Travel

Millenium Park – Wednesday August 8

The next day the Princess got everyone up at 5.30 which, frankly, could have been a lot worse. It did mean that when we got to the supermarket dowstairs (the bizarrely named Jewel Osco) at 8.30 she was ready for a nap and we had to leave her screaming for cake in the frozen food section while we went about the remainder of our business.

Once we’d stocked up with a couple of gallons of milk, we took ourselves to millenium park which in what can only be called an embarrassing overrun was opened in 2004 (explain that mayor Daley). There was free kiddie entertainment. A woman in a jumper (!) with a guitar sang popular favourites which our pale, sweaty, jet lagged kiddies lapped up. A new favourite is a number called lemondrops and gumdrops which, like Hershey bars, is unknown in our part of the world. It involves singing while sticking out your tongue. Oh fabulous. Then we went to the Crown Fountain where the children ran about getting absolutely sopping. How they loved it. I think it may have been the highlight of the Princess’s life to date.

For lunch, we went to the Park Bar Grill where I had my first taste of the American service industry. We were escorted with our dripping children to a table pre-equipped with two high-chairs, six glasses of ice water (did I mention my long suffering sister was there too, somebody had to chase the children around the fountain) three packets of colouring pencils and placemats to colour in. It occurred to me that everyone in Chicago had been really pleasant to us which helped us to survive the exhaustion. Honestly, the poor Americans when they arrive in Europe with their families, my heart goes out to them. Funnily enough though, many of the service industry people were not from the US but somehow the values seemed to be omnipresent. Our doorman was from Bihac and I was tempted to tell him about the time I spent in Banja Luka but somehow, all things considered, I decided best not. The lady running the kiddie train on Navy Pier was from Nepal. One of our taxi drivers was from Cameroon another was from Nigeria and told us that he had a brother who was a nurse in Ghent.  In fact, the only place to find locals was in the shops. I digress. So there we were trying to work out what a PBJ sandwich was in the restaurant and a polite French waitress (ha, ha) came up and explained that it was peanut butter and jelly. I wish she had also reminded us that chips are crisps and we would probably not have gone for quite so many side orders of chips. The Princess had her second meltdown of the day when she dropped her hot dog and would not accept half of Daniel’s instead. “I only want a whole hot dog” she wailed “get me another hot dog”. If only we had had a strategy to deal with jet lag.

Domestic disaster

That evening after a trip to the lego shop to equip the children with small sharp objects with which to strike each other, we went to my sister’s apartment which is lovely but small when you add five of us to it, particularly when three of us are hell bent on destruction. I think my sister was slightly shell shocked by the level of damage three small children could inflict though she bore it stoically only wincing slightly as they spurned the dinner she had prepared in favour of determined efforts to ingest the small glass balls strewn attractively round her fireplace. To be fair, their attempt to dismantle the apartment was somewhat assisted by a kind colleague of my sister’s who had given her a number of things for the children to play with including a cart (enormous yoke for pushing kids around in, never seen the like before, think covered wagon from cowboy films of your youth) which, to everyone’s alarm, they pushed around with great gusto and refused to yield up to the authorities.

By this point, the children had moved to West Coast time and were all refusing to go to bed though it was nearly nine.

Getting there

The most trying part of the journey was almost certainly in Dublin airport where I struggled to contain the children while Mr. Waffle struggled with the American immigration forms. In my ongoing and (I know at some level) surely mistaken belief that the boys shouldn’t be cooped up just because they are small I released them from their buggy. They hurtled round the airport uttering excited shrieks of glee and I hurtled after them. The Princess sat shrieking that somebody had better read her the “Frog Princess” or there would be trouble. Every time I ran past her she became more insistent and people began to look at us nervously wondering who would actually get the thrill of sitting near us. When the Princess’s indignation reached glass shattering pitch, I decided to restrain the boys. While the Princess screamed “Frog Princess, Frog Princess” and glasses shattered all over the airport, I wrestled a howling Daniel into the buggy. He was somewhat manhandled in my anxiety to stop the Princess’s screaming and my concern that Michael would be gone from sight before Daniel was secure. Mr. Waffle ended up abandoning the forms and haring after Michael while poor Daniel got sick from the shock of being treated so peremptorily and the words “Frog Princess” were chanted in the background by the increasingly ratty Greek chorus and I collapsed in tears. “Right, I’ll read the ‘Frog Princess’, give it to me. Sniff. Are you happy now?” “Yes.”

With such a beginning, you might have thought that the 8 hour flight would be absolutely dreadful. In fact, the Princess was reasonably well behaved and the boys slept a bit though we did spend a couple of hours chasing them round the bulkhead. Also the fact that the battery was flat on our 160 euro mini DVD player purchased specifically for the trip was, let us say, unfortunate.

Arrival and Orientation

We arrived at lunch time which was evening for us, if you see what I mean. My saintly sister met us at the airport with the car seats which she had begged to ensure our children’s safety; unfortunately, their installation had defeated her and we got to sweat over them in the car park and experience the legendary Chicago humidity for ourselves. On the way in, I was struck by how run down the city looked. When you arrive into one of the richest countries in the world, you expect it to look affluent. But it didn’t. My sister said that Chicago is the most blue collar of the big American cities. Something for Mayor Richard M. Daley to look into. We’ll be coming back to him later.

The apartment was located in a convenient downtown location but designed more for corporate workers than families. This was evident from the fact that they didn’t offer baby cots, the rooms were done in tasteful shades of beige and it was really a very pleasant place to be. My sister had sourced child cots and bought food and milk, presents for the children and a mobile phone so our needs were met. There was also a supermarket downstairs which was open 18 hours a day selling milk in gallon bottles (a gallon is 3.78 litres, way, hay, hay). We spent the afternoon unpacking and extolling the virtues of air conditioning. We put the children to bed, made my sister cook us dinner and sat back and admired the impressive view of the Chicago skyline from our 29th floor fastness.

And on a completely separate note, netnanny will not allow me to access my comments from this computer as they are clearly awash with what I see other people call p**n on their blogs. Sigh.

We’re back. Did you miss me? No, well, we’re back all the same. Much as I love all my relatives, it is fabulous to be back in our own house. Also, Belgium is not damp. It is, I hasten to add, raining, but my clothes are not all damp in the way that they tend to be in Ireland where damp is endemic and the hot press a way of life.

So, we spent a week in Cork. As always, we went to Fota where Mr. Waffle and I were entranced by the llamas, kangaroos, monkeys and (I think) prairie dogs lolloping about and the children fell in love with the ducks all over again. Just because it’s a cliché, doesn’t mean it isn’t true. The weather was pretty good all in all, we had a paddling pool in the garden which the children loved and on the most rain sodden day we went to the Glucksman gallery which they also loved. Video installations are the way of the future.

For a couple of days they had their Uncle Dan in Cork as well which they loved because they are as feckless as he is and they recognised a kindred spirit. I was touched to see how sweet and patient my brother was with them: tossing them in the air, reading to them, playing football with them, outlining to a restive audience the rudiments of rugby, waving at them gamely when they went in to his room at 6.00 in the morning to tell him that daylight had broken and it was time to rise and shine. Not actually rising though. However, the star of the show was their Nana who spent hours playing with them, cooking for them and chatting to them. Their Granddad also contributed his mite by waving at them from behind his paper from time to time as appropriate and announcing when they seemed likely to do anything particularly dangerous. My parents house is great for this and Michael, in particular, got great entertainment from the hacksaw on the landing.

On Sunday we set off from Cork to Kerry with tearful farewells on our part (Nana, Nana, NANA) to the loving Cork grandparents and, I suspect, mild sighs of relief from them, though they looked suitably downcast. I imagine that the minute we left, they rushed in to have a quiet cup of tea and savour the silence. We left on a high as we had all gone to mass that morning and the children were as good as gold. Especially welcome since my aunt had done a reading and I wouldn’t have liked her to be shouted down. My aunt lives next door to my parents and is the least materialistic person I have ever met as well as an early riser. This was a phenomenal combination for a mother of three small children and most mornings saw us going through the back garden and tapping anxiously on her window so that we could go in, play her piano, test the durability of her china and wooden ornaments and demand that we too get porridge for breakfast.

The journey to Kerry was distressingly eventful. We were diverted from Macroom to Millstreet due to roadworks. We were stopped for about half an hour by an accident just before Sneem (isn’t that the most delightful name for a town?) and once we got to the other side, we promptly rolled over a stone and got a puncture. Subsequently we discovered that Sneem was the subject of much bad feeling among the holiday group as one of their number, a Canadian too, a visitor to this country, had been kicked out of a café there for breastfeeding her 5 month old daughter. I must say I have never ever had such an experience and nor has anyone I know. I suppose it must happen but not surely with a very discreet mother and a small baby and in modern Ireland to boot? Well, apparently, yes, poor J who was on her own with baby A was tossed on to a street with the words “this is Ireland, you can’t do that kind of thing here”. You will be happy to know that, even as I type, a number of irate letters are winging their way to the Irish Times headed “smirched in Sneem”. But honestly, who’d have thought?

I digress. We got to Caherdaniel in the end where we were greeted by another set of loving and excited grandparents, fresh to the fray. The parents-in-law described life in Caherdaniel as resembling a Feydeau farce with a vast rotating cast (though, to my knowledge, no infidelity). They had rented a large house as had their friends, the Canadians and the cousins. The previous week, the cast had featured, the Canadians’ son-in-law the theatre director and his daughter from an earlier relationship who had left for Las Vegas (fancy) to talk about a show, the Canadians’ daughter’s school friend from Ireland (I should perhaps mention that Mr. Canada is a diplomat who has spent time everywhere and is now finishing off his career as ambassador in a glamorous posting which comes with a house with eight bathrooms which we have been invited to sample and we may yet) and her husband (who was the year behind Mr. Waffle in college and remembered him but of whom Mr. Waffle does not have even the faintest recollection, and yet he can describe to you in detail the flags of 189 different countries, mysterious) and three children. More or less simultaneously with us arrived the Princess’s only first cousin and attendant parents, Mr. Waffle’s cousin J’s new girlfriend and Mr. Waffle’s cousin S who is working in Australia for a year and who is quite possibly a saint having travelled for 24 hours and after a brief respite in Dublin, driven to Kerry and spent many more hours entertaining a crowd of adoring four year olds. In situ for the duration were Mr. Waffle’s parents, the Canadians (friends of the parents from their Dublin posting), their daughter, her four year old and 5 month old daughters, Mr. Waffle’s uncle and aunt, their three children and their daughter’s 4 year old son. Are you still with me?

The Princess had great fun with the other children. In particular the Canadian four year old who was a quite extraordinarily entertaining and charming child (not obviously as extraordinarily entertaining etc. as my child but close and, on the plus side, she seemed to be quite happy to keep her clothes on much of the time unlike my hardy nudist daughter). I did think as I watched them gathering shells on the beach together with enormous concentration, how lovely it must be for the parents-in-law to have their granddaughter and their old friends’ granddaughter playing together. I am a sucker for this kind of thing. Her second cousin is a boy and he was better for jumping on beds but not as good at the shell gathering which he scorned in favour of shrimping with his mother and nana.

And the sun shone. This was nothing short of miraculous as there were floods everywhere else in the country. Obviously, the sun didn’t shine all day every day but we went swimming a number of times and, given half a chance, the boys would have launched themselves across the bay to Cork. How they loved the water. The Princess and her father went down to the pub one night with various cousins and aunts and uncles and while he sat and talked in a manly way she had crisps and bonded with her cousins which is a quintessentially Irish holiday experience and one that reminded me nostalgically of my own youth spent in similar hostelries in West Cork. On the Wednesday night, the ambassador brought his guitar round and there was a big dinner which necessarily involved cross-questioning the misfortunate new girlfriend (please see dramatis personae above) and her boyfriend, Mr. Waffle’s cousin. As I extracted much information from both by my use of the direct question (I am the only Irish person alive capable of asking a direct question and I find it hugely effective in getting information from my shocked compatriots), my mother-in-law kept saying “please forgive her, she’s from Cork”, she once tried this on a wheel clamper in Dublin and it didn’t cut the mustard there either. Nevertheless, the wider clan was captivated and the girlfriend bore up spectacularly well though I did think she quailed slightly when Mrs. Canada senior asked what they got up to after dinner on their first date.

The Ambassador is a really good guitar player. Normally when I see a guitar in the hall, my heart sinks, but “The Boxer” was not played once. There were some lovely Canadian folk songs including one which the Princess wants me to find about a boy who sinks another ship for the captain of his ship in exchange for gold silver and the captain’s daughter but, alas, drowns before he can claim his bounty. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the tune or the words which is a little problematic but I do think that it shows how attracted she is to cheerful tales. Incidentally, have I mentioned that my daughter can recognise sarcasm at 20 paces; I feel that this is one useful skill for life with which I have equipped her.

On Saturday we went to Limerick where we stayed in the grandly named Clarion Suites but I have to give it a plug because it was so nifty and I found it. Two bedrooms, a kitchenette and a sitting room. I am a genius. Having tried and failed to arrange to meet our only friends in Limerick we ran into them on the street and went out to dinner with their one very well behaved child and our three hyper ones. We exchanged fragments of conversation over dinner – Oh I see, you were in Washington when we called, five in the morning eh, fancy that? – No, no bugs except, of course, Daniel was sick in the car, I think I’ve got most of the large pieces of sausage he regurgitated out of the car seat – not sleeping through the night, no, oh you neither, great, um, no, sorry about that – your family have moved back to CAVAN? And so on. Slightly more satisfactory than it sounds but tiring. Limerick was as depressing as I remembered and not at all celtic tigery unlike Cork which is absolutely booming and looks fantastic but not overcrowded and overdeveloped like Dublin. Apparently the celtic tiger never crossed the Shannon; Limerick sits squarely on the Shannon and, frankly, it looks like it’s doing a good job barring the entrance. Maybe if I hadn’t seen it in driving rain, I would have felt more warmly towards it.

On Sunday we began the marathon journey home stopping at Bunratty Castle, no, stop your sniggering, we did not go to the medieval banquet, we had lunch. We got to the airport, unloaded our two bags, three car seats, buggy, assorted miscellaneous junk and three children from the car in driving rain and went to stand in the enormous queue for an hour to check in our luggage, then queued for security (fold up the buggy, take off all shoes, taste the milk in the bottles), then queued to get on the plane, in due course queued to get into Belgium, queued for our luggage, carried into arrivals two bags, three car seats etc. etc. as Charleroi airport continues to be trolley free by choice. Discovered we had just missed the bus for Brussels and would have to wait an hour. Spent the time stopping our hyper boys from pushing each other under a bus. Queued to get on the bus, got to Brussels, waited for two taxis, got home at 8.45. Will never travel from Charleroi again.

We’re flying to Dublin on Saturday and then on to Chicago a couple of days later. Reassure me. Please.

All morning: Michael has attacks of vomitting and diarrohea.

15.15 Two taxis arrive to carry us to the bus stop.

15.30 We finish packing in our equipment and children.

15.40 We arrive at the bus stop. Load our stuff. Get on board. Mr. Waffle and the Princess go to get her a bottle of water. The boys howl and wriggle trying to go with them. The bus driver starts his engine.

16.10 The bus driver tells us that, as the bus is full, we will have to carry all our children on our laps. No one is very happy about this arrangement infringing as it does on safety, sanity and dignity. He relents.

17.00 We arrive at Charleroi airport in bucketing rain. Uniquely, in my experience, Charleroi airport does not have trolleys. I wait with the children in the heaving terminal building while Mr. Waffle ferries across the luggage and the three car seats. Miraculously, car seats do not count towards your luggage allowance on Ryanair which seems extraordinary. This means that, hurrah, we are within our allowance unlike the young man from Limerick in front of us who is resignedly putting on as many clothes as he can from his overweight bag.

18.00 We board using our exciting priority boarding cards because Ryanair will no longer call people with children first and we were worried that we might not get to sit together. Not only do we sit together but the only seat left empty on the plane is beside me. Double hurrah. Journey is uneventful but tiring because my children only love me at the moment and none of them wants to be with their lucky, lucky Daddy.

19.00 (Irish Time – 20.00 Belgian Time) : We land and go to seek dinner in Shannon airport. Everything is closed which we discover after an extensive search. We get some sandwiches in the Londis shop.

20.00 We get into our hired car and drive to Cork.

21.00 The boys finally fall asleep.

21.10 I fall asleep.

22.00 We arrive in Cork. The Princess who had been flagging is all perked up and rushes in to the attentions of her loving granparents. We unpack and put the boys to bed.

22.30 Kind nana puts the Princess to bed and we sit down to a well-deserved cup of tea.

22.35 Michael gets sick all over his bed. We clean up and lull him back to sleep.

23.00 We go to bed ourselves and aside from administering some bottles, the night is peaceful.
05.45 The Princess wakes us up and our holiday begins.

Did I mention that it’s been raining since we arrived and the forecast is for more.  On the plus side, Michael appears to be well again.  On the minus side, Daniel got sick at lunch time.  Oh well, at least we have an army of loyal babysitters on call.
I am so looking forward to travelling to the US in August.