Vacation Planning

Well, I can tell you what we didn't do today: we didn't go swimming.  And we'd been anticipating swimming today for weeks.

Most things in Zürich are incredibly, exorbitantly expensive, but there are a few great deals, highly reflective of Swiss values.  And, as is clear from their wonderful system of playgrounds and community centers, the Swiss value their children; the aquatics program in Zürich is another gift to their kids.  For 30 francs, Ella can have admission to all of the pools (indoor and outdoor) and private beaches throughout Zürich, all summer long, until mid-September. Children under 7, like Alex and Joey, are free. And the passes for adults are still totally affordable, at 100 francs.

Today was the opening day all of those beaches and pools...including the aquatic complex across the street from our house, the one with the enormous water slide and the huge lap pool and the little wading pool and to playground for my pollywog.  We've watched them over the past weeks, draining the pool and trimming the lawns and refilling the water.  And we've watched the temperature of the pool water rise on the huge digital thermometer. And all week long the sun was out and the heat was high...until last night.

But the weather forecast still said it would reach the 70s today, and we're from Seattle: we're made of sterner stuff.  That would be more than warm enough for a swim, just a short one.

But the morning chill never did leave the air, and Dennis and I realized that, maybe, it would be a little better for everyone if we went to one of the indoor pools instead.  And then it started raining, really raining, and we looked at each other and realized that we just didn't have any energy for it, not today.

You see, we're in the middle of a big, energy-sucking project: summer vacation planning.

I remember when I was a little girl.  Mom and Dad, so peaceful and organized, would sit at the table with a yellow legal pad and a Triple A guide book one fine, exciting evening and they would plan our annual summer road trip.  When I was small, we started with two-week vacations to the Atlantic coast, to a beach condo that my Grandpa had somehow magically found. And then we grew bolder and drove down to Florida, some years going clear to Key West.  And then, as when we kids were older and more patient, our parents ambitions started to stretch further, taking us to Texas, and then farther, and farther, all the way to California, through the glorious parks in the southwest.  And they'd plan it all with a guide book and a telephone and a paper map.

Once they'd figured out their route, Mom would visit AAA, and a few weeks later, they'd give our magical TripTik, that wonderful, customized book of maps, on which the agent would carefully trace their recommended route with the most deliciously squeaky aqua-colored pen, marking with an ink stamp the possible construction sites.  And then we'd go home and I'd play AAA Travel Agent, drawing aqua lines on scrap paper, pushing as hard as I could to make my own marker squeak impressively, and stamping the paper officially with whatever Care Bear Stamp I had on hand.

But all of that diligent practice isn't serving me at all.  The system changed on me, and I'm afraid I have to admit that I'm failing at this vacation-planning thing, miserably.

For one thing, Dennis and I have absolutely no idea where we should go.  We have vague ideas of sandy beaches and warm sun, the Atlantic Coast vacation of my youth, transplanted to Europe.  But there aren't very many sandy beaches on the Mediterranean, it turns out, and so we somewhat arbitrarily decided on Corsica, which seems to be known for aqua water and golden sand.

And since we live in this wonderful age of computers, Dennis and I expected planning this trip to be easy: a few clicks on a travel search engine, and poof, there will be the hotel of our dreams.  But Corsica seems to be a decade or so in the past: while many hotels do have some sort of a web presence, you need to call or write to find availability.  And the island's address system sees a little more lackadaisical than what we're used to. Hotels don't list their street addresses, so our beloved maps.google.com is useless: we're left looking at satellite images, scratching our heads: "well that looks like it could be the shape of the pool of the hotel, but if that's the case, it isn't on the water at all."

My parents had the benefit of the AAA diamond rating system and their reliable third-party endorsement when choosing their hotels: we usually stayed at those 2-star and 3-star Holiday Inns, which, reliably, had the best pools, the ones with the plastic curtain that you could swim under, separating the indoor pool from the magical, starlight outdoor pool.  And you could count on them having ice buckets, which Kathy and I fought over for the honor of filling.

Portrait of a rainy day

But as we're looking at eye-numbing lists of hotels and villas and holiday complexes, I just don't know what to expect or believe. We didn't bring a good guide book with us from the states, so we're relying on user comments on TripAdvisor.  They always run the range from glowing to bitter, and I usually have the sneaking suspicion that most are written by the staff of the hotel and their competitors.  So Dennis and I keep finding hotels or villas or holiday complexes that look promising, only to be scared away by warnings of "broken air-conditioning, paper-thin walls, discotheque that will keep you awake until 1 AM, and bathrooms that smell of poo."

We're getting nowhere, fast. It doesn't seem that we should need a travel agent in this day and age, but I'm starting to think that we can't avoid it.

Our poor kids, while their parents were getting increasingly stressed by this whole vacation business, entertained themselves as best they could with their books and toys and every board game on the shelf.  Finally, Dennis and I had had enough: he said he had an errand to run, and offered to bring home Chinese food for dinner, a little balm for a frustrating afternoon.

Before the rain started, Ella began a new project,
collecting Swiss wild flowers to press and keep.

A half-hour later, I got a call from Dennis: he'd been out getting me a belated Mother's Day gift, a new satchel, and he wanted to make sure I liked it before he bought it.  When I got off the phone, Alex asked me what Daddy wanted.  "Well, he's getting me a gift, Alex.  Your Daddy's a nice man."

"Oh," said my Alex. "I'm happy for you that you chose him."

Well, good thing for you, too, little man.  And, somehow, we'll take this fine family we've made on a fun vacation.  But, until we figure out how, you'll need to excuse me.  We have several more hours combing through vitriolic hotel reviews ahead of us.