a business conference. We're looking forward to those photos!

Today we got to see the Olympic Torch pass through Bath - that was pretty cool.  Quick shot of that:

No, that is not Orlando Bloom running with it

And after a brief break from travel for the kids and Mommy, we're looking forward to a busy summer, with trips to Paris, SC, Martha's Vineyard, Stockhom and yes, back to Cornwall! See you soon, probably from the road! A bientot!