Still learning and discovering Paris #@LaVillette

Today - finally! - Small Fry didn't have to go to the Centre de Loisirs (the public summer camp held in a local school) while I worked. We had decided instead to spend the day with Rachel and her two lovely littlies, Wendy and Eleanor (respectively Small Fry and Fingerling's BFF*). Fingerling has spent most of the week with the three of them as the garderie is shut and she's too small for the Centre de Loisirs. You have never heard anything as sweet as the excited high-pitched sounds Eleanor and Fingerling make when they see each other after a break of...say...15 hours.

We decided to go to Le Parc des Dunes et de Vent at La Villette. It's a brilliant, number-restricted,  age-restricted enclosed park with all sorts of innovative things to explore, like wooden climb-on features, a bouncy castle floor, diggers, spider webs to climb on and all the rest of it. Well, despite taking over an hour to get to it AND leaving the house in the rain, we found out that it was shut as the wood becomes slippery when wet. 

But La Villette is just stuffed full of kiddie-centred fun, and instead Rachel and I spent a good chunk of time yacking watching the kids as they played on a dragon feature. This thing:

And after all that exercise we were all starving and ate here...

...which has just got to be one of the funkiest little eateries I know in Paris. Each room has maintained its original decor (so, for example, there is a toilet in the bathroom), but there are now tables and chairs in each room (including the bathroom) and the whole house is a café (there are real bathrooms for those actually needing to go, as well as a real and separate kitchen etc). It was very cool and had very good food, so that kept both adults and children happy.

We then spent most of the afternoon in a children's café beside the water, which is actually way more than just a café. It's actually run by an association and the whole house is geared towards children's activities. There is a soft play area for babies, a painting area, a wooden slide and fort, books, a water room, cartoon watching room... And because it's France they have little workshops, like music, or crafts. It's really quite unique (and dare I say it) advanced in terms of educational, meaningful yet funfull (yeah, I know, not a word) provision for children.

On the way home we stopped by Paris Plages and water fun area. It was originally set up for those not lucky i.e. rich enough to get out the city during the hot, humid and sticky summer months weeks day. But I might try and spend a bit more time here next year. Small Fry in particular was fascinated by all the various forms of water transport.

 

Tiny little pedalos for kiddies - they use their arms to move

To roll over the water in

Tee hee

The nauti bikes biking

At the bottom of the reservoir we arrived at the locks, just as a canal boat was going through. I mean even I found it interesting, but Small Fry was beside himself with excitement...and questions. Non-stop, I'm telling you. 

And so we are lucky/rich enough and we are going away...tomorrow in fact, to Corsica. Except that an Air France cabin crew strike began yesterday and we have just been told that both flights are cancelled. Our replacement flight will leave only 90 minutes later, but as it's the most popular travel day of the year El Puma refuses to delay our departure from the house by taxi. And instead of having a 1 hour layover, we will now have 7. In Nice. When normally I would suggest we go for a little walk along the seafront, I think I'd rather remain stewing in the rubbish airport, even if there is nothing to do.

AND, the best bit? No internet for a week. Seriously.

See you on the other side!

* Best Friends Forever

Park life #Staycay

Caught biking #Bikerchick

I turned a corner, the broken bell on my bike caught my very fine weave silk and cotton mix top and voilà, I turned up at the doctor's looking like a punk.

Aperol spritz #theon-trenddrinkofthesummer

And I am testing them from multiple locations just to see who does it best.

Splash pad fun #summerholidays

 Small Fry and his bestie Zak hit the fountains. This is the first time I've seen Small Fry play in the fountains and not mind too much getting wet. He even got water up his nose after doing the classic 'let's see if the fountain is on' trick by standing over it and didn't cry. It's baby steps...

Le jardin #summertimeactivity

Today we went to the jardin d'acclimatation, which is something we seem to do once a year, every year, about this time of year.

This time we took the little train from Porte Maillot to the entrance, which is totally not worth it by the way. 3 euros for a 200m journey (which we only realised afterwards) and from the entrance you still have to walk the extra 800m to the other side of the jardin where your friends are meeting. 

Still, Fingerling was with her bestie Eléanor and although Small Fry wasn't there, Wendy had a super time.

 Looking* at fountains with the new Louis Vuitton expo building** in the background.

* El Puma and I love swimming, the sea, water and watery type activities and have taken our kids every Saturday for a year to their swim class...yet both of them are still very afraid of fountains and have a general dislike of water. So I dressed her up in her togs for nothing. As soon as they got wet she cried that they were wet and wanted them off.

** the building is amazing although the weird colouring is new. The art is contemporary and not to my taste. And it is totally not child friendly.

One Child Wonder #aperitif #terrasse #sunshine #summer

Small Fry has gone to visit his Moon and Abuelo in Brittany for 3 nights. We miss him, but had completely forgotten how easy life is with just one child around. Fancy an aperitif sitting outside a bar? No problem!

#thingsyoucandowithonechildonly

Busy but brilliant #aweekintheUK #work #play #stay

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair...

It's a little presumptuous of me to steal this quote by Dickens from his Tale of Two Cities, but all I really wanted to say is that a lot has happened and that happening included both highs and lows (sometimes simultaneously) since I last blogged 2 weeks ago.

First, we left. With all this luggage, little ol' me and two very energetic kiddies.

Here is the two of them in the airport, right before we go to security, looking exactly as they mean to go on. Small Fry can run like the wind and he practiced it again and again despite my ever increasing threats. Fingerling is a great imitator of her big brother, but at least I can still catch her. She is currently obsessed with planes (can't think why) and every time she saw one she yelled 'plane', which as you can imagine happens quite a lot in an airport.

I bought a tea, which was both ambitious and fool-hardy. I set it down on the er beautiful carpet-tiled floor as seen in the photo below and it fell over. We did a family trip to the loo, bought an apple juice, set it down and it too fell over. Then Small Fry moaned that he needed a number 2 after all, so back to the loo we went. And on the way back to the seat Fingerling tripped on the same beautiful carpet and went head first into the wall. 

I have never been as happy to hear a flight called*.

So, once we actually made it to Scotland, we stayed with Oma and had a lovely meet up with grandpa at a local restaurant that also has a soft play area and some sort of horse riding game. They spent at least 15 minutes on that thing without me ever putting in an euro.

And having made it to Scotland, I left again. I went to London by train for one night only to see my flatmate of 3 years from Brussels get married to her Indian partner. It was a brilliant wedding and party and even more special were the other guests, loads of whom were from Brussels and hadn't seen  for 15 years. 

Weirdly, I could see that some of the same entanglements, cliques and battle lines were still the same and some felt hampered by old ties. I didn't care, I just had a great time :)

And the great time went on late enough considering that the next morning Christina, Simon and I were on a bus by 8am heading to Kings X and our train back up north.

And from there, on my 4th consecutive day of travel, I really did head north. Even further north: To Aberdeen and my work conference. And this is how it started...

 ...with something called a Slow Food Reception. From what I could see it was just lots and lots of exceptionally good food in bite-sized amounts that you could eat on the go and while talking to people. And of course as it was a fishy conference, there was plenty of fish:

One of the fresh fish stands

Very, very fine seaweed chocolate in there

There were about 500 of us there, with 8 parallel streams of topics over 4 days. The conference was brilliantly organised with tea breaks every 1.5 hours (I haven't drunk so much tea in years!), a bowl-food lunch ever day, a fish and chips reception and a super duper gala banquet with ceilidh.

These guys weren't even Scottish but enthusiastically got into the spirit of things

My arm post-ceilidh. Ceilidh-dancers will know what I mean.

And this was a typical session. I presented two papers and moderated one session, and everything seemed to be well received. I had a great time improving my network and sharing the work of the OECD (usually both at the same time).

 While all this was going on, Oma ensured Small Fry and Fingerling had a great time:

With cousin Corey

With cousin Ryan

I had wished El Puma a happy Bastille Day back in Paris and was just about to go to sleep when I started to read news reports about the dreadful attack in Nice. Although not as close to home as the Bataclan attacks, I found it very upsetting to hear about the number of families, and especially children, that had been involved. It was a dreadful atrocity and yet there's not much you can do to stop a bloke and a lorry. As Obama said shortly after the Dallas shootings that also happened last week, "it's as if the deepest fault lines of our democracy have suddenly been exposed". I think this is true not just in America, and it is both ugly and troubling. 

And as the hashtag #prayfornice went out it felt all too familiar, and I once again found comfort in the words provided by the Church of England:

We pray that though we are deeply disconcerted by such acts of merciless violence - no matter how near or how distant from us - we may not give in to discouragement, but fix our hearts on always doing what is right and just.

May we also add grace and forgiveness.

But I don't want to end my post on that dreadful note, because I am blessed with a life lived fully, and this involved both family and friends.

On the way back from Aberdeen to Stirling we stopped off at Tante Margret's house and met the most vicious male swan I have ever seen (guarding its 5 offspring...but still...). We also ate brilliantly, drank lots more tea and caught up with cousins.

Mummy (on the left) and babies

And on Saturday we packed up and decamped to Edinburgh in order to catch up with Anita, Caitlin and Conor, whom we last saw a year ago in the Dordogne, and who are usually resident in Mexico. We had so much fun, and even the terribly rubbish accommodation will one day be the start of a good story. 

On Saturday we visited Dynamic Earth, which started well (i.e. dinosaurs)...

 ...but ended up being way, way too dynamic for Small Fry.

The volcanoes shook the ground (literally), the ice caps made the room cold (literally) and the time-travelling elevator just gave him the heebie jeebies. So we gave up and went to the kiddie play area upstairs.

They look like they're having fun but they are actually fighting.

No matter, we had fun together, wine was drunk, and plans were made to see each other again.

On Sunday we visited the National Museum of Scotland, which had two (at least, that's all we had time for) very cool child-friendly areas. The first was an exploration area (legos, how things work, shadows, dressing up etc.)...

...and the other was near the animal bit. In the end, our kids were more fascinated by the actual animals than the kiddie play area near the animals, and we spent a great hour talking about the animals we could see. And there were A LOT.

The Animal Kingdom floor

Small Fry and Fingerling looking down

A giraffe looking up

 And at one point it was all too much for my little monkey.

 On Sunday afternoon we left our busy but brilliant week and headed home to Paris.

Getting a final play in before the 2 hour flight

The newly renovated Edinburgh airport is fairly rubbish BUT it does at least have kiddie play areas which are ALL GOOD.

The final photo taken by Oma who came in to help me with the luggage on send me on my way with my final cup of tea. Thank you! And thank you for looking after the kiddies all week! They had a great time :)

And I very, very quickly regretted wearing my boots after we touched down in 30 degree temperatures. And half the airport staff already seemed to be on holiday as there was only one booth open for about 6 flights arriving simultaneously. It would have taken us an hour had I not jumped the queue thanks to my antsy kids, but we still had to wait over an hour for luggage from touchdown. Thankfully, thankfully, Moon, Abuelo and El Puma arrived to pick us up and could entertain the kids somewhat through the glass walls while I sorted out the baggage. 

Family is The Best!

*it was on this flight that Small Fry's water bottle leaked all over my laptop. It turned on but the screen had funny black lines across it. I quickly turned it off and left it in rice for 24 hours to dry while I went to London. When I came back - miracle of miracles - it worked fine and could continue preparing my presentations. One evening the laptop got quite warm after being on for a few hours, and tiny grains of rice that had found their way into the body of the machine started popping. It smellt delicious but required some strong shaking and eventually taking the back off (thanks Daniel) to get it all out.