Ireland, Day Six: Visiting the Cliffs of Moher with kids

Short story: everything people say about the Irish countryside is true. Green and gorgeous! I’m not going to bother with a lot of words today because the pictures (almost) say it all. If you are a visiting Ireland solo or as a family, visiting the Cliffs of Moher should be at the top of your to-do list. (But keep a tight grip on the kids!)

If you are out to see the Cliffs, by the way, I’d also suggest seeing some other sights in the Burren — particularly the Aillwee Cave and Birds of Prey Center — if you are traveling with kids. But we’ll get to that a little later on.

For our final full day in Ireland, we visited the Cliffs of Moher on the west coast of the country in County Clare. We stayed at the most wonderful AirBnB house in a town not far outside the city of Ennis, Kilysdart, which was only about 40 minutes from the Cliffs.

Friday was the first day we didn’t get lucky and avoid the rain, but the Cliffs were so gorgeous it hardly mattered.

The Cliffs of Moher are between about 400 and 700 feet above the sea.

My lens was a little fuzzy from the rain. Cliffs of Moher with kids. 

We parked in the visitor’s center area and walked over to see the Cliffs. A good portion of this area had paved areas, concrete viewing places, steps and a wall to keep people from plummeting to their doom.

Further down you could walk on a much rougher path with no fence. We didn’t want the kids to jump offf of it but we did want to walk further, so we sent Owen with Gail and David back to the visitor’s center. It can be so handy traveling with other adults!

Fiona stayed with us because she was safely strapped to my back. Carriers = must-have item if you are traveling to the Cliffs of Moher with kids (well, with babies or toddlers or unreliable adults who can’t be trusted not to endanger themselves — see photo above for reference on that last one.)

After the Cliffs of Moher: the Burren with kids

Once we had our fill of the Cliffs — the visitor’s center was also worth a visit, by the way — we decided to follow our Rick Steves’ guide and do some driving in the Burren.

The best description of the Burren comes from a Cromwellian Army officer in 1651, who described the region as having “not enough water to drown a man, wood enough to hang one, nor earth enough to bury one.” It is a rather strange place characterized by exposed limestone that dominates the landscape with very little soil cover. It kind of looks like the place where you’d film a post-apocolyptic movie where humans have destroyed the environment.

The Burren (that name comes from an Irish word meaning “rocky place, btw) isn’t like any other place I’ve seen, but pretty in its own way.

We stopped at a few of the sights suggested in our Rick Steves guide, which outlined a driving tour of the Burren. One of these was the Caherconnell Ring Fort, an ancient and well-preserved ring fort dating back to around 10th century. There is also believed to be Bronze Age structure right next to the ring fort where student archaeologists are working and learning.

We heard a lot about ring forts during our trip, perhaps unsurprisingly give that tens of thousands of places have been identified as former ring forts in Ireland alone. They were homes to a family and perhaps their dependents, status symbols, defensive structures and a way of keeping livestock safe and contained when needed.

This sort of stacked-stone method was used to construct the walls of the ring forts, and apparently they required a lot of upkeep. 

I have to admit that we didn’t find this to be the most interesting thing in the world, but it was nice for the kids to have the opportunity to run around since we’d either been in the car or keeping a tight grip on them all day long.

Our final stop of the day was the Aillwee Cave and Birds of Prey Center, both of which the kids loved. We got to watch a Birds of Prey show, and since we were one of only three families who were there, the kids got to volunteer to hold an owl (both of them) and a hawk (just Owen). They were completely pumped!

In addition to the show, you could also walk through an look at all the birds on display and listen to an audioguide (included in the price). We found Hedwig!

Even though we are from southern Indiana, where there are show caves a-plenty, neither Chris or I had ever been in one. The Aillwee cave impressed us a lot as a result, as did the roughly one-hour tour that took us (what felt like, at least) deep into the earth with a guide who explained to us the history of Aillwee and the formation of the cave. It was fascinating! However, if you are at all claustrophobic this is probably not the place for you.

Our last stop of the day was a restaurant in Ennis, a town that was allegedly hosting some kind of music festival when we were in town (contributing factor for why we chose to stay near there). Unfortunately, none of the music — which proved to be at various local restaurants — was starting at the relatively early hour we decided to dine and we were too exhausted to hang around. Our meal was still great though.

Overall, we absolutely loved Ireland and wish we could have seen more before we had to drive back to Dublin and catch our flights on Saturday. We actually looked into seeing if we could delay our flight home so that we could spend a couple extra days and go to the Ring of Kerry, but Aer Lingus flies between Dublin and Catania just twice a week and the timing didn’t really work out. I guess that means we’ll just have to go back some day!

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IRELAND, DAY 5: The Rock of Cashel with kids

With incredible scenery, fascinating history and plenty of room to run around, visiting the Rock of Cashel with kids turned out to be an excellent choice for our Ireland trip. Located in the middle of the country, the Rock of Cashel feels “on the way” to so many attractions if you are leaving from Dublin. If you are looking for a day trip from Dublin, visiting the Rock of Cashel with kids can also be a reasonable option as it is only two hours away by car.

This visit was the fifth day of a six-day long trip in Ireland with my in-laws; for details on the the rest of our trip, see here and here and here and here. 

When we started planning our trip to Ireland, I knew very little about what exactly we should go see other than a vague notion of seeing “the countryside.” Once we started researching, it turned out that to cover every sight that seemed vitally important, we’d need about a month. We had six days.

By the way, one of those sights were really interested in seeing was the incredible Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. We didn’t make it this time, but if you are interested in going, check out my friend Elizabeth’s post on the visiting the Giant’s Causeway with kids. 

The Rock of Cashel, however, was nearly a no-brainer (in part because its proximity made it “on the way” to the two finalists for our last two days in Ireland, the Cliffs of Moher area or Ring of Kerry area). It took us about two hours to drive to the Rock of Cashel from the Dublin Airport, with pretty countryside all along the way.

I’ve already talked about all the drama that ensued Thursday with our rental car, but once we got on the road it was smooth sailing. (Or, almost smooth sailing depending on how you view my driving-in-Ireland skills.)

Brief history of the Rock of Cashel

A quick back story of the Rock of Cashel: It was a fortress used by the kings of Munster for hundreds of years, changing hands frequently because it was of such strategic importance. In 1101, the King of Munster decided to donate it to the Church — a strategic move because it a) won him the goodwill and support of the church and b) effectively took the Rock out of play because he wouldn’t have it, but no one else would either. From there, it became an important religious site and home to archbishops and a cathedral was built. The Rock was sacked in 1647 when the town of Cashel’s inhabitants refused to surrender to the forces of (military commander, rebel and future Lord Protector of England) Oliver Cromwell, and an estimated 1,000 people who had taken refuge inside the cathedral were massacred. It went into decline and a state of disrepair after that, and a new cathedral was eventually built elsewhere in the town.

What hapens when we try to take a nice family picture … 

Visiting the Rock of Cashel with kids

We took a guided tour of the place; they have these every 15 minutes and I highly recommend doing this. Without a tour, we wouldn’t have had the faintest idea what we were looking at or why it was significant. Now, I know taking guided tours with kids can be a bit of a risky business — you never know if their attention is going to last and there is always the worry they are going to choose the wrong moment to be loud. Taking the tour at the Rock of Cashel with kids, however, worked out pretty well because it was almost exclusively outdoors. When they got loud, we just walked a way a bit.

Part of the Cathedral built in the 1200s, and the distinctive Round Tower discussed here. 

This was an enormous Celtic cross erected as a monument by a family buried here. Unfortunately they used a metal rod to reinforce it and a lightning strike resulted in the top half cracking off. Another reason to visit the Rock of Cashel with kids: for some reason, broken things seem to interest them. Kids are weird. 

The cemetary here was closed to new people sometime in the 1930s, but before that there was a list that people who had relatives buried here could sign in order to ensure they could join their family eventually. Now there are just three elderly women left, and they will be the last to be buried here. 

Stone fence surrounds the whole thing, which means if you visiting the Rock of Cashel with kids, they can run around! And you can lay down. 

We really liked having a tour of the place, but we really enjoyed that afterward we could hang out for as long as we wanted to look at all the tombstones, rest or run around. Benefits of driving ourselves! Seriously though, kids need time to run around and be kids even while on vacation. At the Rock of Cashel, they had the chance to do that.

Well, that’s adorable. 

The Rock of Cashel with kids — not only was it doable, it was great fun!

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Fun. Fairly chill. Easier than expected. 

Words I use to describe our experience driving around in Ireland, with me (exclusively) at the wheel.

Nerve-racking. White knuckles. Life flashed before my eyes.

Words my husband used to describe our experience driving around Ireland with me at the wheel.

Clearly, we’ll have to agree to disagree on this. But, I do assure you he’s being extremely dramatic. We hit nothing* and, contrary to his beliefs, we were not particularly close to hitting anything either. I’d also like to note that his account of it all has grown more dramatic with each retelling.

Anyway, THE TRUTH** 

It really wasn’t nearly as scary as I expected to be. I’ve only had one other experience driving on the left side of the road — I rented a scooter for several days in Thailand in 2008 — but on the motorway (highway) the traffic is completely divided so the only thing to remember was that the “fast lane” is on the right. In towns it took a smidge more gettng used to, particularly going “the wrong way” on roundabouts, but I felt pretty adjusted by the end of the first day. As in Sicily, the roads were quite narrow in a lot of places, but overall they were much better maintained and tended to be better marked than they are here. And the signs were all in English! (Also Gallic, as were all signs in Ireland).

I do think it would have been more stressful if I hadn’t already spent about eight months here driving a large van through very narrow streets and a lot of traffic. I mean, it was still stressful but much less than just driving in downtown Catania can be. Chris’ chief complaint came from his belief that I was driving too close to the edge of the road on the narrow streets on the passenger side, but I’d point out that while it was an adjustment — I kept feeling like I was driving headfirst into traffic on my side — I ultimately threaded the needle well enough to avoid hitting anything. Also noteworthy: I was the only one to drive in Ireland at all because it was deemed “your big idea.”

Anyway.

The one thing that actually did prove somewhat stressful was the car itself. Thursday morning we had to be out of our AirBnb by 10/10:30, and had plans to pick up the van I’d rented at 9 a.m. Since it was some distance away, Chris and I took a cab to go fetch it and left Gail and David with the kids and the bags. We expected to be back in plenty of time to load the kids and all our baggage into the car and be on our way by 10.

Instead, a mess. The van I reserved from Thrifty Car was billed as being a minivan for seven people and five bags. I pictured something akin to my own minivan. Instead, we were showed to a car that would have been a small five-seater vehicle. The sixth and seventh seats that could be pulled up in the back were ludicrous, no adult could reasonably have sat there and I’d doubt if we could have even gotten Fi’s carseat in. And the “space for five bags”? HAHAHAHAHA. The Thrifty Car representative feebly offered that the website had perhaps meant “space for five carry-on bags.” Again, a complete joke — you could perhaps have fit five small purses, and only if you pushed the back seats so far forward as to make them useless.

So, cue panic. We asked about bigger, automatic vans and they had a 9-passenger automatic one … for 1,300 euro. So about what my family had paid for our flight to Dublin PLUS all four nights at our AirBnB. We considered renting another car, but two cars for the trip? A nightmare. We considered storming off and trying to find another company with a more reasonably-priced van, but again that would take time and what if we couldn’t find one?

I probably don’t need to tell you how I was feeling at this point, but here is a visual representation of my mood all the same:

Finally, the Thrifty Guy suggested that he had a 7-passenger (actual) van at their location at the airport, which they could give for “only” almost twice what we were paying for the original van we’d reserved. That didn’t thrill me, but it was the best we could do. Awesome Thrify Girl offered to drive us to the airport to save time, which we really appreciated. However, it still left us in the quandry because a considerable amount of time had passed and now Gail, David, the kids and about six suitcases of varying sizes were hanging out outside our apartment. A regular taxi to send them to the airport wasn’t an option — too much luggage, too many people and no carseats. I tried calling the carseat-possessing taxi guy that I had used before and got him to agree to come with his van, but he didn’t have the carseat or booster seat with him. This is when Awesome Thrify Girl earned her name and offered to drop off the carseat and booster we were renting from them at the AirBnb. {Also at this point, the original taxi guy called back to say he had decided he didn’t have time after all — panic! — but ultimately he found someone else to send.}

Once we arrived at the AirBnb, Awesome Thrifty Girl agreed to have us take Fiona in her car as well as some of the bags, which mercifully took some pressure off Gail and David. She was also able to just go grab the keys for us from behind the counter once we got to the airport, which was a relief because there was an unbelievably epic line there.

The van itself proved to a Volkswagen, and very similar to the Eurovan I learned to drive on (minus the distinctive bright blue color of our beloved family van, Zippy). It didn’t have much giddyup when trying to accelerate, but I did manage to get it up to a reasonable 140 km/hour on the motorway at various points. It was certainly very wide and long, but it had room for everyone so no complaints here. We drove from Dublin to Cashel to a town near Ennis without incident that day, but of course our car drama wasn’t quite over …

Flat. Tire.

We were actually really lucky that this happened when it did, rather than on the highway. And we’re lucky that we discovered it when we did, as it would have been a huge hassle to have to change in the following morning when we were trying to go to the Cliffs of Moher and it was raining a ton. Instead, Chris and I discovered it in the evening as we were about to make a run to town from our beautiful countryside AirBnB into the town of Kilysdart to grab some dinner for everyone.

Locating the spare and getting it detached proved problematic, and resulted in three of us laying on the ground at various points and Chris whacking himself in the head with the wrench. But once it was off, Chris and David got it replaced pretty quickly. This was a particularly good thing because I had called the Thrifty helpline (back when I thought there wasn’t a spare tire in the car) and was told that it was $200 for someone to come out and replace it.

I need hardly say how unimpressed I am with Thrifty Car as an organization, though obviously Awesome Thrifty Girl was Awesome.

At any rate, I would still overall highly recommend driving in Ireland (with the exception of Dublin, where parking would suck). We’ve now done two consecutive trips that included a renting a car for a portion of it, and I’ve really enjoyed it both times (though obviously the process went a bit less smoothly this time compared to our time in the Loire Valley). Driving on your own gives you the opportunity to see the countryside as you are going, stop when you want to, linger at sights that catch your interest and — spoken like a mom here — store all your stuff. When we are walking around a city, we tend to take everything we need for the day and carry it in a backpack. WIth a car, you can prepare for all eventualities without actually having to carry around a snowsuit in July “just in case” your kid gets cold. Winning.

I do, however, recommend triple checking what kind of car you are actually getting. GRRRRRRR.

Road right outside our Kilysdart rental house. In the distance, the River Shannon. 

*Except some branches overhanging into the road, which do not count beause they are branches. hanging. in. the street. Chris disagrees that these “don’t count,” but also hit some branches just the other day while we were driving around in Sicily. So.

**Because it is my blog, and I get to decide.

The post IRELAND, interlude: Renting a car on the Emerald Isle first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post IRELAND, interlude: Renting a car on the Emerald Isle appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

If you missed the first three blogs on our stay in Dublin, find them here and here and here. Warning on that last one: I just added a new picture of Fiona hugging a lamb that my mother-in-law caught. It is ridiculously adorable.

When planning our trip to France, we took a bit of a departure from our previous methods and decided to make a pretty specific plan for what we’d try to do each day. (In the past, we’d mostly tended to just have a rough idea of what we wanted to do for the entire trip and then decide as we went). I really preferred this way of doing things because it generally meant we had things planned in a logical order, and we were never surprised by showing up at a museum and finding out it was, for example, closed on Mondays.

Because we’d figured this out in France, I’d had every intention of trying to get very specific about planning day-by-day in Dublin. Well, life kind of got in the way. With just three weeks between the two trips, I got bogged down by playing catch up from being gone, trying to get ready for Ireland and (most of all) trying to finish several writing assignments before we left. Our trip was by no means “unplanned” — for example, we’d had our tours and rental car booked, Guinness tickest purchased, van-taxi from the hotel sorted out, etc — but a couple of times not having thoroughly researched everything kind of bit us. For example: we tried to go to the Kilmainham Gaol on  Monday and had no idea that it was so popular that you absolutely need tickets ahead of time. Whoops!

Luckily, we managed to get into the Goal after all on Wednesday because there were still two times available when we went online to buy them. I’m relieved that we did because it ended up being one of my favorite parts of our trip.

So the Kilmainham Gaol was built in 1796, and it has an overall a long, sad history (unsurprisingly for a prison, I suppose) that includes people committing crimes on purpose to get sent to prison, and thus fed, during the Great Famine. However, it is best known because of its association with the Irish revolutionary movement. Many Irish revolutionaries were imprisoned and/or executed here, among them the leaders of the 1916 Easter RIsing.

Our guide for this visit was excellent. Throughout the tour, which lasted a little more than an hour, he explained the history of the jail and its political significance in an interesting, easy-to-follow way that didn’t drone too much. Fiona was asleep in my carrier during the majority of the tour, but Owen was pretty interested. I do recommend that you use a carrier for toddlers and younger — it is a tight space and some of the steps can be pretty steep.

Note: I didn’t get many decent pictures at the jail because it was mostly quite dark and I had a kid to haul around. 

Throughout the tour, our guide shared a lot of anecdotes about people who had been prisoners in the jail over the years. Among these was Joseph Plunkett, one of the leaders of the Easter Rising. Plunkett was allowed to marry his fiancee, Grace Gifford, just hours before he was executed by firing squad at the jail. Afterward, Grace went on to be promote Sinn Fein policies and became a political cartoonist. She was imprisoned herself in Kilmainham in 1923 during the Irish Civil War, during which times she drew inside her cell. This one, which you can see only through the peep hole in the door, is called the Kilmainham Madonna.

I’m not sure our guide would love this pic, but this is right outside Grace’s cell. 

This is the site of the executions of 14 people in May 1916 in the aftermath of the Easter Rising.

This marks the spot where General James Connolly, a man already mortally wounded in battle, was executed. Connolly had to be brought to the jail via ambulance because he was already nearly dead, then ultimately tied to a chair so that he could be shot after he lost consciousness. According to our guide, this was so outrageous to much of the Irish public that it actually took a movement that didn’t initially have a ton of support at the time and magnified it.

The tour ended here, but there was also a nice museum at the jail to peruse, which we did for a little while. Overall, I’d say Kilmainham Gaol is at the top of my list for Dublin recommendations, followed closely by the Guinness Storehouse.

The jail was actually the second stop of the day. We’d purchased a three-day pass for a hop-on,hop-off bus on Monday — incidentally I do not recommend this — and planned to use it to get to all our sights on this particular day. We decided to hit up the National Museum of Ireland – Archeology first, then hope to get to Dublin Castle after the jail since it was open later than the museum. Unfortunately, the hop-on, hop-off turned out to be a bit of a hassle and it took so long to get to the museum that we were left with not much time to explore. Luckily, it was free so we didn’t feel it was a waste to go in and have less than an hour there, and it did turn out to be really interesting.

They had a lot of Viking artifacts, including a lot of gold jewelry and some weapons, that Owen and Fiona were interested in, but for the grown ups the highlight was the “bog mummies.” These are bodies that were perserved in peat bogs in Ireland and other northern European countries, retaining their skin and organs even. They are a little creepy to look at — one even has fingernails! — but fascinating. The bodies on display died violently more than 4,000 years ago, and were possibly human sacrifices.

We had taken a taxi from the National Musuem to the jail so that we wouldn’t waste another hour on the bus, and after the jail we decided to try a taxi in order to make it to Dublin Castle before close as well. It worked out in the sense that we made it there with a little less than an hour, but there wasn’t room in the final tour of the day and we ultimately decided that the price tag wasn’t worth it for only having 45 mintues to wander by ourselves. Oh well!

We ended up wrapping up our final night in Dublin with a nice dinner and a little walking around. Overall, we really liked Dublin. Everyone was very friendly and the city was just kind of low-key and fun. Chris declared several times that he could live there, but part of that may have been that we got extremely lucky with the weather. We arrived during what several locals described as a “heat wave,” with temperatures rising to about 70 and, best of all, NO RAIN!

Next on the agenda: The Blog Where I Endlessly Scared Christopher While Driving On The Left Side of the Road. Stay tuned, folks.

The post IRELAND, Day Four: Last Day in Dublin first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

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As we were planning our trip, we — me, Chris, Gail and David — spent a lot of time trying to figure out which sites in Ireland to prioritize. There were about a dozen places we wanted to see, but given that they were mostly in disparate parts of the country and we has less than six days to work with, choices had to be made.

From this was born the idea of taking day trips from a home base of Dublin, something Chris and I haven’t done a lot of but were interested in. After debating a lot about taking tours on possibly two of our four days in Dublin (this would have been a huge mistake, btw) to go to some combination of the Giant’s Causeway/Northern Ireland, Blarney Castle, Cliffs of Moher, Glendalough/Kilkenny/Wicklow, we finally settled on just the final one. A big motivating factor was that it was considerably shorter than some of the other tours, about 8 hours compared to 13, and that a friend had highly recommended Glendalough. We went with Wild Rover Tours because the company had great reviews.

Overall, we liked the experience of doing a tour (with a few reservations). I’m not really thinking that we’ll be converts to taking a lot of tours, but it was a nice break to do it one day.

The pros:

-I loved not having to make decisions or figure out transporation for the day — we just showed up on the bus when told. It is very liberating to not have to plan everything out.

-It was really interesting to hear some Irish history and lore from our bus driver as we drove along, including learning about fairy trees.

-It was an efficient way to see some sites.

-Riding the bus gave the kids the chance to nap between sites, more so than other travel days.

-The buses themselves were very nice. And they had seatbelts and booster seats.

The cons: 

-We felt a bit rushed and, given that we wanted to have dinner, didn’t really see much in Kilkenny. I’m guessing we were expected to just grab sandwiches at one of the sites to eat on the bus, which makes sense from a time point of view but isn’t our favorite.

Anyway! Onto the tour itself. We got picked up at a site not far from our apartment at about 8:30, which seemed like a fairly civilized time for us. From there, our first stop was a sheepdog demonstration en route to Glendalough. The kids really liked it, especially when they got to hug a 3-day-old lamb named Sophie and pat Jim the dog.

I wish I’d gotten a picture of Fiona’s face when she got to hug this lamb. Pure joy. 

UPDATE: My mother-in-law had a picture of Fiona and Sophie the Lamb! YAY!

From there, it was on to Glendalough, one of the most important monastic communities in Ireland in its time. It was founded in the 6th Century by the future St. Kevin, and supposedly at one point a pope declared that seven visits to Glendalough would equal one visit to Rome in terms of pilgrimage value. If you were already in Ireland, I suppose this seemed like a good value!

Our guide took us around the sites in Glendalough, including the cemetary, round tower, former cathedral and St. Kevin’s Cross (though we missed some of the tour because Fiona and Owen needed a bathroom).

I would liked to have spent more time in the cemetary, but we ran out of time. 

This round tower would have been used mostly for storage and as a beacon for people coming to Glendalough. Elsewhere in Ireland, we were told that these structures are unique to Ireland and found all over the place. 

St. Kevin’s Cross. If you can get your arms around it, you’ll get your wishes granted. Sadly, my arms weren’t long enough. 

After finishing up his own talk, our guide recommended that we take a walk to the Upper Lake (Glendalough is between two lakes), telling us that it would take about 15 minutes to get there. It was indeed a lovely walk, and I really enjoyed the scenery along the way. As far as I could tell, there were tons of paths all over the area, including one to a waterfall, and we could have easily spent a whole day here exploring.

However, this walk didn’t take anywhere near 15 minutes. And it wasn’t like a “we couldn’t make it in 15 minutes because we had two small kids” thing — I had Fiona strapped to my back and Owen walks reasonably fast. It took about double that for both us and my in-laws, which meant that once we got to the lake we had little time to stop and admire because we were worried about getting back in time. Others on our tour said the same thing. When I asked our guide about it, he simply joked (I think?) that he makes it in 7.5 minutes. I mean, that’s funny but considering the dire warnings we received about how we’d be left behind if we didn’t get back in time it seems like it would be wise for guides to give a more realistic time frame!

That said, I really do recommend visiting Glendalough and doing this walk because it was beautiful. We were lucky enough to have perfect weather as well.

Once we made it back to the bus, it was on to a brief photo stop in the Wicklow Mountains (“if some of you live near mountains you might say, ‘these aren’t mountains, these are hills!’ our guide said (paraphrased.) Accurate.

And then it was on to Kilkenny. From here, we could have taken a 30-minute walking tour down the medieval mile with our tour guide, but at this point we were all pretty much starving and eyeing a restaurant we had just passed that overlooked Kilkenny Castle. The result was that we didn’t end up having time to tour the castle or head down the medieval mile, but having a great meal, some drinks and sitting in the sunshine overlooking a castle felt like a great trade.

There’s not much to report after this* — we took the bus back to Dublin and had a chill night after this long day — so I’ll leave you with this one thing.

This three-tiered platter? It was once full of sandwiches and various pastries and such. A pair of women sitting at a table near us had ordered it, but had only eaten a fraction of all the stuff because it was huge. As they were leaving, they came up to us with the platter and told us that we should eat some of it since it was going to waste. Well, there were desserts on there … who were we to argue? So naturally we were pretty much destroying the thing when the waitress came to clear the other women’s now-empty table and Chris noticed that she kept looking at our table. Suddenly we realized that they probably thought we’d gone over and snagged the platter after the ladies left, at which point Chris insisted that I tell the waitress what happened so she didn’t think we were scavengers. Apparently my explanation was not considered particularly convincing. Whoops?

*Unless you count Fiona loudly yelling ‘I HAVE TO PEE OUT OF MY BAGINA!!!!’ over and over on the bus ride home. Obviously we have some work to do on both discretion and anatomy.

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In case you missed it, my account of our low-key first day in Dublin is here.

With Monday came the first of what we lovingly termed “the death march days.” It is a running joke (maybe a joke?) that I try to drag Chris and the kids to the very end of their tether every single place we go, and I guess Gail and David got to experience this as well. Whoops. I’m working on it, truly.

That said – Monday was great. We started with a tour of the Guinness Storehouse, with tickets we had purchased online in advance. I highly recommend this, by the way – it is an extremely popular attraction and you don’t want to miss your chance to go. When you are buying the tickets, your pricing depends on what time of day you want to go. Mornings are cheapest, and things get progressively more expensive as the day wears on. Naturally we chose 9:45 in the morning – and even though that sounds too early for beer, the storehouse takes ages to explore and by the time you get to the beer it’ll be a much more reasonable beer time. Like noon.

We loved Guinness. I had a mental picture of basically seeing bottles being filled or something, but it was more of an interactive museum. With beer! You walk in and immediately (next to the gift shop, ha) you see the original lease for 9,000 years signed by Arthur Guinness in 1759. It is right at the bottom of the seven-story “pint glass” in the middle of the museum; if filled, it would hold 14.2 million pints.

Guinness has since bought the land on which it sits, so no worries about the lease. 

Fiona by a pool of grains

The place included explanations of how the beer is made, company history, advertising from throughout the years and across the globe and – the best – beer tasting and instruction for making a perfect pour.

I will freely admit that we did not see a ton of other people with young children at the Storehouse, but we found it to be perfectly kid friendly. Possibly because everything was so visually interesting, the kids really seemed to enjoy themselves.

At the end of the tour you can take your (perfectly poured) Guinness and go up to the glass-walled Gravity Bar on the top floor for awesome views! It was really cool, but the only problem was that it was quite crowded so we didn’t linger long.

We also ate both snacks and lunch at Guinness and were really impressed. Everything we got was delicious and not outrageously priced like you’d expect at a major tourist attraction.

From there, we hit up Phoenix Park, the biggest enclosed park in Europe. It is absolutely enormous, about twice the size of Central Park in New York. Apparently there are 400-something tame deer living in there, though we didn’t run into any of them. Chris was interested in seeing a monument to the Duke of Wellington, the Irish-born general Arthur Wellesley who ultimately defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.

This was the tallest obelisk in the world until the construction of the Washington Monument, at least according to our hop-on, hop-off bus driver. 

We also try to stack activities that we want to do with stuff we are sure the kids will like – though honestly they often end up liking the activities we think they might be bored by after all. Example: we planned to follow our visit to Napoleon’s Tomb in Paris with a visit to the Luxembourg Gardens. This time, we decided to let the kids play at the playground in Phoenix Park for a while so they could recover from the Guinness Storehouse. Us too.

For such an enormous park, I was a little surprised that the playground wasn’t larger. Especially because we noticed as soon as we got to Ireland that there were about a zillion kids everywhere, much different than Paris. We googled and Ireland does in fact have one of Europe’s highest birth rates.

We were already pretty tired at that point but decided to go see the Book of Kells at Trinity College (see: death marching) for fear of not having time on our only other day in Dublin. I’m so glad that we did because it was really impressive. If you are unfamiliar, the Book of Kells is an illuminated book containing four of the gospels in the New Testament, created by monks around 800 AD. It isn’t super clear how it managed to survive when so many other manuscripts didn’t, but it did and it is beautiful. I couldn’t take pictures of it, but it is something to behold. This one, I will admit, the kids weren’t overly impressed by.

Another part of Trinity College. This library would make Belle jealous even after Beast gives her his.

From there, it was a quick dinner in Temple Bar and then a return home after we were all basically falling asleep at the table. Literally, in Fiona’s case!

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The post Guinness Storehouse and Trinity College with kids appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Our 6 days in Ireland: Visiting Dublin with kids

Well, we’re back from what Chris has officially dubbed “my favorite place we’ve been.” High praise! We spent 6 days in Ireland, including Dublin, a day trip to Glendalough and a road trip to the west of the country.

Our trip kicked off with 3 days in Dublin, where we met my in-laws, Gail and David. We had a great time seeing Dublin with kids — it is a wonderfully child-friendly city!

Ahem, we also thought it was an “adult-friendly” city as well. Guess why? 

Note: if you are going to Dublin with young kids, I’d say 3 days is about the minimum you want to have to make the most of Dublin. With strategic planning and a little older crew, you’ll be able to get a lot out of 2 days in Dublin!

Things to do in Dublin with kids

Note: this post has been updated to reflect Chris’ April 2018 visit here! 

If you are headed to Dublin with kids, rest assured there is plenty to do! Here were our favorites for the entire family.

1. Guinness Storehouse. Sounds like it wouldn’t be child-friendly, but you’d be surprised. Whether you are headed to Dublin with kids or without, this place should be on your agenda. Read more here.
2. Phoenix Park. The perfect spot to run off some extra energy, climb some playground equipment or search for deer. Read more here.
3. Kilmainham Gaol. Fascinating and educational; even our 4-year-old was interested in the 1-hour tour of this place. Absolutely do not miss this place — and remember to book your tickets ahead. Read more here.
4. National Museum of Ireland — Archeology. If your kids are little museum buffs like ours, they’ll love the National Museum of Ireland! Especially the peat bogs, which are pleasingly creepy. Read more here.
5. Dublin Zoo. Located within Phoenix Park, this is a spot we didn’t hit on our May 2017 trip. Chris, however, had the chance to visit in 2018 and said it was outstanding. We won’t miss it next time.
6. Trinity College. Going to see the Book of Kells might not seem like a big thrill for kids, but the place itself was so visually interesting (think Beauty and the Beast) that I wouldn’t skip it. Read more here.
7. Dublin Castle. We only saw the outside of this one due to time constraints, but next time we are in Dublin with kids we’ll be touring it! We’ve heard great reports.

When we next have the chance to check out Dublin again with our crew, I’d also like to plan to visit an indoor waterpark — AquaZone — and Imaginosity, billed at the Dublin Children’s Museum.

But, I’ll get into these sites a little more below and in the posts to come!

Why 6 days in Ireland?

Gail and David were planning to come see us this year, but we also wanted to do some kind of a trip together. To be honest, I have no idea how we finally settled on Ireland given that when we first started discussing it Gail said she was basically interested in everywhere in Europe except Portugal. And then David chimed in that he thought Portugal would actually be cool … as you can imagine, narrowing it down was tricky! None of us had been to Ireland and we all wanted to see it, so it eventually won out. One bonus was that it was an easy, nonstop flight from Chicago. (My in-laws live in Indianapolis, but since overseas flights from Indianapolis tend to be dramatically more expensive they chose to drive to Chicago to fly from there). Overall, all four of us were (I think!) thrilled with our choice, though we wish we’d spent more time there.

Chris, the kids and I arrived in Dublin around 1 a.m. Sunday morning because Aer Lingus offers just two nonstop flights between Catania and Dublin per week at this time of year, so choices were limited. We picked a hotel near the airport so that we could get to bed quickly (wishful thinking) and as an easy meetup point with Gail and David when they arrived later Sunday morning. We also arranged for a large taxi-van with car seats to pick us up from there, and arranged with our AirBnB host to drop off our bags early.

Day 1 in Dublin with kids: Dining at Ireland’s oldest pub and taking it easy

Sunday was a low-key day in Dublin because we were exhausted from our late-night flight, and Gail and David hadn’t been able to get any sleep at all on the plane. We decided to have lunch at The Brazen Head, which was founded in 1198 and is reported to be the oldest pub in Dublin. It also proved to be a rather further walk than we thought – sorry, guys. I didn’t love my food, but everyone else really liked theirs and it was generally a fun pub atmosphere.

I had optimistically booked us a free walking tour through Sanderman’s Walking Tours for the afternoon, but by the time out 2 p.m. meetup point came around we were exhausted and drinking beer in The Brazen Head felt like a much better idea. If we had more time, I would have rebooked though – I’ve heard really good things.

From there, Chris and the kids and I just explored Dublin a bit while Gail and David got some sleep at last. We walked through Temple Bar and had some snacks, including possibly the best wings we’ve ever had. Temple Bar seemed like a fun area, if you don’t have two cranky preschoolers in tow! Speaking of the kids – Owen and Fiona were asleep by about 5:30 and 6 p.m., respectively, and slept until the next morning. Poor guys were tired!

We took turns grabbing dinner while they slept – it was SO NICE to be in a place where you can eat before 8 p.m. if you are so inclined. And even nicer to have a date opportunity with Chris! We went to the Bleecker Street Café – it isn’t super impressive looking on the outside, but it was good food and good times inside. I recommend the chicken curry.

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Many of the people who know me in real life know about my love of British royal history … my guilty pleasure being literally any historical fiction novel based on Plantagenets, Tudors, etc. I also have an affection for French history, however, so this day made me a happy lady.

Naturally, I got to start my day off by lecturing Chris about some of the principal characters related to the history of the castles we were going to see that day, in particular Queen Catherine de Medici and Diane de Poiters. “Luckily” for Chris, I had just recently read a biography about Catherine so I had lots of fun facts to share.

Rough excerpts of our conversation:

“Born in Florence to the powerful Medici family, she was the niece of a pope -”

“- parents both dead before she was a month old – ”

“- invading Spanish troops laying seige to Florence called for her to dragged out of her convent naked at age 11-”

“- universally considered pretty unfortuante looking -”

” – married to the second son of the King of France, known to history as his “least favorite son,” because the king badly needed the huge dowry she brought and the friendship of a Medici pope – ”

“- that pope promptly dies and leaves her dowry unpaid, pissing off the French – ”

” – husband ignores her in favor of his mistress, courtiers call for him to divorce her – ”

Right about here is where Chris jumped in to ask why he needed to know about this very unfortuante sounding woman. Answer: because she ultimately ends up being one of the more powerful women in French history, the power behind the throne for 30 years. Also? She is accused of assassinating many people (including by poisoning) throughout her life, and definitely did do some of that.

So, our first stop of the day was Chateau de Chenonceau, a gorgeous castle that is deeply intewined with the personal histories of three women, among them Catherine de Medici and her rival, Diane de Poiters. But first, a look at this gorgeous place.

So, the Catherine/Diane drama. Catherine marries Henry, duke d’Orleans, when they are both 14. By 15 or 16, however, Henry — soon to become the Dauphin after the death of his older brother — takes up with Diane de Poiters, a woman 21 years his senior. Diane becomes Henry’s queen in all but name after he ascends to the throne and Catherine, who was already facing criticism for not conceiving, basically has to suck up to Diane to keep her from speaking against her. She even ends up acting as her informant/spy at various points. For her part, Diane is not particularly eager for Henry to divorce his ugly wife and marry some hot princess who might not be so tolerant of her taking precedence, so she ends up helping Catherine conceive — by kicking Henry out of her bed and ordering him to go spend some time with Catherine. Catherine finally ends up with a son after a decade of marriage, then nine more children in 12 years. Go figure. At any rate, however, she is still completely powerless at court. Diane picks her children’s tutors, where they’ll live, what they’ll study, what they’ll wear — everything.

Where Chenonceau figures in: Catherine de Medici believed that her late father-in-law had promised this castle, which she loved, to her. Henry naturally hands it over to Diane instead, so Catherine has to settle for nearby Chaumont. She is not pleased.

AND NOW WE ENTER THE REVENGE PHASE. So for 20-odd years Catherine has to see Diane basically every day, watch her be set up in Catherine’s rightful place, watch her usurp her role as mother … until Henry drops dead. More accurately, while he is on his deathbed. While Henry is crying out for Diane as he is dying, she has her barred from the room. When Henry is dead, one of her first actions is to have someone inform Diane that she never wants to see her again, effectively banishing her from court. Not long after, she managed to wrest Chenonceau from Diane’s grip. She did compensate her, however — by giving her Chaumont instead. I can only imagine vengenance was sweet.

ANYWAY. Enough of your history lesson for the day. The palace! If you are in the Loire Valley, I would say it is not one to miss.

The Catherine de Medici room

While inside of the palace was certainly interesting, but the real showstopper here was the grounds. They were enormous and beautiful, both the carefully manicured gardens created by Diane and Catherine and the more wild,woody areas. If we didn’t have the kids with us, I think we could have walked around the grounds all day.

Diane’s gardens   

Hands down, the kids’ favorite part of the day was the hedge maze on the grounds.

Overall there was a lot more stuff to see than I anticipated, including a donkey farm and even more gardens that we didn’t visit. We ended up spending four hours there, which pretty much shocked me. And honestly, we could have easily stayed longer (especially if it wasn’t as chilly as it was).

Our next stop on my itinerary was to be Chateau de Chaumont, the castle that Catherine de Medici received instead of Chenonceau and subsequently pawned off on her vanquished rival. However, with the weather starting to look threatening and it already being early afternoon, we realized we needed to press on to Chateau de Chambord even though Chaumont was literally on the way — we could see it from our car. (I have no idea why so many of these castles names start with Ch, by the way).

Good news for the readers who are less interested in my historical hot gossip: I don’t know a ton of details of its history and thus won’t be bothering you much with details. But, you should know that it is the largest castle in the Loire Valley that was (somewhat inexplicably to me) used as a hunting lodge. Why on earth would you need to build such an opulant building if you are only going to spend a weeks a year there?! Answer, I guess, is to impress people with your wealth. And have one cool crib when you go hunting. Anyway, it was constructed by King Francis I (Catherine’s father-in-law) and took 20 years. It *may* have been designed in part by Leonardo da Vinci, who lived his final days in a manor just outside the nearby Chateau d’Amboise. The double helix staircase for which it is famous almost certainly was.

Closer look at the roof. 

This is the famous double helix staircase. People could go up or down the stairs on different sides of the spiral without ever meeting until the come to the landings of one of the three floors. 

Inside the castle was absolutely enormous, with 440 rooms. Several times I walked into what I thought was just a room and it turned out to be an enormous multi-room apartment — Fiona and I almost lost Chris and Owen a few times doing this!

The grounds of Chambord were also huge, which is no doubt why they had bikes, golf carts and event boats for rent. If it had been warmer (and we had enough time) we definitly would have rented a boat because it looked really cool.

From Chambord we drove back to our cottage (stopping in Amboise, a town we missed this day, for an excellent dinner near their chateau) for our last evening in France. Driving in the Loire was so cool because there are so many castles packed into the same area that we could even see them from the car. I’m pretty sure you could spend weeks just exploring castles if you were into that sort of thing.

Veretz castle, in the little town where we stayed in the Loire. I took this picture from the car when we basically ran right into it. 

If you are planning a trip to the Loire, I HIGHLY recommend renting a car for this reason. Also, the driving is honestly unintimidating in this area. I wouldn’t want to drive in Paris, but driving in the Loire was basically like driving in Indiana. Also helpful: renting a car with GPS.

Next up: I’ll compile a list of our suggestions for traveling to Paris/Loire with kids.

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The post FRANCE, Day Seven: Castles, castles, castles appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Our family spent the last half of our trip to France visiting the Loire Valley with kids, and I can honestly say its been one of my favorite trips ever. One this particular day, we saw the Chateau d’Usse (Sleeping Beauty’s castle), Fontevrault Abbey and the Saumur wine caves. I’d recommend all of them!

To read more about our visit to the Loire Valley with kids, click here. 

In a day marked by some great sightseeing, the best moment of our visit to the Loire Valley with kids came not inside a great monument but just outside of it: sitting in a sweet little restaurant (Le Comptoir des Vins) just outside Fontevrault Abbey, having a great meal and two good glasses of wine and telling Owen the history of one of my favorite historical figures, Eleanor of Aquitaine.

I swear one of the best things about having kids is that they are a captive audience …

Visiting the Loire Valley with kids

So, backing up a bit. Thursday dawned in our shared hotel room (after a night that reinforced why we usually rent apartments) and we headed off for the first of two full days planned in the Loire Valley. The Loire Valley, an area sometimes described as “The Garden of France,” is in central France surrounding the Loire River. This area was of strategic importance in previous centuries, and the result is that there are literally hundreds of castles of varying sizes and levels of opulence throughout this region.

When we first planned by 30th birthday trip, my first priority was going to Paris, with the idea of doing “something else” as well. A little research led me to the idea of going to the Loire Valley, and soon enough I was more excited about that part of the trip than anything else. Luckily, it lived up to the hype! Because there are so very many castles and historically significant sites in the Loire Valley, and mostly all within very easy driving distance of each other, deciding what to prioritize was our biggest challenge. We ended up deciding on three activities per day, split up by location.

I’d also like to mention that this trip has completely inspired me to want to visit basically all of France. There’s so much more than Paris, and so many wonderful places to see. In particular, I’m looking forward to visiting Alsace and Provence some day soon. My bloggy friend Sabrina has an awesome post up right now about her hiking trip to Calanques National Park and visit to Cassis (which she calls one of the most beautiful towns in Provence). 

Visiting Sleeping Beauty’s castle: Chateau d’Usse

Thursday started with the Chateau d’Usse, a castle that I chose specifically with the kids in mind. Unlike the others we’d see in the next two days, it does not have enormous historical significance — choosing it over nearby Chateau de Chinon was a bit of a wrench for this history nerd — but it is gorgeous and is believed to have been the inspiration for the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale.

Although I would still like to see Chinon at some point, going to the Chateau d’Usse was the right choice for a visit to the Loire Valley with kids. It wasn’t overly busy, which meant we felt like we were just getting to wander around Sleeping Beauty’s castle all by ourselves.

The castle has definitely leaned into the idea that the author of Sleeping Beauty had Chateau d’Usse in mind for Princess Aurora.

Fiona loved the princess stuff at Chateau d’Usse, even though her questions about when we’d see a “real princess” persisted. I guess we’ll have to try and search for the Princess Charlotte in London some day, ha! Though if we ran into them at the park I expect she’d be disappointed by the lack of tiara.

These stairs led to an underground chamber that at one point was the beginning of a tunnel that ended in the forest. It was a way of escaping the Chateau d’Usse in case of attack. 

The Sleeping Beauty motif was contained largely to one tower of the Chateau d’Usse. Elsewhere, the mannequins were dressed in 1920s style. 

Overall, Chateau d’Usse made an excellent stop for anyone visiting the Loire Valley with kids. What it lacks in historical significance, it more than makes up for in beauty and kid-friendly Sleeping Beauty decor. And if you go early in the day during the shoulder season, you might even find you have the place practically to yourself!

Loire Valley with kids: visiting Fontevrault Abbey

If the Chateau d’Usse visit was chosen in part because it would appeal to the kids, our next stop of the day — I freely admit — was entirely for me. If you are not overly interested in history, I encourage you to let your eyes wander down to the pictures now and rejoin us toward the end. I’ll back back with wine after this!

The Abbaye de Fontevrauld is a fascinating part of Angevin history, and it dates back to 1101. During its heydey, it included four religious houses and though there were both nuns and monks in these houses, it was a woman who had the running of the overall establishment, the Abbess of Fontevrault. The abbess was usually a highborn, often well-connected woman (widow of the Duke of Burgundy is one example) and this was an important position. The abbey was patronized in particular by the Plantagenets, the family who would ultimately end up ruling England for centuries. Highborn children were often raised at Fontevrault, including at least two of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s children.

My interest in going here was partially because of the history,and partially because I was interested in seeing the effigies of Eleanor, her husband Henry II, and her son King Richard “the Lionheart.” If you aren’t familiar with Eleanor, she was one of the most powerful women in Europe during the Middle Ages. Here are some highlights:

-She became soverign duchess of Aquitaine as a young teenager after the death of her father

-Almost immediately marries Louis VII, King of France

-Goes on the Second Crusade as one of its leaders

-Unsuccessfully makes a bid for an annulment from the Louis; Later, finally receives her annulment after 15 years of marriage results in just two daughters

-Almost immediately remarries, this time to the Count of Anjou/Duke of Normandy, a teenager 11 years her junior who would become the most powerful man in Europe in time — helped in no small part by Eleanor adding her lands to his. Henry Fitzempress was the son of the woman considered by many to be the rightful Queen of England, Empress Matilda. Matilda, only surviving legitimate child of King Henry I, was named by Henry as his heir but in the end lost the throne to her cousin Stephen after years of warfare. Her son Henry, therefore, had a claim to the English throne and ultimately convinced King Stephen to agree to name Henry as his heir in exchange for peace. Henry acended to the throne of England a year later, in 1154.

-With Henry II, had at least eight children, seven of whom survived to adulthood. Among them are four surviving sons: Henry, Richard, Geoffrey and John.

-During long periods of separation, Eleanor often ran parts of the now enormous and ever-growing Angevin empire, which stretched over England and wide swaths of France. In later life she returned to Aquitaine as its duchess again. Her court is known for celebrating troubadors, chivalry and courtly love.

-Joined her sons in a revolt against her husband/their father, in the process seeking help from her first husband, Louis VII. The sons wanted to weild more power in the domains they’d inherit.

-The sons lost. Eleanor is imprisoned by her husband for most of the next 16 years. During this time, her son Henry “the Young King” dies, as does her son Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany by virtue of his marriage to the duchy’s heiress

-Eleanor is freed upon the death of Henry II, who ended his days at war with his heir, Richard, after finding out that his youngest and favorite son, John, had also betrayed him.

-Eleanor is basically running things while her son, Richard, goes off on the Third Crusade, then plays a huge role in raising the enormous ranson set by the Holy Roman Emperor when he captures Richard. Richard dies a few years later.

-In her late 70s she was still running all over the world, including a journey across the Pyrannees into Castile to pick one of her granddaughters to marry the new King of France.

-Eventually, she retires to Fontevrauld for some well-earned rest after decades of badassery. She died there in 82.

Queen Eleanor, King Henry II and King Richard the Lionheart (and King John’s wife, Isabella d’Angouleme) were all buried at Fontevrauld, but their bones were scattered during the French Revolution. Their effigies, however, remain.

Seeing them was a surprisingly emotional experience, which I can’t really explain.

The rest of Fontevrauld was interesting, including learning about how it was converted into a prison after the French Revolution. From 1804 to 1963 it served as one of the toughest prisons in France, apparently. Members of the French Resistance were shot there under the orders of the Vichy Government.

Overall, I would say the place is worthy of a visit if you are interested in that particular history. It may be boring for young children, but there is grassy area to run around in when they need a break. And frankly, it doesn’t kill a kid to be bored once in a while!

Loire Valley with kids: wine caves of Saumur

Our final stop of the day was the second-oldest winery in (well, near) Saumur, a city known for its excellent wines. There were tons to choose from, but we ended up going to Bouvet Ladubay, which formed in 1851 when a married couple by the names of Etienne Bouvet and Celestine Ladubay purchased 8 kilometers of caves in which to produce and age their wines. The concept of “wine caves” seems to be quite common in the region, as we saw them advertised everywhere. I knew that this one had frequent tours of the caves and I planned for us to join one whenever we got there (instead of doing advanced tickets and being a slave to the clock), but unfortunately I failed to consider that the frequent wine tours might not be offered in English. Whoops. We joined a French one since you can’t see the caves without going on the tour and it was only a few euro anyway — plus it ended with a tasting. It was interesting to see the caves and we did have a pamphlet to read describing the things our guide would be talking about, but I’d recommend hitting an English tour.

I only have a few crappy pictures because it was dark and I was tired of carrying my big camera. 

The wine tasting afterward helped make up for the awkwardness of our tour, however. We liked some of the wines enough to buy a couple bottles, and even Owen got to try some sparkling grape juice (Fiona was asleep on my back). Had Fiona been awake, I’m not sure she would have loved being in the cave, but hey! That’s what baby-wearing is for.

From here, our exhausted bunch piled into the SpaceCar and headed to our final destination of the evening — the cottage we had rented with a mysterious address: “Le Parc, Veretz.” Fortunately, our faithful SpaceCar’s navigation system got us there.

A note about the driving: loved it. It was like driving in Indiana again — wide open spaces, pretty farmland, less honking and very chill. I ended up doing all the driving because I was the one who went to retrieve the car from the rental agency and didn’t know I was supposed to bring Chris’ driver’s licence with me. It worked out great though, because when you are driving it turns out you can pull over and take a picture whenever the hell you feel like it even when the rest of the car is begging to JUST GET HOME ALREADY.

Worth it. 

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The post FRANCE, Day Six: Sleeping Beauty’s castle, history and wine appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

So picture this:

You are heading to your seat on what you hope will be a nice, relaxing 1.5 hour train ride to another city. You’ve got your laptop bag and plans to do a little work along the way.

And then you get to your seat.

A screaming 2-year-old is in your seat, valiantly resisting all efforts by her mother to remove her. A boy of about four years is whining to eat what is in the bags currently covering the entire table meant to be shared by this grouping of four seats. The father is standing there with an enormous teal bag, blocking the aisle as the two parents try to consider what to do with the thing. The wife half-heartedly suggests it can perhaps be shoved under the table. Spoiler: it can’t.

.

.

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As you can guess, we were NOT the protagonists in this particular tale. Yes, I felt bad for the poor bastard as well.

Backing up: Wednesday marked our last morning in Paris. We’d made a real effort to clean up and pack the night before so that we could spend our morning looking at (and hopefully buying) some art in the area around Sacre Coeur. Montemartre has long been known as a trendy, artsy kind of area, no doubt because it used to be cheap — “used to be” because literally nothing in Paris is cheap — and Chris and I bought two paintings there in 2010 that remain some of our favorites. Since we didn’t have to be out of our apartment until 11, we figured we could walk up that way and maybe pick something up before we left. Unfortunately, it didn’t really occur to us that most of the artists wouldn’t be out that early and of those who were there, nothing really struck our fancy. However, we did take the opportunity to go into Sacre Coeur and look around. (It is gorgeous).

We also stopped for one last pain au chocolat (our absolute FAVORITE) before we left. Oh man, these things were SO GOOD. I’m sorry, but Italian pastry really has a tendency of being ridiculously over the top. You bite into something and it has to be a giant mass of Nutella. Pain au chocolate? Perfection in pastry. Just the right amount of chocolate. 

When planning the trip, I had settled on taking the high-speed train to Tours because the city is a great jumping-off point for the Loire Valley, which we planned to spend our last few days touring. I had booked a cute little cottage in a Loire town called Veretz for us to stay in the last few days, but since I had intended to get to Tours in the evening I booked us a hotel in the city for the night. While I don’t necessarily regret this decision — I actually quite liked Tours — I do think it would have been easier to just go straight to Veretz for three nights instead of staying in a hotel for one, then going to the cottage.

But anyway. When I booked the tickets (for the afternoon, for reasons that are no longer clear to me) I noticed that you didn’t have to buy a ticket for anyone under 4 (they sit on your lap). Since I had a bit of sticker shock — 160 euro for three roundtrip tickets between Paris and Tours — this seemed like an awesome idea.

Chris, supposedly unaware of this particular decision until the day of, did not think this was a “awesome idea.”

At any rate, despite the inauspicious start it did turn out to be a perfectly lovely train ride. The dude who was supposed to be in what Fiona had determined was “her seat” found another since the train wasn’t crowded, we ate lunch and I read the kids a book we’d bought about Joan of Arc (though I changed the ending a bit because the idea of being burned at the stake fucking HAUNTED ME as a child). Of course, once we reached the other end we realized that there are in fact two “Tours” train stations (one is actually St. Pierre de Corps) and that our rental car was at the other one. Whoops. We had meant to drive straight to the nearby town of Amboise to see Leonardo da Vinci’s home, the Clos Luce, but after this particular realization we ended up deciding to just stay in Tours and go to bed early.

I’m not sorry we got to see more of Tours than planned, because it really was a lovely city. We immediately noticed some differences from Paris — it seemed much more relaxed, fewer people spoke English (got to break out my French for real here!*) and service felt like it was shockingly fast. They had a tram system at ground level, which was pretty cool even if it did freak me out a little when I drove across it in our rental car, SpaceCar.

We also got to see Tours Cathedral, which was beautiful and impressive.

We also made the acquaintance of SpaceCar, our vehicle for the next few days. Chris *may* have gotten sick of this name (coughcoughNeverReallySawThePoint) but I assure you it did NOT get old. I ended up being quite pleased with it, despite my initial annoyance at Europcar because the employee there handed me the keys, two car seats to carry myself and send me out to find it on my own in a crowded parking lot. Once I found it, however (after learning the name of the vehicle was not, it turned out, “Essence” as written on the key) I was thrilled to find that it had built-in navigation and wasn’t as tiny as I expected after frugally** paying for only the smallest, cheapest car available.

* A note about my French: I spent a lot of time in school studying it up to the AP level, followed by a single semester in college because it turned out that I only needed one to fulfil my whole language requirement and, after learning that, the Arabic I had considered studying seemed HARD. I was always fairly sucky at the language, especially the understanding-and-speaking part (aka the only part that actually matters), but could read it reasonably well. On our honeymoon, I barely used it because I was so self conscious and because everyone in Paris spoke English anyway. Having been humiliated in Italian for months, however, seems to have given me a bizarre confidence in my French. All of the sudden I was AMAZED that I could read menus and plaques and stuff and even make a little conversation with people like my cabbie en route to pick up our rental car. The contrast with my constant confusion in Italian was insane. Of course, my newfound confidence was somewhat compromised when our landlord at the tiny cottage in Veretz proved to speak no English at all and seemed to think I spoke more French than I actually did based on my initial ability to say approximately three things correctly. Um. Hello, Google Translate. We meet again, my friend.

**I say frugal, Chris say cheap. If you are a seeing a theme of me attempting to save money to the detriment of convenience than congratulations! You are on Chris’ side. If you are applauding me for saving a buck, then welcome to Team Kasey.

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One of the best parts of traveling with little kids is seeing their unexpected delight at the most random things.

Tuesday may have been one of the kids’ absolutely favorite days, and the chief reason wasn’t the one I expected. We started off the day at Napoleon’s Tomb and the Musee de l’Armee, part of a complex of buildings known as Les Invalides because it was a former hospital/retirement home for soldiers. We went because I hadn’t been there since I was a kid and because I assumed Chris, currently reading a series of books in which Napoleon features prominently, would be interested. Chris and I indeed enjoy the visit — I was much more interested in the museum at 30 than I was at 13, especially the excellent World War II exhibit — but it was Owen and Fiona who loved it.

Fiona loved the gold on the dome and kept asked if a real princess lived here. She was fairly devastated throughout the trip when I had to keep telling her that we wouldn’t be meeting a princess, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her about Marie Antoinette. 

Both kids were keen to open Napoleon’s tomb — I think they may have gotten the idea from the Catacombs that they should be allowed to see the bodies of all the tombs — but were suitably impressed with the side of the box even without getting to open it.

Several other prominent military leaders are also buried at this site, as are Napoleon’s brothers, who he had made kings of various lands he conquered. Which is a pretty nice gift, if you ask me, but must have made it difficult to think of something to get him for Christmas in return. “Oh, this is a nice golden cup. Hey, remember that time I gave you a COUNTRY? But no, no, this is great. Thanks, Jerome. It’s great. Really.” 

The Army Museum was a big hit with Owen in particular because of the various weaponry for them to look at. They were all pretty impressed by these cannon and spent ages out here playing with them.

Leaving resulted in a bunch of tears from Owen, and I suspect we may have promised him we’d come back “sometime soon” because he spent the next several days asking if we were going back to the Army Museum and getting pissed when the answer was no. Whoops. Take away message though: you never really know what kids are going to like.

Our second stop of the day was the Luxembourg Garden, an enormous gorgeous garden in the middle of Paris. The place was enormous and included a pretty pond where you could rent toy boats to sail. Chris and Owen took a rest here while I walked around (Fiona being asleep on my back) and found tons of statutes of women who were influential in French history.

This is Margaret d’Anjou, wife to King Henry VI of England. She was an exceptionally driven woman who became the leader of the Lancastrian faction during the Wars of the Roses. Her husband, Henry VI, was mentally ill and had a nasty habit of falling into catatonic states for months and a time. He and Margaret (already hated because she was French and brought essentially no dowry) had an unpopular reign because of their mismanagement, duplicity and habit of playing favorites at court. When Henry VI was deposed by the Edward of York after the Battle of Towton, he and Margaret and their son went into exile. Henry VI was ultimately captured and imprisoned a few years later, but Margaret’s resistance continued and, through her scheming with a disaffected York lord, Henry VI briefly regained his crown a decade after he lost it. This triumph was short-lived, however; Edward IV regained his throne about six months later. Margaret and her teenaged son, Edward,had  brought an army against the Yorks in an effort to defeat the Yorks once and for all, but Edward was killed and Margaret captured at the Battle of Tewkesbury. Henry VI died of “a broken heart” (probably murdered) in the Tower of London a week later. Margaret is a hard character to necessarily feel warm and fuzzy about given some pretty poor choices, such as ordering the deaths of two lords who kept her mad husband safe during a battle and had been promised safe conduct, but she was a woman of great courage and conviction and that makes her fascinating to me. 

The park included a large playground, which cost a couple euros each to get into but proved to be very fun. European playground equipment tends to remind me of playground equipment from when I was younger, awesome at the time but which now seems strangely hazardous compared to what we most often see in the United States. Still, my little climbers had a great time and spent a good two hours here despite it being quite chilly. I highly recommend a visit for anyone traveling with children, including bigger ones — the park was separated by age ranges and the “big kids” side had lots of cool looking stuff too.

Afterward, I meant to visit the Pantheon, a structure originally envisioned as a church but repurposed as a burial place for French patriots and distinguished citizens after the French Revolution. People like Voltaire, Victor Hugo and Marie Curie have all been buried there. However, though we were right in the neighborhood we ultimately decided that the kids were too worn out for another visit. Instead, we opted to stroll through the Latin Quarter and grab a crepe. This area has always been one of my favorites in France little streets with tons of restaurants, very diverse and vibrant and with a fun vibe. I originally looked into finding an AirBnB in this area, but regrettably I couldn’t find anything in our price range. Next time we go back though, I’d love to stay in the area.

Tuesday was also the day we took the subway most; we had been mostly walking or taking Ubers the rest of the time. Chris and I are fairly divided on the transportation issue, though we both like walking best when we don’t have two kids to drag along. He prefers Uber because it is so hassle-free and he considers it not overly expensive. I prefer the metro because traffic makes me a crazy person. Paris has an amazing, easy to use subway system (we never waited more a couple minutes for our train) and I like feeling of being constantly in motion, versus sitting in traffic. And it is cheaper.

We had told him before, but for some reason he didn’t really grasp that we were traveling underground until this particular Metro ride. He was shocked. 

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While most of my recap posts (here and here) have been fairly wordy, for Day Three the pictures pretty much say it all.

Monday — which happened to by my 30th birthday — we decided to visit the water lilies we’d seen the day before at Musee de L’Orangerie in person, at Monet’s home in Giverny. We caught the train to the town of Vernon by the skin of our teeth (five minutes to spare!) which resulted in Chris and Owen having to sit on the stairs, while Fiona and I shared a seat and she cried for Daddy. Happy birthday to me, I guess?! Thanks, baby girl! Haha.

We took the train to the town of Vernon, which was an easy hour-long trip. Honestly though, after making the journey I wonder whether it would have been cheaper to rent a car for a day and drive. The train tickets for three (Fi was free) cost us 80 euro, plus another 20 euro for the bus ride from Vernon to Giverny. It probably would have been too much bother to rent a car for a day, but it is something to consider if you are planning a trip yourselves with a group. Another option between Vernon and Giverny was renting bicycles, by the way, which I think would have been amazing if our kids were old enough.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter how you get there. Just get there. It is gorgeous and was one of my favorite things we did on a trip packed with awesome.

Can you believe that I honestly wondered whether many flowers would be out this time of year?

We had a lovely lunch in Giverny before catching the train back to Paris, where we ended our evening at an Indian restaurant in our neighborhood. It was delicious but I don’t think the owners were overly impressed with us being there … possibly because of Owen’s refusal to eat anything, or possibly because Fiona — apparently deciding the rice was the best thing ever — started shoving it into her mouth with her hands at a rate that can only be described as cartoonish. I swear, we do feed this girl!

Overall, I couldn’t have asked for a better way to kick off my 30s than spending it in a beautiful place with my favorite people in the universe.

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“It’s so beautiful that it hurts me,” said Anne softly. “Perfect things like that always did hurt me — I remember I called it ‘the queer ache’ when I was a child. What is the reason that pain like this seems inseparable from perfection?” 

-Anne’s House of Dreams

Day Two

This trip marked my fourth trip to Paris, but somehow I’ve never been to Sainte-Chapelle. After visiting, I can’t imagine why.

Some backstory: Sainte-Chapelle is a royal chapel built starting 1238 to house the relics acquired by King Louis IX, chief among them the Crown of Thorns. Apparently the Crown cost about 500 million in today’s terms, though presumably to Louis — later canonized as Saint Louis — it would have been priceless. Accordingly, he built an appropriately glorious place to house this treasure.

The exterior of the chapel isn’t that impressive — it was a royal chapel within a palace on the Ile-de-la-Cite, which is now a government building. But once you walk inside … it’s just wow.

The first floor, where more common folk could go, is impressive enough …

This is King/Saint Louis in the first level of the chapel. 

But walking upstairs, where the king would worship, was like walking into a jewelry box. It was amazing. It gave me Anne Shirley’s “queer ache.” I just stood there, thinking about how much more amazing it must have been to stand here 770 years ago and what it must have been like for Louis to be here in the presence what he can only have truly believed was the real Crown of Thorns.

During this reverie, Fiona was standing next to me in what I guess I assumed was awed silence. Because even though I have two children, I apparently believe that 2-year-olds are capable of an “awed silence” of more than two seconds.

Naturally, she made a break for the wall to touch it (fortunately not the glass), ducking under a metal railing intended to keep people from doing just that. Instead of going under myself and grabbing her, like an idiot I tried to grab her over the railing, resulting in her hugging the wall even more to be out of my reach. At this point a security guy came running over going “NO NO NO NO” and, after approximately two seconds of watching my feeble effort, picked her up and handed her to me. This, of course, scared her senseless and so began the second embarrassing phase — bloodcurdling screaming in a a sacred and mostly silent chapel. I dragged her to the closest exit to at least keep her from shattering the 12th century glass, but that proved to be a fairly crowded balcony and I was basically trapped there begging her to stop screaming.

We left shortly after.

This feels like a good time to note that if I missed one thing from Sicily (other than good cappuccino), it was their remarkably indulgent attitude toward children. I’m not saying that the vast majority of people we encountered in Paris weren’t lovely, but we absolutely got more nasty looks directed at the kids in four days in Paris than we have in six months in Sicily. To the Sicilians, pretty much everything a kid does is “va bene.”

Anyway, Sainte Chapelle is quite near Notre Dame, so our next stop was there — mostly for nostalgia reasons. A million years ago, when Chris and I were on our honeymoon, we stayed at a hotel near Notre Dame. A few of the days we bought our lunch from a bakery and went to the park next to the cathedral for a picnic, so we wanted a repeat with the kids. There was also playground equipment, which is either new or we didn’t notice it at the time since we didn’t have kids. It was the perfect stop to recover from Sainte Chapelle, though in hindsight a little wine might have been in order.

We chose not to go in because Chris and I had already been and we didn’t feel it was necessary. Owen was actually a bit annoyed. 

Back view of Notre Dame, in the area where we had our picnic. 

I also really wanted to replicate a picture that Chris and I had taken in the garden almost seven years ago, this time with the kiddos. It was definitely easier the first time …

Best one we could get. 

One of several outtakes. 

From here, it was off to the Tuileries Garden, a vast green space first created by Queen Catherine de Medici, whose personal history was very important to a couple of the castles we saw later in our trip. Since we rented an apartment in Montmartre, a little further from the center of things, going home for naps wasn’t really an option. Fiona napped in my carrier as we were walking there. but unfortunately Chris got stuck carting a very tired Owen on his shoulders most of the the way. Sometimes a stroller would be super helpful, but sometime I’ll have to do a post on why we don’t bring one with us on trips. Update: I did do this post. Here it is.

Our walk took us past to Louvre as well, which we opted not to go into since we’d been there in 2010. And honestly, we found it ridiculously overwhelming even back then. We much preferred the more chill Musee D’Orsay last time. Still, I was glad Owen got to see the glass pyramids, even if he did inform me that they “weren’t real pyramids because pyramids aren’t made of glass.”

After a stop to admire the Tuileries and have cocktails and ice cream to power us through the rest of the day, we set off for Musee de l’Orangerie. I had been interested in going here specifically to see Monet’s large water lily paintings (since we were going to Giverny the next day!) but I ended up loving every minute of this place. I am not a huge art person. I don’t know much about it like, at all. But this museum was what it would look like if they were like, “hey Kasey, you know the only types of art you are particularly interested in, and the only artists you actually know? Well, we thought it might be easier if we just put them all in one place for you so we just … did. Enjoy.”

So it was mostly impressionists — Monet, Matisse, Renoir, Cezanne, etc. Absolutely gorgeous. Also, they had a mandatory coat/backpack check (free) so we got to wander unencumbered. It tells you how sick I was of carrying things that this sticks out in my mind.

Deep discussion of art underway here, obviously. 

This was possibly one of the only museums I’ve ever visited where I earnestly wished to stay longer, but the troops were restless.

We ended our day outside of Sacre Coeur in Montmartre, one of my favorite places when we last visited because Chris and I spent a nice evening sitting on the steps overlooking the city, drinking Heinekens sold to us by guys wandering the area selling them out of boxes. Visiting with the kids wasn’t quite as relaxing, but the kids were on great behavior during our (very overpriced) dinner.

This picture is from a couple days later; I think I was too tired for photos on this particular evening. But Sacre Coeur is exceptionally beautiful, though much younger than Notre Dame and Sainte Chapelle (finished in 1914). 

Even thought we were staying in the Montmartre area, getting to Sacre Coeur at the top of the hill still required a lot of stairs like this. At one point Owen was crying that he couldn’t do more stairs, so I told him about Saint Denis, the patron saint of Paris, to distract him. Saint Denis came to Paris sometime in the third century to convert locals to Christianity. He was beheaded for his trouble, but apparently after the decapitation picked up his head, washed it off in a fountain (beheadings are messy affairs, I understand) and then walked up the hill to Montemartre to expire for real. Please refer to the picture above for even more reason why this walk was SUPER IMPRESSIVE. Anyway, Owen was fascinated, quit whining and then asked for “more stories about France” throughout the trip. Obviously, I need to save up more gruesome martyrdom stories for future emergencies.

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We’re back!

Chris, the kids and I just spent a fabulous eight days in France (celebrating my 30th birthday along the way) and it went even better than I could have hoped for. This was Chris’ second and my fourth trip  to Paris, but we were able to focus on the places that we hadn’t been before so a lot of things were as new for us and they were for the kids. We did have a few mishaps along the way with the kids naturally causing a scene in various national monuments, and I was unfortunately sick for the entire trip, but all the same it was an amazing trip.

Day One in Paris

We actually arrived in Paris Friday night, but since we got in two hours later than expected — a situation I’ll be talking about after I have finished arguing with Chase — we didn’t do anything but go to a restaurant, eat and smash a wine glass. So, let’s kick off on Saturday morning.

Our first stop had to be the Eiffel Tower, obviously, because the kids have been obsessed with it for some time. When we drive through Indiana, Owen and Fiona would frequently ask if various radio towers were the Eiffel Tower.

Fiona’s first birthday was even Paris themed, haha. 

Their reactions to seeing the tower were great! But naturally once we got into the area — for security reasons the Eiffel Tower area is now fenced and has metal detectors and bag checks — they were most interested in chasing pigeons with other child tourists. What is it about trying to catch those dirty birds that offers such universal appeal to young children?!

We had assumed that we weren’t gong to be able to go up the Eiffel Tower unless we walked the stairs to the first level, something I wasn’t really up to doing since I had been sick all night. During the planning phase, Rick Steves and various websites had basically described trying to get on the elevator to the top without reserving a ticket beforehand to be madness, unless you showed up well before opening and waited in line for ages. To our surprise, however, we found that the line wasn’t all that long, maybe half an hour? Then an additional perhaps 40 minutes of waiting to cram onto the elevator.

I’m not entirely sure why our experience getting tickets was different than others, but I expect it had to do with the chilly, overcast weather, relatively early hour (within first hour of opening) and off-season timing of our trip. I still recommend trying to get tickets ahead of time if you are going, and doing so immediately after you know your dates.

I have been to Paris before, but only ever gone to the first level of the tower. We decided this time to go big or go home, so all the way up to le sommet it was! The view from 1,000 feet up was worth the wait.

View of Champ de Mars on this side.

The Seine on this side! 

She looks cute in this picture, but looking through this thing led to one of about three tantrums at 1,000 feet. The kids were obsessed even when we ran out of coins to put in the telescopes. 

Once we had our fill of the tower, we grabbed a few sandwiches and headed to the Champ de Mars greenspace right next to the tower. While part of it was fenced off for landscaping, there was room on the sides for an impromptu picnic and some running around time.

Our second stop of the day came at the insistence of Owen: the Catacombs. If you aren’t familiar, the Catacombs are underground tunnels in which the bones of millions of Parisians are laid to rest. They were moved to the tunnels in the late 1700s because overflowing cemeteries in Paris were creating a health hazard. I honestly didn’t really think we’d go there when I was first planning because I thought Owen, previously afraid of things like the movie Kung Fu Panda, would be too freaked out. But when I told him about it he latched on and got OBSESSED with the idea of going. Sure enough, he loved every minute of the roughly 45-minute underground journey through the a portion of the tunnels.

At this site we DID have to wait in a lengthy line (perhaps about an hour and a half?) but it went faster that it might have because a couple from Chicago were behind us in line and we spent the whole time chatting, while their 9- and 11-year-old boys entertained the kids for much of the time. Also, about five bathroom trips for Fiona helped break things up.

The tombs themselves were delightfully creepy, with several signs that said (in French) things like “Stop! This is the Empire of the Dead!” and “Whichever way you turn, death will be waiting for you.” I found it more fascinating than I expected, though I do wonder how these people would feel about their bones becoming a tourist attraction.

Fiona didn’t love the tunnels as much as Owen by any means, saying repeatedly that it was “too dark,” but since she was in the carrier on my back she did fine. I, on the other hand, thought that the stairs coming up from the tunnels might kill me. Narrow spiral stairs are the worst since you can never see when it will end, and you can’t pause without holding up the line!

The kids, who had been up incredibly late the night before, were pretty tired. We had a little dinner — some of us, anyway — and headed back to our AirBnB to collapse.

Owen fell asleep at our dinner table. Fiona, who seems to not need sleep, was hyper instead. 

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