I haven’t blogged in forever. It was a crazy
summer and then the school year started and well, here we are. And, I want to
blog about being on sabbatical, resilience, middle school, and the latest young
adult novels I’ve read. But, first things first. Our summer. . .
Four years ago, Emery asked to go around the
world. Thinking he would forget about it, I told him we would do that when he
turned 10. Well, he never forgot, and we managed to circumnavigate the world in
the shortest and cheapest way possible. It was awesome.
Here are the facts:
1. Three
stops (with layovers in Boston, Iceland, Moscow, and Los Angeles) Paris,
Venice, and Tokyo.
2. 13
days.
3. Start
and end in New Orleans
Yes, it was expensive. But we saved and I taught
summer school to help finance it. And, my husband is a genius. He bought a
series of one way tickets and paid in advance for the hotels on discount sites well in advance of
our trip. It was so much cheaper than any way I came up with (travel agent,
multi-city airline tickets, etc.)
Victor and I are not convinced that Emery
appreciated the trip as much as we did or as we hoped. To be honest, every time
we flew to a different country we would up sleeping for 14 hours before
embarking on a whirlwind trip of must sees, which began with figuring our that
city’s public transportation system (I could do an entire blog post on Tokyo’s
public transportation system).
I’m not sure how to recount the trip other than
a way suggested by my colleague who suggested that a good way to help Emery remember
the trip is to have him write captions for some of the pictures we took. Well,
colleague, Emery’s captions may not surprise you:
 |
| This is definitely the best trip a family can take. |
 |
| It's a tower. Yay! |
 |
| Are you sure I won't burn the place down? |
Tips for summer trips
1. Less
is more. Don’t try to see everything. Taking in just two sites a day really is
enough.
2. Tours
are your best friend. We took a tour in Paris and in Tokyo and they both were
memorable, educational, cheaper than if we had tried touring on our own and
efficient. Yes, it’s a little touristy, but the tour of the Opera House in
Paris is something I’ll never forget and wouldn’t have done if we didn’t have a
tour as part of our package. I like the put together your own itinerary better
than the having to stay together with a group for an entire day.
3. Okay, professor moms (and dads). Say you really
want to go to the Guggenheim Museum in Venice and you’re rushing there because
it’s Tuesday afternoon and they are closed on Wednesdays, and you are only in
Venice for three days and of course the first day you had to see the “big”
sites, and then you pass by a little church that is advertising an exhibition
of working wooden models that Leonardo da Vinci made. You go into the exhibit because
you think you have enough time to make it to the Guggenheim before it closes.
Your son is clearly having fun with the models (and honestly you are too) and
you stay longer than you thought you would. Don’t be sad and try to convince
the museum to let you in for the last ten minutes they are open when you
finally get there. Stay longer at the da Vinci exhibit.
