Mountains are Quite High Really.

Posted on October 14, 2012 by roadschoolingclaytons

So today, with the assistance of the new walking shoes, we went on a real hike. Now I think I have a better understanding of what hiking in the Pyrenees is all about. These mountains are huge, and pretty spectacular. Even for someone who has spent a fair bit of time in mountains (not me, obviously), they are stunning. It’s hard to appreciate their grandeur from a distance, but today we went to Les Gorges Caranca and started at the bottom at a pretty little river, and as we wound our way up the side of the gorge, the scenery just got more and more impressive.
And for me, unfortunately, more and more frightening. It’s such a weird feeling. A dichotomy. I want to go up. But somehow I can’t.
I know it’s hard for people who have no fear of heights to understand, but those of you who do will be able to relate. How I ended up marrying the man I married becomes more of a mystery to me as we explore more of this rugged and beautiful area. Opposites attract? I don’t know. He literally vibrates with excitement and enthusiasm when he gets near a mountain, and the higher up we get, and the more “airy” it gets on the path, the more excited he gets.
I vibrate too, but it’s not from excitement. I’m scared up there, and at the risk of sounding completely pathetic, I just don’t get how edging your way along the side of a cliff 1000 meters up in the air is fun. I try to understand. I really do. Some people might think I’m being negative, but I’m not. I enjoyed the hike. The views were amazing, and it’s such a great family thing to do, but when it got to the point where you needed to hold a wire “hand-rail” so you didn’t fall into the gorge, I was done. I tried to go further. I wanted to rise to the challenge. My middle daughter wanted me to as well. She really takes after her father, and it goes without saying he was itching to go further. In fact, he’ll be off up there again on his own in no time, I’m sure. But I couldn’t do it. In some ways, I feel like a bit of a failure, but we still had a great couple of hours on the mountain which we all really enjoyed. It was beautiful, and I’m so glad to be able to experience somewhere so different from where we live. And I loved that as we walked, we met some people who greeted us with Bonjour, and others with Hola. There’s just something so exotic about being so close to three different borders, and sharing the mountains with so many different cultures.
And as an added bonus, on the way home, we saw a guy dragging a dead wild boar up the road, and that’s not something you see every day!

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Living with Less

Posted on October 14, 2012 by roadschoolingclaytons

As I sit here applying a little lipliner from the stub of my MAC spice liner that happened to be in my purse, not in the broken-into car, I feel cranky again. This is the only cosmetic I have left. So, I’m applying a little and putting vaseline over the top. Why? Not sure…that’s a whole other blog post I imagine. Or maybe some sort of self help book…
Anyway, the robbery happened a week ago today, so we have been here at La Fougere in the beautiful Pyrenees for almost that long. And have we done much hiking? Have we enjoyed long rambling walks around the lakes and along the rivers? Have we taken advantage of the fact that we finally don’t have to drive every day? Have we been to the numerous amazing thermal baths we keep reading about?
No. We have not.
Why? Because it has taken us almost a week of driving around to any town big enough to stock walking shoes to actually get a pair of shoes. I have big feet, and apparently either all women in France have big feet and so they’re sold out (which is not the scenario I expect is true), or more likely, no women in France have big feet. Merrell lady’s shoes come in sizes up to European 44, but no store here has any over 41. I take a 42. So, every store I went in had maybe one or two pairs of shoes in that size, but all of them were men’s. Which is fine as long as they’re not really wide, and big and black and clunky and manly. Which they all have been. I did finally get a pair yesterday afternoon. They are big and manly and not something I would really want, but they were on sale, and so my thought process is that I can wear them now and buy something I really want when I get back to England.
This is only one of the inconveniences that has resulted in us not being able to fully enjoy our beautiful surroundings. It takes a really long time to find a place where we can buy underwear for the whole family. And don’t even get me started on bathing suits. I have a big body too, and buying a bathing suit generally takes me longer than buying shoes. Or any other item, really. Even for the kids, it is not the right time of year to be buying bathing suits. None of us has found any yet, and so no mountain hotsprings.
The thing is, we did not come here to shop. It is not a shopping sort of a place. Half the stores don’t even open unless they feel like it. In France, they close from 12-2, and then reopen. Maybe. And in Spain they open 10-2 and then close from 2-4:30 or 5. Depends. Some of them only open at the weekends. Some close on the weekends. Some close on Mondays. Some on Wednesdays and Fridays. In short, it is almost impossible to go anywhere with the intention of shopping without a written schedule of opening and closing times. Which, naturally, does not exist.
What I need is a mall, a really big one that opens from 10-10 and has stores I recognize. We could go to Barcelona, but with the car window still out, we can’t really go too far. Oh, and that’s the other thing; we have now driven to Spain twice where the closest Citroen dealer supposedly was, and it was closed both times. Yesterday we finally found one open in Bourg Madame, on the border, but they need to order the glass so it will be Wednesday or Thursday by the time we get the car fixed.
Now, this all sounds very negative, and I don’t want it to appear that we are not appreciating our time here. Most of the time, everyone is very positive, and we are just getting on with it. We are learning to live with less, which is never a bad thing. For example, when I get up in the morning, I don’t have to decide what to wear. If it’s cold and cloudy, I wear my long pants and my long sleeved top, and if it’s sunny and warm, I wear my t-shirt and my short pants. And up to today, I always wear my flipflops, regardless of the weather. Today, though, I will wear my men’s walking shoes.
Another positive, I asked one of the kids to go upstairs and get dressed this morning, and she said, “I have no clothes”. Right. Much easier. Pajamas are clothes and clothes are pajamas. Good.
Also, our kids have always been pretty good at entertaining themselves without much, but this brings new meaning to it. They have been playing very intricate and detailed games with a wooden chess set and board they found in a cupboard. I believe one kid controls the white guys and the other the brown guys who live in the “castle” which is the box. The pawns are villagers who also live in the castle, the bishops and knights are servants, and the coloured pieces from the Ludo game are the evil interlopers trying to take over the castle. Fabulous.
It’s all good. But I still get cranky over the fact that all our belongings are probably in a dumpster somewhere in Rome.

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Hiking The Pyrenees in Flipflops is Not Recommended

Posted on October 11, 2012 by roadschoolingclaytons

Before I begin this post, I want to point out that I am aware there may be children viewing it; therefore, there will be no swear words in it. I am going to leave it up to my readers’ own judgement to insert appropriate swear words where they deem it necessary.
So, let’s start at the beginning. Due to the Roman Robbers (directly before “Roman” would be a great place to insert expletive of your choice – just so you get the hang of it), the only footwear I currently have is flipflops. We have been in the mountains, 1600 meters up (where, interestingly, mosquitos cannot survive) for 72 hours and my mountaineering husband is chomping at the bit to get us out hiking. We have had a couple of little walks, but nothing you would need a map for, so they don’t count really.
Anyway, we have spent the first couple of days settling in, recovering from our long and traumatic journey here, and just getting the lay of the land. But today, we must hike.
So, we set off to the ski town of Font Romeu, where there are a smattering of outdoorsy shops, so I can buy some walking shoes (on the way to Lac de Bouillouse where we will hike).The fact that it took me 3 weeks to find a pair of sneakers before we began this trip should have been an indication that this would not be an easy task, but to be fair, we had briefly checked the stores out yesterday, and I knew there were lots I liked, so I thought it would be fine.
Until I realized it was 11:36, and all the stores in France close from 12-2.
Needless to say, I did not get any shoes. But today was a hiking day, so hike we must. We drove up to the Lake where “we” decided on a shorter route than was originally planned, and headed out. After the first ten minutes (which was more of a steep scramble than a walk), I knew this was not going to be a hike for my flipflop-clad feet, but onward we pressed. Our “guide” was sure this was the steepest part. And it was. But the rest was rough rocky terrain, very little of which I would actually refer to as a path. The girls thought it was great. The two younger ones pretended to be on horses the whole time, and Misty and Sky were often racing ahead of us searching out the little yellow route markers to blaze the trail. The oldest walked along checking the map with her dad, commenting often how beautiful the hike was.
I wouldn’t know. I was busy with my eyes on the ground, painstakingly picking out every step to insure I didn’t lose a toe on a particularly sharp rock or break an ankle as my feet slid around my flipflops. Both eyes on the ground also served the purpose of enabling me to avoid eye contact with other hikers as they passed by with their mountain boots and walking sticks. I can just imagine what they were saying in Spanish or French (I don’t even know for sure what country we were in) about the crazy lady in the flipflops.
After an hour or so, we decided we’d better turn back. It wasn’t quite as sunny as it had been when we started. It was, in fact, 11 degrees and starting to rain.
For those of you who have ever tried to walk in flipflops in the rain, even on a flat surface, I don’t really have to explain to you what it would be like trying to get back down the steep scramble as your feet attempt to find some way to grip the bottom of the sopping wet flipflop so they don’t slide out entirely. I probably would have been better off trying to do it barefoot. Lucky my gallant “guide” was there to support me on the really treacherous parts. Even Misty and Sky struggled with those!
Despite the trials, we made it back in one piece. Toes and ankles intact. I don’t think we’ll be doing anymore hiking until I get some new shoes though.

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A Lot Less Luggage

Posted on October 9, 2012 by roadschoolingclaytons

My very well travelled and worldly friend Kim emailed me just as we were leaving for this trip to tell me never to leave anything we valued in the car. Well, that’s pretty difficult when your car is kind of your home, but we have tried to be careful. But now we are travelling lighter.
Our flight from Athens to Rome was delayed on Saturday, so instead of being able to go into Rome to visit the Colosseum and The Vatican, we had to stay at our airport hotel for the evening. Because of this, we decided to leave the hotel early in the morning, and see the sights before we began the drive to Nice. So, we did some research, and asked the hotel staff, and the plan we came up with was to drive as far as the outermost Metro stop (where, according to the map, there was parking), and then take the metro into the city. Hotel staff thought this was a good plan – not driving into the city avoids massive congestion charges, and we would only be leaving the car for a couple of hours. The expected parking lot didn’t actually materialize, but there was some parking on the street outside the station, so off we went.
Unfortunately, while we were touring the Colosseum and getting our picture taken with very overpriced gladiators, someone was smashing our car window and making off with the vast majority of our luggage. When we returned to our car, quite jubilant from our visit to such an amazing site, and proud of ourselves for having navigated the metro without a hitch, still in good time for the long drive to Nice, we found the back seat of the car full of glass, two out of three of our suitcases gone, and the kids backpacks too. The really heavy suitcase full of math books remained. The irony.
Now, the really bad part of this is not our clothes, cosmetics and toiletries, vitamins and medicines, shoes, bathing suits, masks and snorkels, address books, netbook, iPods, all our chargers, and all the bags, although all this is mighty inconvenient. The really bad part is the kid’s journals that they have been keeping faithfully since we left home, and their teddies that they have had since birth. This is what makes me most upset and angry. How dare they mess with our children’s security? And what use are teddy bears and journals to a thief? They could have at least thrown them out nearby so we could get them back. There were many other little things in the kids’ bags that were important to them, the things they chose to bring on this trip, as well as souvenirs from their travels so far, but because we had just returned from our “backpacking” holiday in Greece, the bags were heavy, and we didn’t want them to have to cart them around Rome. And as it was 8:30 on a Sunday morning, it seemed like it would be ok. Not so much.
We have been trying very hard to focus on the positives. It’s just stuff. We are all ok. We had the ipad, wallets, passports and cameras with us (although we can’t charge them now anyway…). The window that was smashed was a small one, and we were able to patch it up and get on our way with only a couple of hours delay at the police station. We did not lose the car. We did not lose a child. There are so many positives.
But I’m still angry sometimes. And I’m still sad sometimes. And I’m so sorry for the girls’ losses. Although, again, these are not losses compared to those they could have been. But if I could get one thing back, it would be a $20 teddy bear, not an ipod touch or my new sneakers…
Moving on.
When we finally got to Nice and found our apartment, it was about 10:30 pm and it was a dirty smelly hole. We slept with the kids, and in the morning, we left. Despite the fact we were supposed to stay for two nights. It was gross, and it wasn’t as if we were going to have fun looking around Nice in our car with the window out wearing the same dirty clothes we had on all night and the day before. We didn’t even have a toothbrush. That made the dirty apartment seem even dirtier.
So, what have we learned? What wisdom can we impart to future travellers? I’m not exactly sure, but I’m thinking, don’t go anywhere unless you can get secure parking, cover all your stuff with a blanket so it looks less tempting(?), and I’m guessing having a car without foreign plates would be good. Although that may be tricky. And possibly illegal.

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What I Want to Say About Athens

Posted on October 6, 2012 by roadschoolingclaytons

What I want to say is that it is a horrible city. Dirty, unfriendly, scary, and covered in graffiti. Don’t go there.
But something holds me back.
I think about the state the country of Greece finds itself in, and know that a huge city like Athens will feel it more than other areas. I imagine how I would feel if my children studied for years only to face the prospect of long term unemployment. Would they go out and paint every available surface with angry graffiti if they had nothing better to do, and no hope for their future? How friendly would I be if my already meager income was being taxed again and again to compensate for a government who has borrowed from so many other countries it is on the verge of collapse? Or if after 35 years of working, my pension has suddenly disappeared? Or if I am now renting a home I might have previously owned. Perhaps I would feel bitter enough to want to destroy what’s left of my neglected city? I might even be a little intimidating or condescending to the tourists who come for a night and spend only a few euros en route to somewhere more glamorous. And maybe I don’t fix the air conditioning in my run down hotel, or re-hang the shower door, because I have other priorities for my money. Like food.
Or perhaps I might even rant and rave almost viciously about the state of my country to the family of five in the back of my taxi who has clearly just returned from vacationing on a Greek Island, and then rip them off for almost double the price of a more “official” cab…especially if I was 40ish with a young family and no way to make life better for them.
So, instead of saying don’t go to Athens, I feel like saying go, but go with your eyes wide open. Know what to expect, and give yourself a couple of days there in case your first attempt at seeing The Acropolis does not quite turn out as you planned. And get a good map.

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Beaches

Posted on October 4, 2012 by roadschoolingclaytons

I am currently sitting at Kamari beach, Santorini, watching the kids pop up out of the water occasionally and yell excitedly to each other about the new kind of fish, the size of the fish, the number of fish, or the really cool seaweed directly below them. They have been enthralled by these beaches, from Monterrosso in Italy where the snorkeling craze began, to each of the beaches we have visited in Santorini.
Now, I have always said we are completely spoiled on PEI, and we are. We have the most amazing sandy beaches. But this is different. We have been avoiding the sandy replicas of PEI beaches, and heading to those that are more unfamiliar and interesting for the kids. The black sand of Perissa where the ocean floor is just a big volcanic slab, the charcoal gray pebbles of Kamari, and the creamy pumice cliffs of Vlyxada have all been favourites, each one surprisingly as good as the last (even though they only ever want to go to the last one they went to!). There is a very famous red beach here as well, and we did go check it out, all the while thinking “what’s the big deal, we have tons of red beaches”. And although we didn’t venture down the cliff to get to the actual beach, it was interesting to see. Not like ours at all really except in colour – massive red volcanic cliffs, and red porous rock almost like pumice, but the wrong colour. Not sandstone.
It has been such a pleasure to see the kids exploring these new ocean playgrounds and listening to their tales of exotic creatures!
We even do “beach math” with pebbles!

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Greek Redemption: Santorini

Posted on October 4, 2012 by roadschoolingclaytons

Everyone needs to go to Santorini. All the hassle of getting here, and the disappointment of Athens has disappeared into the Agean sunset. This island is incredible. We have four nights here, but we are wishing we stayed for a month. I have some actual travel advice to impart now:

1. Don’t take the seajet to save time as we did. Yes, it is about three hours quicker than the regular ferries, but you can’t go outside, you can’t see any of the scenery as you approach, and you can’t even really walk around because it’s rough. It’s like a plane, assigned seats and everything. Take the ferry and enjoy the freedom to move around and the spectacular views.

2. Do rent a car or some other mode of transport. I was skeptical at first, but the island is small, and has an incredible variety of things to see, so by the time you pay for buses or taxis, it’s well worth the cost of the car. Surprisingly, the roads are not too hairy either. We got a car for four days from some guy at the port for about 70 euros. Hotels will quote you 35 a day.

3. Do stay in Fira. Oia is probably even more stunning, but Fira is so central you are never more than twenty minutes from anything really!

4. Do eat lots of gyros. It’s very yummy, and cheap too.

5. Do not try to find ancient Akrotiri on your own. We did and it was a massive fail. We will be trying again tomorrow, so I’ll keep you posted.

6. Do explore lots of different beaches. There are black volcanic sand ones, pebble ones, red ones, white ones, ones with pumice cliffs, ones with no cliffs…look how many days you need just to go to the beach!
In the meantime, go ahead and plan your trip. But stay a while.

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Greek Tragedy Act II

Posted on October 1, 2012 by roadschoolingclaytons

So we finally found our hotel, and instead of letting our kids crash like they wanted to, we had to drag them out again because of the one and only chance to see The Acropolis and all that. It’s now 2pm. I ask the vague front desk guy how we get there, and he shows us on the map how to get to the Metro station, informs us we should get off at Monosteraki, and assures us The Acropolis is “very close”. Well, after getting off the train, we walked around for 10 minutes looking for signs or maps to guide us, but no luck, so we just started walking. We could see it, but it was not “very close” and it was very high up, and there didn’t seem to be any clear path.
I would say we waked about a mile, winding in and out of little streets lined with taverna and people selling their wares – all for half price apparently. But no signs. And the ones we did see were so completely covered in graffiti they were impossible to read. In fact, almost everything was covered in graffiti in Athens.
Anyway, after a couple of hours of circling The Acropolis, we had still not found a way in, and every time I asked someone, they just gesticulated and said Acropoli, like, you can’t miss it…
As you can imagine, the kids are starting to lose it. We haven’t had a meal since the previous day, they were exhausted, sticky, hot, and thirsty. So, we basically gave up, sat down at a street cafe, and shared a big Greek taster plate. The kids said they wouldn’t eat, and we didn’t even feel hungry – too hot I think. But when it came, we ate! It was delicious, and it revived us enough that we were able to trudge back to the subway and get back to our hotel.
Turns out, The Acroplolis closed at 2:30 on that particular day. A fact nobody bothered to tell us.

And the hotel air conditioning didn’t work. We had a few tears that night. They wanted to go home. And who can blame them? What a frustrating, soul destroying kind of a day. Mairi called it The Greek Disappointment.

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Greek Tragedy

Posted on September 30, 2012 by roadschoolingclaytons

It is currently 4:30am and so stinking hot I’ve decided to write instead of continue my futile attempts at sleep. We arrived in Athens today, by plane from Rome. So much quicker than the ferry alternative, and according to any online quotes I managed to get, about 700 euro cheaper than the ferry alternative. We knew our window for seeing Athens was small, so we had decided to take a taxi from the airport to our hotel in Pireaus to save time. When we arrived at the taxi stand we were informed that there are no taxis for five people in Greece, so our option was two taxis (about 100 euro) or the bus (about 22 euro). We chose the bus. Which would have been fine except that it took an hour and twenty minutes, and then the driver put us off at the wrong stop, and we couldn’t find our hotel. So, it’s 1pm ish in pireaus on a Sunday. Streets are deserted. Everything is closed. And all the street signs are not just in a foreign language, they’re in a foreign alphabet. We are dragging our luggage around. It’s about 40 degrees in the shade. The slight breeze feels like a hair dryer. And the kids have been up since 5:30am. I know I don’t need to use any descriptive words to explain what that was like.
And that was just the beginning. More later.

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Roads

Posted on September 29, 2012 by roadschoolingclaytons

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See this thing? This is the thing that challenged my navigational skills on the way to the campground in Punta Sabbioni. And it just messed me up again coming from the opposite direction. We ended up having to make the same triangle of autostrada detours incurring an extra toll in the process. What a pain!
Otherwise, it’s been pretty good on the roads in Italy. Now that Sat Nav Josie has been banished. The difficult thing about it, though, is that road maps written for English people (including our iPad map) have the Italian place names in English, but the road signs have them in Italian. So, if you don’t know, for example, that Genoa is Genova, Padua is Padova, and Florence is Firenze, you’re kind of in trouble. Be warned.
We are currently on our way to Rome (Roma) with two hours to go. Then we have to sneak into a hotel room with our three kids that only accommodates a maximum of four people. We have to do that again tomorrow night too. If you have three kids and you plan on doing a similar trip, I suggest you leave one of them at home. It will be much easier to find lodging.

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