Traveling to Paris

 Packing up everything again and the hotel is letting John and I check out last while the group goes to the Bargello, Oscar and I play in the hallways and then get some take out lunch before heading to the bus station to catch a bus for the airport in Florence.  The restaurant that 

John took the students to gave him presents like wine and biscotti for coming and the hotel gave Oscar a Ferrari remote control car as we leave.  This is the most adorable gift and it has eyes on it, so Oscar lights up when he sees it.  The students have already moved on to France in their minds and there 

 are lots of questions about what to eat, see, do in Paris while we wait for the bus (or rather wait for Rachel and John to find where the bus to the airport arrives at the train station).  We fill up the bus and I’m lucky that I again have the baby with me because I get the handicapped seat with him in his stroller and 

the motion of the bus makes him fall asleep.  We get into the airport and can’t check in yet, so sit to wait when a screaming baby wakes Oscar up.  Irony.  I go to change his diaper and come back to find everyone in line and John at the end of it, when I had told him to check us in early because of all the baby 

paraphernalia.  We just jump in front of everyone in the group, but are still behind several other groups of students including a group of 40 from the University of Georgia.  The airline sees the baby and the stroller and lets us check in first, they get it even if John doesn’t and we are not sitting together again because 

John was booked with the group and Oscar and I are separate.  What we don’t know at this time is that this means that I will board the plane on a separate bus, sit in the cramped section without any leg room while John gets to sit in what counts as first class on this plane.  This irritates me to no end and he’s on my shit list for a very long time after this flight.  Travel days are always harder and they just got immeasurably more stressful for both of us, me because of Oscar and John has 19 students to follow.  So, while we have had our off days in the past when we travel, they now have a new

  dimension that makes for some very bad feelings toward each other.  Being stuck in hotel rooms, not getting to see things and being in charge of the baby most of the time is wearing on me.  It’s fun to take pictures of Oscar looking bored in front of things that are timeless, but the hassle of a toddler that won’t 

behave when you want him to, is teething and cranky, and trying to lug all of his paraphernalia around in order to see things isn’t fun.   I’m thinking that Oscar and I don’t belong on foreign study trips where John has to work and am inclined to avoid them in the future.  Maybe we can meet him after the  students have left in order to have family time overseas, but I have found that I don’t like being a single parent in Europe. Security is a total breeze except that John gets patted down because he forgot to take off his neck pouch that needed to go through the scanner and we get to sit for a while waiting to 

board.  I don’t understand what makes security so hard in the US now, Europe’s got it down pat and that’s after an airline just went missing two days again from Paris.  In line at security, we notice a yellow carryon that has been left and again, I get to tell security that a bag that is sitting there is not mine.  This is getting a little annoying, can’t people keep their stuff with them?  But I was pretty sure that I had seen one of the Georgia students with this bag, so most likely the different security rules are throwing people.  At least you don’t have to take your shoes off in Europe.   I’m able to talk to the University of Georgia professor on the trip while Oscar sleeps throughout the flight and find out about their foreign study which sounds hellacious since they’re doing like 2 and 3 days in any one place and then moving on to a different country.  And we thought that there were too many moving parts to John and Rachel’s trip!!!  We get off in Paris onto a different bus again and while John is trying to wait for us, he gets yelled at and shooed on and then waits in the wrong place for us, so we are already in baggage claim with the group when he arrives there.  All the luggage comes through and we find the drivers that are clutching John’s name to take our group to the hotel.  Of course, John had to get a picture of a driver holding his name on a sign, but it’s on the other camera that we are unable to download pictures from on the trip.  A trip through Paris traffic and we are across the Seine and coming up on L’Invalides before you know it.  As we’re standing on the curb waiting for John and Rachel to check the whole group in, Oscar again has a diaper fail, but this time a big one where he is now peeing all over the sidewalk, me and himself.  I tell John that Oscar is a real “Frenchman” since he’s peeing in public, but he totally doesn’t understand that me and the baby are soaked in urine, so keeps letting the kids go up to their rooms.  The guys that witnessed the peeing incident are nice enough to let me go up in the elevator first, so that Oscar and I can again take showers and change.  If you’ve never traveled to a typical European hotel, you might not know that you’re happy to get an elevator at all and there will most likely be only one that is very small.  So, the group has to go up in waves of people and bags.  This process takes a while every time we check in and out of any or our hotels.  Oscar’s so mobile now, that he can twist right out of his diaper if you’re not careful and at least this happened when we had finally gotten to the hotel and not in the car seat that the driving service had provided.  Well, now laundry is a must, sooner rather than later, but we get dressed to head out with the group to get dinner and see the Eiffel tower at night.