Paris Jaunt

So, a week and a half ago  M informed me that he had meetings in Switzerland and Paris Tuesday and Wednesday of last week. Then he paused and said "You know, I've never been to Paris. Would it be ok if I spent an extra day wandering around?" (he's very careful about asking for extra time away from home. I've trained him well. :) ) So I said, "Well, I've never been either, what if I joined you for the weekend?" . And so began our spontaneous weekend in Paris (we like to keep our plans as spontaneous as possible).

We sprung into action. He called about available flights for me using his frequent flier points and asked his parents about taking the kids for Shabbat and I started calling up about an afternoon and overnight babysitter for Wednesday night. Since Shabbat comes in so early, it seemed a better idea to go Wednesday afternoon, to have to whole Thursday for sightseeing. My two trusty Savta babysitters came through. Katie was available in the afternoon and Mazal was available overnight (she's been bugging me to go away for an overnight vacation since she started with us after E was born 19 months ago so she was thrilled). My inlaws would come to Ranaana to pick up Thursday afternoon and bring the kids back to Jeruslaem for shabbat and even bring them back home Sat. night so they would be able to go to school on time Sunday morning. We would return 4 am Sunday morning.

Everything was falling into place until my friend said to me "It's so great you're not a Polish mother too worried to leave her kids". And of course, from that moment on, I was tied up with anxiety about leaving the kids. Well, mostly E, because I'd never left him overnight before. I started waffling, wondering if it wasn't such a good idea, how would he get back to sleep without us (he still wakes up once a night for a bottle. I know, really bad habit). My brother, father of six, assured me that no one would be scarred for life and to just do it. So, we did.

I was a complete wreck until I got onto the plane. I always had this fantasy orignally of going to the airport alone, enjoying reading a magazine by myself on the plane. I didn't enjoy any of it. It was actually really hard to separate.

And I used to be jealous of my husband that he got all these solitary plane rides to read quietly. No more. My knees and legs hurt from sitting so long and it was hard to concentrate with the numerous screaming babies around me ( of course I was completely sympathetic and really actually wanted to help them, but figured the babies would scream even more being held by a stranger).

Anyway, the weekend itself was wonderful. It was great spending time alone with my husband, away from all of our everyday life. The kids were fine, E got through the nights fine without us (he actually slept through instead of doing his wakeup/bottle routine).

On Thursday we spent 12 hours on our feet roaming around Paris. Thankfully, it was a sunny day, though cold. We hit the Arc d'Triomphe, Champs Elysees and then ended up at a nice kosher dairy place near the Louvre with a "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" theme (not kidding- literally there was a huge statue of one of the characters from that movie). Then we wandered around the Ile D'France with a lot of nice quaint streets and I bought a nice silk scarf from this scarf store. We saw the Notre Dame cathedral. Then we hit the Musee D'Orsay and it was so nice to just be in a museum again. I used to hang out at the Metropolitan and MoMA in NYC all the time in high school and it was nice to be back around art again.

We took the metro to a pretentious overpriced restaurant called Osmose. Not worth the money, but we only found out at the end. Oh well.

Originally we wanted to do the Eiffel Tower at night afterward to see the "City of Lights" thing, but I could barely drag my body to the Metro, so we bagged that till the morning.

Friday, I got a baguette from the local kosher bakery (for future reference, we stayed at a Best Western Aida Opera on rue Richer, on the same block as a kosher grocery, bakery, meat/dairy restaurants and shuls.) and some hard and soft cheeses and made sandwhiches for lunch. We ate them at a little cafe on the Eiffel Tower with some coffee and hot choc. we bought.

It was really freezing by Friday, no more sun. But they had a great exhibition about the history of the tower, how it was built and why. At lunch we flipped through our guidebook to figure out what to do next. We had a few hours till Shabbat, so we felt that we should do something else. Then we decided to just find a cafe and relax, which was the best idea.

Shabbat we tried to memorize some routes to Le Merais, which was in relative walking distance to us. But by then it was really raining and cold, so no more walking for us. 5 minutes before candlelighting I realized I had candles but no matches. I went down to ask at the front desk and they handed me a box of Shufersal matches!

We had both meals reserved at this great meat restaurant down the block, Les Ailes, which was a relief in terms of proximity and just getting out of the hotel on a rainy day. Expensive, but absolutely wonderful and excellent service ie: waiters and hosts who really want to serve you, not just deigning to do so. The food was Tunisian French, which meant about 10 salatim to start (including a crunchy fennel salad and delicious avocado and basil ), fish, a choice of veal chicken or couscous, sides, fruit, pastries, tea and coffee, wine, challah, and drinks. Really salatim to nuts (they served salted nuts and olives with the salatim). There were about 7 other couples there, so it was a nice cozy Shabbat atmosphere.

It was a fantastic trip and I feel very blessed and thankful that we were able to do that on such short notice.

(I will add pics as soon as I upload them).

Update: Promised pics:

Well, It Was a Nice Vacation...

I finally have a second to post. I'm not sure where to begin- the vacation or the post-vacation madness.

How about let's start with the vacation? Much nicer!

Basically, it was fabulous. As my husband described it- Nikui Rosh Totali- complete brain cleaning. No internet. Schedule was basically: AM: Pool PM: A different beach every day. One day we took the kids to a nature park and they got to hang out with animals but it was completely stroller unfriendly (hello, who do these people think come to animal parks?) and another day we took a cruise to this Shipwreck beach.

Getting there and back was a hassle. The plane ride there was at 7 am, which means we had to be there at 5. The girls were really great about getting up at 3 am and getting dressed and ready in 5 minutes. E was too- except that I forgot to change his diaper and forgot to pack a bottle for him for the wait on the security line- big mistake. He ate a lot of tea biscuits but then was very thirsty and cranky- and wet. We finally made it through check in and I was able to change him and get him a bottle before getting on the plane.

All I can say is- thank God it was only a 1.5 hour plane ride. No trips to America until all kids can plug into their own iPods or DVD players!

We landed in Athens, got our stuff. Everyone else was travelling with little itty bitty suitcases because they were going to "HaKol Kallul" (all-inclusive) resorts. Not us! Three big duffle bags for us! But we didn't actually overpack too much and only came back with two.

We got to our car- unfortunately, the car M ordered online that seemed like a "deal" online but was only a deal because it didn't include insurance (!) and was actually too small for us. He had to go back and get us a bigger one and was extremely pissed for getting cheated in about 4 different ways. So lesson number one for readers: Beware of car rental "deals". Stick with the major rental businesses and as always, if it seems to good to be true, it probably is.

So we packed the car and headed to Beit Chabad to pick up our frozen food. The GPS took forever to "Find the Satellite" and I was getting a bit nervous because I had absolutely no idea where we were and where we were supposed to go. Luckily, M printed out Google maps directions to BC and the island, so even if the GPS failed us, we'd be able to get where we needed to go. Yay for my forward thinking husband!

The kids conked out in the back seat and we found Chabad on a little street in Athens. Athens looked kind of like a depressing version of Bat Yam. The parts I saw on the first day didn't look very charming. A lot of cheap dirty stores, a LOT of cigarette ads all over the place ( no wonder 40% of the country smokes as I read in the news last night!). Anway, I made it up five flights because I couldn't figure out how to work the elevator (something about opening and closing the right doors). A very nice Chabad rabbi handed me a rather large insulated bag and a smaller one, packed with individual frozen meals, fantasically packed. I was thrilled. I paid him and he was nice enough to show me how the elevator worked.

Back in the car, M got the GPS working and we made our way out of Athens and towards Korinthos. We needed to get to Killini, on the far edge of the Pelloponese to get the ferry to the island but guess what? The GPS couldn't find Killini! It could only find as far west as Korinthos, so that's where we headed. We later found out that the GPS knew nothing about Zakynthos, our island, either. But there we managed with a map.

M was pretty exhausted from sleeping only 3 hours at night, so we had to make a rest stop on the highway for about an hour. Luckily, there are tons of rest stops on Greek highways, kind of like in America. I took the kids to the bathroom, bought yogurt for E at the gas station (Greek yogurt! Yum!) and some other snacks and we had a nice party on the grass. M slept for about 45 minutes and was refreshed enough to continue.

Here is a piece of Google maps showing a bit what the car/ferry trip looked like. Athens (Athina) is on the right and Zakynthos is all the way on the left:

Leavin' on a Jet Plane

We are planning a family trip to Greece in a week and a half. Though this choice of destination is not as frugal or cheap as the ones mentioned in this post at Mother in Israel, it's not as extravagent as it sounds. We are using my husband's frequent flier miles (the ones mentioned in my first post) and we are renting a house I found on this site .

What about food, you ask? (which of course is always my number 1 concern!). I'll be bringing a pot and a pan to make eggs, pasta, rice, etc and I also ordered some chicken and turkey dishes from Chabad of Athens which actually has a kosher catering service.

So how did I come up with Greece? We were orginally planning on going to the States with M's miles. However, we didn't get around to calling up about tickets till the middle of June, which is way too late to book for the summer ( I had a bad feeling about that). I was very disappointed because not only did I want to get to the States to see my Zayde, whom I haven't seen in 3 years, but I just wanted to get on a plane and get out of the country for awhile (it has been 3 years since I've seen an airport).

After being depressed for awhile, I remembered we had neighbors back in Jerusalem who went to Greece for a week in the summer, and I thought, why not, we have the miles? So I started digging around about hotels, rentals etc. I found the vacation home rental site and thus started my mad rush to plan a vacation. I discovered that June is pretty much very late to plan anything for following two months. People book these homes a year in advance!

It became an obsession for a few days and required a lot of coordination between the flight and the availability of different houses. (There is a reason that travel agencies are still in business) But I finally came up with a match and we're leaving in a week and a half!

We are staying on the island of Zakynthos, which is one of the Ionian Islands on the western side of Greece. We are flying to Athens, which takes about one and half hours, renting a car and then driving over the Peloponnesus (like the Peloponnesian War! Remember that from high school history class?) and taking a ferry to the island. The drive and the ferry should take about 5 hours, but I'm sure we'll stop on the way.

We don't have a lot planned yet, but there will be a lot of beach and pool time on the schedule. And I'm hoping to see the sea turtles! A friend who is a professor of Jewish history informed me that there is actually an old shul and Jewish cemetary on the island and that there was a functioning Jewish community on the island until the 1950's. You can read more about that here.

Wish us luck!