Vacation 2012. Quite frankly, we haven’t taken a vacation longer than a long weekend since our honeymoon in Tokyo five years ago. Albert had never been to Europe despite two missed opportunities; Erin had lived in France for a year, so like Albert showing Erin Tokyo five years ago, Erin now showed Albert and Curie London for three days and Paris for four. Above are one row for each day. the first column is one of the locations, the next is Albert and Curie except when we didn’t have a picture. The third row are pictures of Erin and Curie, the fourth, a family picture, and the last, a picture of Curie.
We are not normal travelers, now don’t get us wrong, we saw all the touristy things, but in the vein of our urban hiking and food crawls, we just couldn’t get into the normal things people do. Instead, we looked for ramen, pho, and had local market hotel picnics in our hotel room. The second-best part of the trip was Curie’s fascination with statues in Rodin’s garden and the Louvre. We traveled with a baby backpack to carry Curie and a stroller, one light enough to take on the Tube and the Metro. The stroller is great for rain, but otherwise we liked the backpack Suephy and Ed gave us.
The best and most exhausting part of the vacation was Curie’s jet lag. We got to spend very intimate time watching our daughter laugh and hug and play standing on a king sized bed as if it were a stage. When she stands on the bed, her knees prop against your side and she stands her total two feet, three inches, and she smiles at you, and makes you laugh. Then when she would sleep, she would wake up with her tousled head and a big grin because she had her parents next to her instead of the cold of the slats of her crib. Yes, we saw the Eiffel Tower, and the Tower of London, yes we rode the Eurostar/Chunnel and went to the Louvre; we had terrible English breakfasts and fantastic croissants; is it terrible that we loved being with our daughter the best?