Adventure Mom

A Votre Service – At Your Service “ Coucou !” Monsieur Bar Fly is drunk. It’s two in the afternoon, and JL has been here all day, swilling pint after pint of Cardinal beer. He steps outside every five minutes to smoke. He’s lonely. Bored. And I’m one of two people at this auberge (inn) he can target. I try to blend with the dining room furniture when JL finds me again. “ Coucou !” I’ve already seen him several times this week, and feel familiar enough and annoyed enough to let him have it: “Pas ‘coucou!’ N’avez vous rien de faire toute la journee?” Translation: “No ‘ coucou ’ [in this case, ‘hello’ and ‘peek-a-boo’ at once]. Don’t you have anything to do all day?” No. It’s JL’s day off, and this world offers two choices: pickling his liver and scarring his lungs. The monsieur is one of several characters who frequent the restaurant and inn my friends, Anne and Arthur, own. Called L’Armailli (pronounced larm-ay-ee), it’s named after a herder of cows and goats and

                Soddisfatta - Satisfied Winter in New Zealand left me cold and hollow, with appetite for little else but turning up the heat. After less than a week of Italian summer, I’m warm and sated. Full of pasta, bread and gratitude. Sono soddisfatta . Sono sazia. I’m satisfied. And full.   Sofia, Fiona, Finley We stayed with our former exchange student, Sofia. Her parents’ three-story house was built in 1928 in the shadow of a church whose bells toll each half hour. The village of 1000 people sits north of Milan. Sofia’s dad, Bob, fetched us from the airport, setting the tone for five and-a-half days with the Franchinis. Rather than play the role for which I’m self-taught -- floundering tourist -- I was, instead, housed, fed and driven to interesting places. Spoiled. Viziato . Maya Angelou said people will forget what you said and did, but will never forget how you made them feel. For me, it’s the same with place. I might blank out this excursion or t

                                           Sleepless in Dubai     A friend told me, as the kids and I embarked on our world tour eight years ago, the word   “travel” originated from the French word “travail,” which means work.   Travel may be less onerous today than in ancient times, but it’s no baguette-and-brie picnic when you spend ten hours in your departure airport, 18 hours in the air and arrive at your hotel at eight am, exhausted, smelly, wearing teeth wrapped in pashminas. This is the state in which Fiona, Finley and I arrive in Dubai. After a snack in the hotel coffee shop and too-brief nap, we hop a hotel shuttle van to the Dubai Mall. Spending three seconds outside in 40 degree Celsius/104 Fahrenheit heat morphs me into an ice cream seeking missile.    Inside the world’s largest mall (by area, at nearly 6 million square feet, with 1300 shops), we bustle past the two-story wall of water containing an aquarium and settle on serve-yourself, pay-by-we