Paris Day 7: the Past and Future of the Loire Valley

After a day relaxing at my mother's house, we set off to discover the Loire Valley.

We first headed out to the Chateau de St Fargeau, which has been lovingly restored by two brothers for 30 years. Just imagining their to do list and their budget gave me a headache: with 15 staircases, 250 windows, and over 2 acres of roof to maintain, their work is truly a labor of love.

The castle was really amazing to visit as they provided access to every part. Some rooms had been set up to recreate scenes from the lives of various previous owners like Anne Marie Louise d'Orleans, la Grande Demoiselle, a rich and eccentric cousin of Louis XIV who was exiled at St Fargeau, and Louis Michel LePeletier who was one of the first noblemen to be murdered during the French Revolution. Other rooms, like the guard room, was filled with swords and armor from the middle ages. We ran from basement to attic, posing as wenches in the kitchen, throwing Steve in jail, and imagining our lives ending in the guillotine.

Sightseeing in France requires a lot of explanations of violent history but the kids have been enthralled by it all. Rather than giving them nightmares, it's resulted in fascinating conversations about democracy, the rights of monarchs to their citizens, capitalism, and even the failure of communism! Just when I thought we were getting carried away, Bella blew me away when she answered Jack's question about whether bad guys ever win wars by saying,
"Jack, there are no bad guys or good guys, it's just whose side you're on depending on what you believe."

It only seemed fitting that after exploring the French past, we would also witness its future. We drove by the massive towers of a nuclear power plant and stood staring at the columns of steam it propelled into the sky. France is a big believer in nuclear energy. They have 56 nuclear power plants, generating 76% of the electricity used in France.

Paris Day 6: Off to the Country

We're now settled in my mother's house in the Loire Valley. My mother was born in nearby little village called Briare where she returned after my parents divorced. Although I lived in Paris as a child, my grandmother's house in Briare was where we spent weekends and vacations. We hunted for Easter eggs in its woods and pricked our fingers on blackberry bushes in the fall. Now when I return to France, it's where I feel most at home, surrounded by the seas of green and gold of the fields of the Loiret.

My mother lives with her new husband, Serge, in a remodeled medieval farmhouse near Briare. The house is built in a large square with a large courtyard in the middle. It's still easy to see how protected the house's inhabitants were in times of war once they swung shut the massive entrance doors to the complex. The kitchen and guest quarters are on one side of the square while the bedrooms of my mother and her husband are on the other. If she has a craving for a midnight snack on a rainy night, the only way to get it is to dash through the courtyard in the rain.

An hour and a half South of Paris, this is "La France Profonde" (deep country) where huge blue tractors will overtake you on dusty back roads and where jars of gun ammo will sit at the center of the table next to the bottle of red wine. My mother's life is a curious blend of cutting edge technology and old world traditions. She and her husband run a website selling electric horse fencing (an invention of his) while living on a huge property where they host frequent wild boar hunts. In their spare time, they play golf and he invents new products (the picture is of his latest project -the wine box).


This is rustic living, with drafty stone houses, dusty brick floors, and adventurous leaky plumbing. The house is overrun with animals: 4 dogs, 2 cats, kittens galore, and a horse, not to mention the 200 acre property filled with wild boar, foxes, bunnies, and pheasants. The kids are in heaven, suddenly free to roam wherever they please.

They've each "adopted" a dog and are busy exploring this new world. Juliette and Jack climbed a ladder and discovered a cherry tree laden with fruit and reappeared with vibrant red toothy grins. Bella gave us all the thrill of our lives when she took the wheel of the golf cart to drive us to the fishing pond.

At night, when dusk made the house seem just a little too spooky, all of their bravado vanished and they begged to share a bed. In this huge medieval farmhouse, my three little monsters bunked down together and fell fast asleep snuggled together, ready for another day of adventure.

Paris Day 5: Navigating the Dining Scene

When you've been waiting to return to Paris for 3 years and you only have 4 nights there, the pressure is high. It would be a significant challenge to just select a few restaurants from the thousands with amazing food in this culinary mecca on food alone, but we had another, much more difficult criteria to consider: kid friendliness.

Paris, unlike Spain and Greece, is not one of those cities where they dote on children. Their attitude is definitely that children should be seen and not heard, and if you've ever dined anywhere near my adorable monsters, you will concur that my children are heard long before they're seen.

We actually did pretty well for our first three nights out. The first night, still reeling from the long flight over, we opted for a very touristy fondue restaurant. The second night, we wandered around the hip neighborhood around our apartment and found a welcoming brasserie table on the street. We sat like true Parisians, checking out the hordes walking past our table, eating foie gras and drinking a lovely white Bourgogne while the kids devoured the fresh cut baguette. After we all feasted on the most buttery filet mignon cut we'd ever had along with some crispy salty fries. After dinner, we strolled the streets in search of the best sugar crepes in the neighborhood.

Our third night, we took on our first serious challenge when we headed to l'Entrecote, without a doubt our favorite restaurant in Paris, the one place we were determined not to skip. L'entrecote is an extremely popular restaurant which serves the same thing to all the patrons who stand on line to be admitted: salade au noix, sliced steak with a mysteriously addictive green sauce, and the best fries anywhere. Once you do get a seat, the waitress only asks you one question, "Quelle cuisson?" (What doneness?) We were on line before the doors opened and were seated quickly. The kids loved the food as much as we did. We left exhilerated by our successful dinner.

When we headed out for dinner for our last night in Paris, we were downright cocky, still high from our success at l'Entrecote. Steve and I had visions of glorious seafood platters and we boarded a taxi with the kids to a seafood restaurant recommended by our Paris with Kids guide for its excellent seafood and its 12 EURO children's menu. The quick cab ride was incredibly long, and we finally arrived in a very residential neighborhood. The first warning sign should have been the uniformed valet guy who opened our taxi door and gawked at our troop of children, but we ignored him and marched into le Marly.

The maitre d' was the second one to gawk. He seated us though and promptly distributed our menus including the kids' which were now 19 EUROS per child for a choice of pan seared tuna or hamburger (19 EUROS is roughly $25 - that's a $25 hamburger!). The prices on the rest of the menu were exorbitant, including the seafood platter we had dreamed of: 99 EUROS for two. Thankfully, the service was so slow that no one came to our table to take our drinks order for 10 minutes, just long enough for me to convince Steve to pack up our stuff and head out.

The minute we stepped back out in the Parisian spring evening, I felt calmer, knowing we weren't about to have a $400 meal with the kids. We headed back to the heart of the Quartier Latin, planning to just find a good but more casual restaurant.

We selected a little restaurant that looked authentic, right outside the Shakespeare & Company bookstore, across the street from the Loire. I approached the owner nervously, asking if he had a table for 5, including 3 children. It was now 8:30, prime time dining hour. He seemed friendly enough, and even asked whether we wanted an indoor or outdoor table. I told him we didn't mind, we just didn't want to be in the way with the kids, but he insisted that we choose.

So I chose. I asked to be inside.

Turned out to be the wrong answer.

As I was settling our bags under the table in the corner of the restaurant, Juliette was the first to get up on the banquette. Only she didn't sit. She stood up, reached up, and grabbed a porcelain statuette of a little man sitting on a chair.

I didn't see any of this. All I heard was the host, actually the same little man represented in the porcelain statue, yelling, "Non! Non! Non!"

I looked up, and grabbed the porcelain out of Juliette's hands just in time and handed it to him.

He thanked me, and then turned to Juliette and said, sternly, "Alors toi, assez. Si tu te releves, je te batterai moi meme!" (You, that's enough. If you get back up again, I'll beat you myself.)

You would think that I would have stormed out, yelled at the man, made a scene, but I did none of the above. Instead, I translated his threat, word for word, to my spellbound children until they finally believed me. And then we all had a very quiet, very peaceful dinner with some very well-behaved children.

But the next day, when we headed out of Paris off to my mother's house in the country, we were more than ready to bid farewell to the stressful Paris dinners. We'd eaten well, the kids have behaved well (mostly), and we were more than ready to go back to our usual rough-housing.

Paris Day 2: Bonjour Madame

The kids are getting a big kick out of finally seeing French in action, as opposed to in a boring classroom. I'm drilling into them the importance of being polite, and acknowledging all shopkeepers and waiters with the required "bonjour" and "merci". The trick is that "bonjour" and "merci" are not technically enough. They need to be seasoned with a "monsieur" or a "madame" to really be polite.

Only problem is... which one is which?

Sitting at the cafe for lunch today, Jack loudly greeted our waiter with a "Bonjour Madame!"
Our waiter frowned, and then replied with a wink,
"Bonjour Mademoiselle!"

Although Jack had been confused about the Monsieur/Madame, he mysteriously understood that he had just been called a little girl. He found it hilarious.

I probably should have started working on the table manners before landing in France!

Paris Day 1: L'Arrivee

After a surprisingly smooth flight, only made memorable by the sudden onslaught of parental guilt when we both woke up to find Juliette sleeping on the floor of the plane, we arrived in Paris. We picked up our luggage and cleared customs in minutes, just long enough for the kids to guffaw while saying "Bonjour" to the uniformed customs officer.

Next thing we knew, we were standing under the gray Parisian skies, trying to talk a taxi into taking our overly large American family in one car. "Cinq! Non, c'est trop." Finally we located a familiar shape: a minivan that agreed to take our brood into the Paris.

I talked my husband into doing something different this trip. Instead of staying at a hotel, we rented an apartment for four nights. The cost per night was marginally cheaper and it seemed much roomier. I did some research online before turning to my mother for help. Having left Paris at the age of 10, I'm not very familiar with the different neighborhoods and was flummoxed by all the options available.

In the taxi ride into Paris, while trying unsuccessfully to get the kids' eyes off their electronic screens to take in the sights, I fielded a few skeptical comments from Steve in the front seat. "I hope the apartment is nice... This woman had better be there to open the door... Where is it anyway?" I nodded, trying to convey a calming aura, but wondering what we would do if there was no one to greet us when our minivan dumped us with all our luggage in front of some random sealed apartment building.

We did indeed land in front of two monumental green wooden doors, but they did not remain locked for long. Our hostess opened them up and welcomed us into a palace. The apartment is a ground floor duplex with vaulted exposed brick ceilings and beautiful dark wooden beams throughout, all exquisitely decorated with antiques. There is even a courtyard! The kids started running around, shouting, "It's a castle! We're staying in a hotel castle!" She was no doubt getting nervous about having welcomed us in, but once our foot was in the door, there was no getting us out.

The Seine is just a few blocks away, the boulangerie is just around the corner, and cafes are all around. Our pied a terre is a hit and we are off for more adventures tomorrow.

I only hope that Juliette will be able to last four days without breaking this very expensive looking "tea party".