Venezia -> Mali Lošinj, Croatia

We actually managed to get the early start we were aiming for, which I think is pretty good, considering we're shepherding five children among us.  And since the hotel had given us a huge breakfast, it seemed  reasonable to drive straight through to the ferry stop for the island of Cres, in Croatia.  From there we'd be driving to the island of Lošinj, where we'll be staying this week, at a resort in the Kinderhotel family, the Hotel Vespra.

We stayed in a Kinderhotel once before, in February, when we took our skiing vacation in Austria. And, indeed, most of these extraordinarily child-friendly hotels are located in the Austrian alps, but, just recently, it seems, they're starting to expand to warmer locations, with an eye on summer vacation spots.  For our summer vacation, we wanted time on the beach, and, since this was the only Kinderhotel that was on the Mediterranean, it's where we decided to go. It was worth the long drive, we decided, for some sunshine and easy meals and optional free child care....Dennis and I wanted a vacation too, you see.

Miraculously, the drive didn't actually take much longer than Google predicted, although, by all rights,  we should have gotten horribly lost.  The directions that Dennis had so carefully printed out in advance of our trip listed only roadway numbers, but when we crossed into Slovenia, it became increasingly hard to find a single route number on the road signs.  Rather, the sign posts only listed what towns laid on each route.  And since the Slavic town names were sort of a mad jumble of consonants, and I was trying to read them at highway speed, navigation became increasingly frustrating.  And the smallness an narrowness of some the roads did nothing to reassure us: some of our path seemed rarely trod, and it didn't seem likely that it could possibly be our route.

But it was, and, in the end, we made only one wrong turn, one which only took us only about twenty minutes out of our way.  Brie's and Geoff's car came equipped with a GPS, which should have made the driving trivial, but they said the navigation system flew into a panic every time we entered a tunnel (and there were many of these).  Apparently, the system believed that, somehow they had driven their car into the sea.

But things were simplified greatly when, after our mistake, we started using the GPS on Dennis's phone.  In my relief, I became such an enthusiastic navigator at that point that I started getting some mockery from the driver's side of the car.  Especially when I started warning Dennis about impending forks in the road that turned out to be long residential driveways.

And so we made our way into Croatia: since we were leaving the European Union, we had to go through a couple of stern-faced passport checks. But then they welcomed us with several large, shiny, tourist booklets and maps (all in Italian, sadly) along with a nine-language guide book of driving laws in Croatia.  It informed us, among other things, that a seatbelt is "an absolute must-have on Croatian roads. With this accessory you simply cannot miss. It fits equally well with the evening combinations and light, airy summer clothes."  So we learned not only that seatbelts are compulsory, but also that Croatians seem to have a sense of humor.

Unfortunately, when we arrived at the queue for the ferry, with lunch long overdue, there really wasn't wasn't much on offer. We'd read that we should expect a 90-minute wait for the ferry, and where there are wait times like that, we reasoned, there is also, usually, food for sale.  But not so much.

That's Cres, behind me, and our ferry boat

Luckily, the kids were pretty happy with their steady diet of granola bars and Garfield cartoons.  Interestingly, to buy our ferry passage, we had to abandon our car in line and walk down to a ticket booth.  But I'll forgive them that inconvenience since they allowed us to pay our passages in Euros instead of Croatian kunas, of which we had none.  But now we have a few, and we learned that the two-kuna coin features a picture of a tuna.  The tuna kuna.

The ferries reportedly ran less than once an hour, but when we failed to get on the first one, we realized it wasn't such a bad luck. The posted time table didn't seem important at all: they were running the two ferries back and forth just as quickly as they could load and unload them on either end of the twenty-five minute passage.

While waiting for the ferry, I
entertained myself with watching
a dung beetle roll his little ball of poo
back to his house. Awesome, right?

Still, Dennis and Brie and Geoff had time to walk down to the dock to see if there was any sort lunch to be had: Dennis returned with a gas station mystery-meat sandwich, half of which Joey joyfully consumed.  For the rest of supplemented our diets with ice cream on the ferry boat.  It is vacation, after all.

As I waited with the kids by the car, looking down the cliff at the Adriatic, it seemed as though this vacation was shaping up nicely: the water was clear, as rocky seas tend to be.  But from his closer viewpoint, down by the docks, Dennis found the view somewhat more menacing. There, swimming just a few feet from the three-year-olds who were splashing in the shallows, was a man in a full camouflage dive suit, swimming with a harpoon gun.

The ferry boat that we took would seemingly have been much better suited for a different passage route: although there wasn't much room for cars--it seemed that they boarded fifty cars, at most--there were at least twenty times as many seats as passengers.  We made ourselves very comfortable in the air conditioned cabin with treats and coffee and Uno and legos beforee bundling, all too quickly, back into the car.

Once we were on Cres, we had to drive the length of the island, before we reached the bridge to Lošinj, meaning ninety minutes of narrow roads, bumpy, and somewhat washed out roads.  The landscape on the island was completely insane. It was all barren, rocky terrain, with a few scrub bushes in amongst  the periodic spindly pine trees.  It reminded me more of the American west than anything else.

Except that the desolate landscape was broken up by a completely nonsensical maze of loose rock walls.  What they were dividing or demarcating, I couldn't begin to guess.  They branched out at all angles, with no farm houses or ranches in amongst them.  And, although the roads signs kept warning us to watch for cows and sheep, we saw a total of two ewes grazing, roadside, on the entire trip. They, along with my friend the dung beetle, represented the sum total of animal life that we'd seen in Croatia.


Although there's hope that we'll see more: the Lošinj archipelago, apparently, is home to gecko lizards and hosts over hundred dolphins in its surrounding waters.  And I was glad to read that, hostile though the terrain seemed at first glance, there are no poisonous reptiles on these islands.

Although the driving for Dennis and Brie was tedious and draining, Geoff and I had a pleasant break of it: with only one main road stretching across the island, there was no way to get lost. And, every once in a while, we'd round a bend and have a really extraordinary view.

I think this is the town of Veli Lošinj, which means "Big Village," located a little north of our Mali Lošinj, which
means "Small Village." A misnomer: Mali Lošinj grew to be quite a bit larger than its northern neighbor.

The tourist bureau on Mali Lošinj makes a big deal about the fragrances of the island. ("Let yourself go! See what it's like to be pampered by nature that has given Lošinj 1018 plant species - 939 are autochthonous and 230 are herbs...") Apparently "August is the month of oleander, loquat, and fig."  But all I smelled when we pulled into the parking lot was gorgeous, fragrant pine, from the needles crushed by our car tires. Indeed, the hotel is located in something of a pine forest. Mmmm...

But the trees were the last thing on the kids' mind as we unloaded our bags. Ella and Alex both remember very well all of the playgrounds and soft play areas that our last Kinderhotel had.  They were bouncing in place with anticipation as we took our glacial time unpacking the car.  But as soon as we burst into the lobby, Ella spied a mat with some oversized building blocks. "OKAY!" She said to herself, as in, Right! Let's get down to Business.  And in she dove, making a kid-sized castle by the time we'd received our room keys.

After extracting the young ones, we found our rooms.  I should say that this hotel is considerably larger than the last hotel that we visited, which could hold about 40 families, maximum.  I think this hotel has well over 500 rooms. And I should also say that our last hotel had ranked a full four smileys on the highly prestigious smiley rating system for Kinderhotels, and this hotel has only managed to scrape together a mere three smileys.

The reason for that became clear quite quickly. Ella was eager to find the Pino Club. Our last hotel had Smiley, a large yellow smily-face man, as its mascot; the Hotel Vespra, has Pino the pine tree holding court over the children's play area.  But, when we found Pino's club, it was clear that it was a set of recently converted conference room. Not a twisty slide or jungle gym in sight.  Awww....poor kids.

But the transparent disappointment that registered on the kids faces quickly turned back to anticipation as they found a ball pit and a counselor in one corner working on a painting project with the kids.  And, even better, all of the counselors spoke English quite well.  Alex (who seems to have designated himself Keeper of the Small Folk) and Joey and Kael disappeared into the balls, while Ella curled up with a paint brush.  Happy as they seemed, we decided to leave them for the half-hour before dinner while we continued our walk around the hotel grounds.

Surprisingly, especially since this is a child-based hotel, dinner doesn't start until 7:00, or, as I like to call it, bedtime.  So I guess we'll be trying something a little new this week.  Until then, Brie and Geoff and Dennis and I enjoyed our newfound freedom on the terrace, with a drink apiece and this lovely view of the sea.

Also, between the hotel and the sea, was a large playground, a mini-golf
course, several sport courts, and an enormous outdoor pool.
I think we'll be just fine.

Kael, when we came to fetch him.  Maybe
we should rethink the wisdom of
abandoning our children in foreign countries?
Naw.

The kids were all very happy when we went to pick them up.  The counselor invited us to join them after dinner for a kids' carnival-themed party: some of the children had made costumes this afternoon, apparently, but the counselors had made spares that our kids could wear.  I signed Ella up: something about that glint in her eye told me that trying to get her to bed on time would be futile, anyway.

Dinner was...overwhelming.  Not to press the point to much, but Dennis and I sort of missed our Kinderhotel of yore, where we had an assigned table in a quiet dining room, and our food was brought to us by a waitress who, each night, earnestly asked "and would you like the cream soup?"

We wanted the cream soup tonight; instead, we were faced with the largest buffet that I'd seen in a long time. I actually liked a lot of the food, once we managed to find the things that each of us wanted to eat.  Happily for some of us, it seems that plain noodles and chicken nuggets are always an option.  But Croatian food seems to feature large joints of meat and some interesting seafood.  Octopus and squid feature heavily.

After eating, the boys seemed to be ready for bed, and Ella, too, overstimulated as she was, started getting a little snappish.  But in the end Dennis and I decided that giving her some time away from the boys might be good for her, so I took her downstairs for the kiddie carnival.

Ella as Rapunzel

The counselors gave Ella a Rapunzel wig made out of streamers, and they whisked her away with the other excited children, while I settled in to watch.

Pino the Pine and St. Nicholas: our unlikely hosts for Carnival

Some cute costumes

It turned out that each child had to walk a catwalk in his costume in front of the audience. I have to say, this is the sort of thing that would have thrown me into cold sweats when I was eight, but Ella handled herself really well, throwing in a little skip as she took her place in line.  From there, they herded all of the kids into a dance party, where they did Croatian versions of Head-Shoulders-Knees-and-Toes, the Macarena, and on and on.

It soon became clear that Ella still considered herself on stage, performing for all of the adults: she followed along as best as she could with all of the grace that she could muster.  At about 9:00, when I tapped her on her shoulder, she almost collapsed into my arms. "Mom! They've been making me dance all this time for all of these people! Do you think it's okay if I take a break?"

Since Ella was treating the evening as a performance, I shall, as well: I present to you, dutifully, recorded, ninety seconds of Pino's Mini Carnival and Disco.

Milano -> Venezia

Joey, wary of the Italian freeways

Our drive today was so much easier, taking us the expected two hours to get from Milan to Venice. We're staying in exactly the same chain that we used yesterday, similarly on the outskirts of town.

We had to stop on the way there, in one of the restaurant-and-rest stops that span the freeway every several miles. Ella was completely charmed with the quickie mart store, which sold jugs of olive oil and sliced salamies and, best of all, spaghetti noodles that, when unfolded, were probably as tall as she. I promised that, on the way home, we could load up on giant pasta.

After we unloaded our bags at our hotel, instead of trying to drive closer to Venice, we decided it might be wiser to take the bus to the water taxi terminal.  None of us had researched Venice too terribly carefully, but we had vague ideas of wanting to see San Marco's Cathedrial, eating somewhere close by, and then wandering around the island.  And because that was our plan, those of us who wanted most to see the cathedrial--Brie, Geoff, and me--made sure to cover our knees and ankles.  In Brie's and Geoff's case, that meant wearing long pants in 90+-degree weather.  But Art is Sacrifice.

A cat nap on mommy's lap

The bus ride was as seamless as could be expected, with the small exception of making the driver a little late on his route by pestering him to sell us bus passes.  But he dropped us off right outside the ferry ticket office, and we were able to buy tickets for a ferry that was just about to pull away, taking us up the Grand Canal, almost all the way to San Marco's square.

And that was very good news, because heat and hunger were getting the best of my kids, and they were getting grouchy indeed.  Things improved, however, as the crowded ferry emptied and Ella and Alex and I could retreat to some seats.  Alex curled up in my nap and fell fast asleep in minutes, although Joey had beat him to unconsciousness by a good half-hour.  Meanwhile, Ella and I tried to remember some pop culture references to Venice with which she might be familiar, once I realized that she had no idea where we were going, or why. The best we could come up with was the beginning of Garfield in the Rough, where Garfield dreams that he's a gondolier who jumps out of his boat at the mention of imminent lasagna.  Oh, that Garfield.

But, although Venice wasn't particularly familiar to her, she did, nonetheless, find it impressive, and peering out the window of a boat was a lovely way to see it.

Our gang, plunging into the throngs of tourists

Toting our two sleeping boys, we made our way to Piazza San Marco, which really looked a little too beautiful to be for real.

But our peek inside the cathedrial would have to wait: Ella was hungry, and she promised no amount of granola bars would stave off her appetite. She'd been promised pizza. Or noodles. Or both.

Dennis, at the kids' table

We walked through the square and entered some alleys past it, and soon found a restaurant that was good enough.  "Haben Sie Pizza Margarite?" asked Ella, who has taken to speaking German to any foreigner. And, indeed, they did.

Alex had reawoken on the walk to the restaurant, and Kael, Alex, and Ella all wanted to sit together. Dennis heroically took up residence at the kiddie table while the rest of us grown-ups looked on, approvingly, and sipped our drinks

Our late lunch turned into an early dinner, as slow as the service was, and Dennis eventually took Alex out to look at some of the shops surrounding the restaurant when he got particularly wiggly. Ella, too, walked across the street to peer in the windows until the boys came back and I could take her around.  While Alex was out with his dad, he found some pretty beaded earrings that he said he wanted most of all for his souvenir: the boy likes sparkly things.  And Ella picked some Merino glass pendents, noting, as I did, that seemingly every store in Venice has a the same rack of glass jewelery and carnival masks.

Not that she was complaining: both are colorful, and it made for some delightful window shopping for the kids for the rest of the day.

When dinner was finally over, we headed back to the cathedrial, where we learned that the doors closed for the day at 5:00, and here it was just a few minutes before the hour.  Hoping, we got into the line anyway, but we were about forty people too far back. San Marco, thus, joins Ulm on the list of significant cathedrals we were too late to see.

Kael doesn't seem to mind too terribly much that we were barred

I had a wonderful time looking at the outside, however

Sleepy, sloppy Joe, wakes up from his nap

But there was a silver lining, definitely: all woes can be cured with gelato.  And so that's what we did, with Joey waking up from his epically long nap just in time to get a vanilla cone of his own.  After they finished eating, I gave the kids some old bread that I'd saved from home so that they could feed the pigeons.  But, seemingly, I'd forgotten: Joey doesn't share food. Not even with pigeons. He kept his stale bread to himself.














Alex, however, enjoyed feeding the birds, and tried to amass as large a flock as he could before the other kids ran through, scattering it.

Ice cream eaten and bellies full, we walked back across the island, taking the long walk back to the bus terminal, safe in the knowledge that we could always hop back on a water taxi if we needed to.

Playing in San Marco Square

Brie and Geoff have managed to raise their two-year-old, thus far, without ever using a stroller, but they bought one, finally, specifically for this trip.  But their little Kael never did deign to sit down, and so the stroller became a rolling backpack holder, which they had to haul over many little bridges and across cobblestones. So I'm not sure we've sold them on the value of strollers.

And Joey, energized, soon decided he had little use for his stroller, either.

We make our inefficient way across the island

And so our course was slow, with the kids being distracted by various shiny things in most of the shop windows.  If anything, all the kids had a little too much stamina: whenever the alleys opened into piazzas, they'd take off, chasing each other around, squealing, enjoying the freedom and the day.

Dennis, bless him, guided us confidently through the city.  We didn't lose a single kid. And, along the way, we got to see some really spectacular views of a really spectacular city.

The kids, taking in the Grand Canal

And my three defninitely had enough energy to walk all the way back to the buses, even in the extreme heat, with just yummy little lemon soda to spur them on, to see what was behind the next corner, and the next.

I took woefully little video today, as I was a little too dazzled by everything, myself. But here's a little of the kids, taking in Venice.

Zürich -> Milano's outskirts

Nothing went as planned today, but we eventually made it to Milan...almost.

My own morning was quite pleasant: Ella and nochElla had made plans last night to meet up for one last walk and one last game of ping-pong before their long separation.  And while the girls were off at the playground, Paul came by and entertained our three boys, carefully explaining the rules of tag to the two-year-olds.

While I was sitting out and watching the boys run around and giggle, one of my neighbors, an elderly lady, came down to chat.  She'd never had any children of her own, but she tells me she loves watching them, and she particularly likes watching mine.  And she clearly knows them well.  "They are nice children. This one," she said, gesturing to Alex, "he is very sensitive. And this one," Joey, "He's a tough little guy."  From her fourth story house, she sees more than my little ones: she'd come down to tell me that late last night she'd watched a family of foxes, a mother her own three pups, playing by our sand box, grabbing sand toys in their mouths and flinging them into the air and dragging them around.

While I was enjoying coffee and conversation, Dennis and Brie were off having a far less enjoyable morning, retrieving the rental cars.  After a few alarming telephone calls from Dennis, the two of them finally made it home, well after 11:00, more than two hours after they'd left.

Brie tried to follow Dennis home from the rental place, but the two of them got separated in the heavy traffic, and, somehow, Brie ended up on a road taking her through one of the mountain tunnels, and Dennis had no idea where she was.  She didn't have our address, or a phone, or even a phone number to call. But she did have her ingenuity.

I have to tip my hat to her: she ended up pulling over and finding someone to loan her a phone, and then called the Hertz rental desk, using the number on the paperwork they'd given her, to ask them for Dennis's phone number.  They wouldn't release the number, but they did connect her to him.  Good enough!

It was lunchtime when we finally left, but we really didn't have much food in the house, so we decided to drive for a little while and find what we could on the road.  Today's trip was only supposed to be three hours long: maybe, we thought, we could even get away with snacking on the road and having a late lunch.  Today is Dennis's and my 11th wedding anniversary: a pizza and a bottle of wine in Milan sounded like a lovely way to celebrate.

But, instead, the 11th anniversary will heretofore be known as the sitting-in-traffic anniversary.

To get to Milan from Switzerland, you need to pass through the St. Gotthard tunnel, through the Alps.  When it opened in 1980, it was the longest roadway tunnel in the world, at 16 kilometers. (Now it ranks third.) Because the roadway funnels down to one lane in either direction through the tunnel, with a traffic light at the entrance enforcing low traffic concentration inside, there almost always traffic jams at the entrance.

But we didn't know this at the time. (Ahem, Google maps.)  All we knew was that the traffic was at a complete standstill for a long, long time.  When we saw a little toddler, scooting past the frozen cars on his little pushcart, we decided that it might be safe to get out of the car for a break of our own.  Luckily, we'd stopped for food just before reaching the really bad traffic, so the kids were in great humor.  Particularly Alex, who understood exactly how ridiculous it was to be playing cards on the side of the road.

But there is a bright side: this was probably one of the prettiest places in the world to be stuck in traffic.

If we ever pass this way again, we'll be riding that train.

Three good kids

If we'd taken the train to Milan, our trip would have taken three hours, total.  Today, factoring in the ill-fated trip to the rental car place, we spent almost nine hours dealing with transit.

The inside of the Gotthard tunnel,
posted here because we spent
two hours waiting for this view

All the same, we reached Italy, and eventually found our hotel in the outskirts of Milan.  They'd only opened a few weeks ago, and so everything was shiny new, and the rooms were incredibly large.  However, as is the norm in Europe, they still made us split our family of five into two separate chambers: Ella and I shared a room this night, and, ludicrously, she and I each had a queen-sized bed to ourselves, with enough extra room for Ella to turn cartwheels, besides. But still, I'd call it child friendly: they greeted the kids each with a little pack of colored pencils and a pad of paper, and they didn't object in the slightest to the game of duck-duck-goose that we played in the lobby, over which the kids made friends with an Italian girl about Ella's age.

In fact, our only real objection to the hotel happened when Brie, hypnotized by the shiny ball hanging down into the shower in her room, just couldn't help herself.   The alarm from the emergency cord that she'd pulled was piercing enough for them to need to vacate the room, but no one ever did come check on them...you know, to find out what, exactly, the emergency was.

Geoff eventually had to walk down to the front desk to ask for help.  Which probably means that Brie is not alone in succumbing to the temptation of pulling an unmarked cord.  Indeed, Joey very nearly lulled one in his bath tonight, his hand drifting upward, asking "Heeeey...What's that..."

By the time (7:00) we'd gotten settled, we'd sort of given up on the idea of finding dinner in Milan.  Instead, we asked the front desk for a recommendation, and they gave us a card for a steakhouse and pizzeria that they said was family friendly.

Thank you, Chelsea and Aaron and Henry!

I was a little concerned about the quality of the recommendation when we arrived at about 7:30 on a Friday night and the restaurant was nearly empty.  I'd forgotten entirely and they were nearly empty.  I guess I forgot that were in Italy, where, apparently, the dinner rush begins somewhere after 9:00.  The restaurant, which appeared to be a converted barn, filled up, with a line snaking out the front door, and the noise that our children were making entirely lost in the general din: so yes, I'd say that it was family friendly, indeed.

And the kids had an added treat: I checked the mail this morning just before we left found there a package from our friends Aaron and Chelsea.  I tucked it into the car, to open when the kids got restless, but they never really did, so I let the kids open their presents right before dinner: new books around!  And so Ella contentedly nibbled her pizza margarita all through dinner, completely lost in The Ordinary Princess.

And that left us with the boys to entertain: I cuddled up with Joey, commissioned to draw pictures of the family.  Ella, he demanded, was to be surrounded by books and Alex by kitties, Daddy needed to be at Google, and as for me, I was to be juggling a half-dozen coffee cups.  Joey seems to be as adept as our neighbor at taking measure of our family.

Ella turtlified our
champagne cap

As for our anniversary dinner, Dennis and I picked a few things off the menu that looked interesting, to share: a pizza, some pasta, and a curious appetizer, which turned out to be a plate of shaved meats and little fluffy biscuits.  Except one of the meats seemed to be pure pork lard, thinly shaved.  We gamely ate most of it, but couldn't quite finish it off.  And our dessert, which was advertised as a torte, ended up being a chocolate muffin.  But it was good, and it was made better with a celebratory bottle of champagne.
 
Joey and I left early the restaurant a little early and found a party in the parking lot: someone had left a huge pile of golden streamers, and Joey dove right into a group of children, squealing happily, running around the parking lot and trailing the shiny streamers after them while parents and grandparents beamed happily.  They do seem to love their bambini here, and Joey has the bold makings of an international ambassador.

When we got back to the hotel, we discovered a few hiccups: Ella had forgotten her book at the restaurant, so she and Dennis had to go back to fetch it.  Meanwhile, I cleaned up the boys, and as I was tucking them in, I learned that Alex had knowingly, but for reasons unclear, left his favorite "purple kitty" stuffed animal at home.  He'd packed four other kitties instead, but, facing bedtime, realized none of them would do.

Luckily, a mommy's arms are an acceptable substitute for a purple kitty.

Preparedness

Joey and Kael, having a little conversation about the
merits of dinosaurs

I do believe our friends finally got some sleep last night, which I suppose is fortunate, although I was really enjoying the comic value of their fatigue-derived loopiness. They were even feeling ambitious enough for a trip to our local playground this morning.

Ella, however, seemed to have absorbed some of their exhaustion: she lost her temper with Kael when he upended a little coffer of jewels that she'd brought along with her.  I suppose it's now occurred to here that now there are two more small people around to mess with her stuff. But as much as I empathize with her somewhat obsessive tendencies, I still couldn't let her get away from it.  And, once she had sufficient distance from the episode, she could admit that she was being unreasonable.  I overheard her apologizing, too, to Brie: "So, um, I'm sorry about 'the episode' earlier..."

I can't imagine why Ella would take issue with this trio:
they don't look like trouble at all!

After three more of their missing bags trickled in, I sent Brie and Geoff on their way to have lunch with Dennis at Google.

My kids, however, had no such good fortune. At this point, Ella was still in her sour mood, and Alex was taking advantage of sport that this offered, teasing her at every turn.  In short, they were driving me nuts.

Driven by madness to inspiration, I told the kids that, as their penance, because they were fighting, they would have to hold hands for the next hour, for the duration of the trip to the grocery store that we needed to make.

Forced togetherness

Initially Ella and Alex behaved just as you might expect, each squeezing the other's hand as tightly as possible. But then I reminded them that their punishment would only be as bad as they made it.  That seemed to make sense to them: they were both very quiet for a moment, and then somewhat miraculously turned their moods around, giggling over the problem of trying to put on sandals with only one had a piece. By the time we were walking down the sidewalk to Migros, they were swinging their arms, with Ella was teaching Alex some of the little German songs she'd learned in school. By the time we were walking home, they decided this was "the best punishment ever."

All the same, when I finally released them they seemed to have had enough togetherness. Ella took to her room to read and draw while the boys played, more or less nicely, and I pulled together our baggage for our trip, until our friends found their way back from Google.

Dennis was finishing up a project with his group and will be starting with a new one when we return from our vacation; after tying up all his loose ends, he picked up take-out Wagamama on the way home, which meant he didn't get back until after 7:00.

But, it being summer, we've seemed to have slipped into a later schedule, and the kids didn't much seem to mind.  In fact, they still had energy to spare, so I took Alex and Kael out to the little playground across the street, where Alex reveled in having a new, funny little friend to entertain.  They played some made-up little game of kick-the-ball-around-and-chase-it, running flat-out for well over a half-hour. Alex was awfully cute with Kael, coaxing him along and encouraging him, reveling in having a little boy who looks up to him unquestioningly.

After dinner, since it was already late, it didn't seem to matter much if the kids stayed up a little later, especially since they'd be doing nothing but sitting in the back of a car tomorrow.  And so Dennis took Ella out to play a little ping pong in the park, where they were joined by nochElla.

Brie's and Geoff's final missing car seat finally arrived, this evening, and with our bags packed, we had little left to do before we left tomorrow morning.

We did, however, acknowledge that we knew no Croatian among us, and so spent a little time looking up phrases.  But the free phrase book app that I downloaded had only about 30 phrases, including "I've been shot" and "That's not my gun."  That's not exactly the sort of vacation we had in mind, so we stuck to "Thank you" (hvala)  and "Hello" (halo). And "beer" (pivo).

I think we're good to go.

Welcome, Geoff and Brie and Kael, and Juniper, too!

This morning was a carbon copy of yesterday's, except that I spent my free time de-fuzzing the car seats for our upcoming vacation. They once again fell victim to the poor circulation in our storage room. This time I dismantled the seats entirely, hosed them down, and tried not to gag as I watched all fo the moldy bits of pretzel and goldfish wash out of the nooks of Joey's seat, in particular. Lovely, I know.

The kids, however, had a fine time, setting aside soccer, for once, so that they could teach nochElla and Paul how to play four-square. I've never seen the game played here in Switzerland, although, along with a distinct lack of climbing equipment on the school playgrounds, they're also lacking balls and jump ropes and all those other American staples.  Chase and tag and keep-away, it turns out, are very popular Swiss games.

Preparing Kael's bed

Eventually, Alex and Joey took a little break to help me get beds together for our guests, who were arriving this afternoon.  The boys got rid of all of the lumps on Brie and Geoff's mattress by jumping on it enthusiastically. And Alex, with great hope, moved one of our couches into his bedroom for two-year-old Kael to sleep on. Sadly, Kael was ultimately a little too shy and disoriented to join the boys. All the same, I thought it was sweet cute, how much Alex is looking forward to having the little guy stay with us: "Kael's coming? Yay, Kael! Kael thinks I'm cool!" was Alex's response the good news.

And Joey was even happier: "Kael! My friend!"

So Kael was the rockstar visitor as far as the five-and-under set in my house was concerned, but we we were also anticipating four-month-old Juniper as a guest, making her parents, Geoff and Brie, some of the braver, and perhaps crazier, people in our acquaintance.

Kael's pretty cool, too.

Dennis went to the airport to meet their 11:00AM flight, but they were unfortunately delayed because of lost baggage.  By the time they showed up, Joey was fast asleep for his nap, but then, so was poor, jet-lagged Kael. The two toddlers managed to sleep through the noise of two Ellas, an Alex, and a Paul, playing in the living room while I caught up with our friends: eventually, fearing difficulty at bedtime, we finally coaxed them to wakefulness by putting Toy Story, which no little kid would dream of sleeping through.

Once everyone was sufficiently awake and cheerful, the boys got to know one another all over again in our backyard sandbox. It was awfully fun watching the boys pick up right where they left off six months ago.  And, by all appearances, Kael does indeed still seem to think Alex is cool.

Poor Brie and Geoff got about as much sleep as you'd expect parents to get on flight with two tiny ones, but they each only surrendered to the briefest of naps and then heroically stayed up as late as they could, long enough to accept the delivery of just two of their six bags that had gotten lost in transit. And, unfortunately, neither bag held any clothing for Geoff. Instead, ridiculously, much of the room was taken up with books that they had kindly brought for my lucky kids.

In fact, we're all feeling pretty lucky to have such lovely friends.

Routines

Standing back and looking at today, it kind of summed up, very tidily, what our life here in Zürich has become.  It was a day of little routines, all those things that make life comfortably predictable for the kids.  Ella has accumulated quite a few little chores for each day.  She wakes up each morning and turns on a book-on-tape and practices her handwriting for school: in a burst of ambition in one of the first days of summer, she attempted to finish her whole cursive handwriting workbook, A to Z, in one sitting, but she got bored and crampy within an hour.  So instead she counted out the pages and gave herself a daily assignment, and does it without too much nagging, thank goodness.

Alex gets to spend his mornings less productively: usually his first act of the morning is to beg me to put on a Garfield cartoon for him, and usually I do.  I'm kind of a fan of morning cartoons, too.  But it isn't too long before the boys start thrashing around with nervous energy, and I have to toss the whole lot of them outside.

But, more often than not, nochElla and Paul will peek out from their 4th story apartment, and then they'll run outside to join my kids. Then the whole mass of them will run up to me, asking if they can play computer games, and I shoo them back outside.  It's all part of it.

Lately they've been playing two-a-side soccer, with the entryway to our apartment as one of their goals. Luckily, we have the best, most understanding neighbors in the world. Sometimes they even join in for a pass or two. But the kids don't have a soccer ball among them: they use a super-light playground ball instead.  I was contemplating getting them a proper Swiss football, but Dennis reminded me that they'd probably just break a window.  And truly, they're happy without it, anyway.  None of the four is particularly good at soccer, although Paul takes the role of resident expert. At one point I heard him instructing Ella about the appropriate way to pass a ball.  "Remember, don't use 'stinky toes.' If you pass with the inside of your foot, it will go where you want.  See?"  Apparently they have "stinky toes" in Great Britain and Switzerland, too.

After lunch, my kids curled up for a while: Joey fell asleep for an early nap, and Ella's been spending a lot of her free time this vacation exactly as I would, with a fat stack of comic books.

Alex, seeing a window of opportunity, approached me with a deck of cards and a hopeful smile.  We've played more games of Kinder Bunnies and Sleeping Queens and Uno in the last few weeks than I can possibly count.  Alex sneaks a game in whenever he can: he's a child after my own heart.

When Ella finally took a break from reading, she hopped up from her blanket and dashed to her room. And then, a half-moment later, I heard the swift tinkling of her little bell set as she tapped out Pop Goes the Weasel, double-time.  She does that a lot: a couple of times a day she gets this funny little itch to play, and she'll dash through every song in her very small repertoire.  I've been begging her to let me teach her a new song, but she says she wants to get her others perfect.

I don't know if it's coincidence, but just when Ella started playing, Alex ran up to me to ask if he could take a walk to the candy store to spend one of his dimes.  And he came back, sucking the gummy candy that he had bought, moments after Ella finished.

Unfortunately, Joey didn't miss Ella's little performance.  It woke up him up, and he stumbled out of bed with another high fever.  He didn't want to do much but be held, and he was pretty quiet the rest of the day, alternately sitting with his books and watching his brother.

Ella drifted back outside to play with her friends, eventually going over to their house.  And then, when she was back home, I guess lost track of her.  I say this because, later today, when I was cleaning up, I found these little gift boxes sitting out, each with four coupons: one for "ten hugs," one for "ten kisses," one for "one game nite" (during which, apparently, Dennis and I get to play one of Ella's two particular favorite games) and one for "One trip to the 'teater' (I have a baby-sitter)."  Would that either Dennis or I could come home and announce that we have a sitter.  Ah well.  Our 11th anniversary is coming up in a couple of days, and maybe that's what inspired Ella to do this.  When I asked her about it, she just smiled slyly and said "Oh, those weren't from me."  But I'm on to her. Dennis and I haven't yet started referring to one another as "Mom" and "Dad," nor as "Mother" and "Father."

Dennis came home and watched the kids for me this afternoon, so that I could rush out for weekly German lesson.  It continues to be a private lesson, which is wonderful but also a little intense.  I'm exhausted by the end of the 90 minutes.  But my lesson continued when I got home and took the kids outside to our courtyard to play...and to force all of my neighbors into small German conversations with me as they passed by.

We always end the day with bedtime stories, and I gave the boys extra today, although Joey, poor little sick guy, fell asleep half-way through the second one.  Ella's bedtime routine has grown to include reading a little German story with Dennis each night, something really simple and short out of a German first-reader.  We figured we owed it to her to help her retain what she knew over the next month, and Dennis thinks it's been helping her a lot.  But her vocabulary has been increasing in funny ways: the book that she's been working her way through is all pirate stories: she now knows the word for seagull poop. Her skills came in handy the other day at the grocery store, however, when she was chatting to the lady in line behind her about a toy that had monkeys and treasure chests.

After the kids were all tucked in, Dennis and I spent the evening the way we spend most, making good use of the Hulu subscription that my parents got us for our birthdays (Thanks, Mom and Dad!) while Dennis, because he's lovely, folds all of our laundry. 

It's no trip to the teater, but, hey, I'll take it.