What we did this summer

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.

Remember, this is a trip for your child(ren), not for you.