Lisbon

The hardest part of moving out of McLouis may have been processing all the kids’ artwork from the last 5 weeks. We bought a 500 sheet brick of printer paper in France and ended up with a few Eiffel Towers; outlines of Mont St. Michel traced with the side window as a back light; auroch, horse and mammoth “cave paintings;” lots of “family portraits;” and reams of sketches of whatever happened to be on the day’s episodes of Wild Kratts (the heron spreading its wings to make a shadow so it was easier to see the fish below the surface was a favorite). Not to mention shells, rocks, sticks and of course, elements of their Halloween costumes that had to be subject to close review before making it into the bags to bring home.
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Tho transition logistics couldn’t have gone much better. Only 20 minutes late to meet the lady for the Airbnb, found a spot for McLouis just up the block (complete with a random dude implying a tip for having “shown us” the obviously vacant spot); had everything including duffels, car seats and fridge/pantry contents shuttled into the apartment in three or four trips, picked up the rep from the camper rental company at the airport 15 minutes away and had him drop me off 15 later; and walked right out the door into the impossibly narrow historic cobbled streets of old town Lisbon for a nice dinner.
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We’re looking forward to not leaving the ten block radius around this apartment and enjoying staying still for a few days right in the middle of everything before the flight back to the US.
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#familytravel #travelwithkids #lisbon

“You wanna go where? Well sure, it’s just not a place a lot of tourists ask to go.” The driver of the tuk-tuk taxi was friendly, just surprised that a mom and her 3 year old wanted to go to a random park in the middle of a neighborhood of all places in Lisbon. Wynne and I had walked down the two stories of weathered wooden stairs from our apartment a couple hours before and wound up the hill through impossibly narrow cobblestone alleys with precariously close balconies overhead until we reached the Jardim da Cerca da Graça, a spot that had just happened to come up when I searched for “playground” in Google Maps.
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As it turned out, it reminded me a lot of Dolores Park in San Francisco, both with its sweeping view of the city, mix of locals and their dogs lounging around in the grass and, as advertised, a great playground for kids. I’d texted Ann right away to come meet us.
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Meanwhile, I boosted Wynne up to pick oranges from the high branches, the “low hanging fruit” have since been claimed on the 20 or 30 trees scattered around the playground, and when we needed something more substantial, we walked over to the kiosk cafe in the middle of the park. We shared a huge ham and cheese sandwich (with butter, of course) and I had a glass of homemade ice tea with mint and fresh orange slices, all for 3€. At the BiRite down the block from Dolores Park, I would have paid $10 minimum.
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When Ann and Mae showed up, the girls played “Magic Treehouse” on the log-cabin style play tower before moving to the awesome water table while Ann and I went round and round in our usual discussions of the benefits of “home” vs spontaneous experiences like these.
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#travelwithkids #familytravel #playgroundtourists #lisbon #portugal

I guess today’s not the day to stop airing our dirty laundry on this feed...
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In the literal interpretation, the hallway clotheslines in our Airbnb give the impression that the owners are aware that the Euro-style combo washer/dryer (installed in the kitchen, of course - c’mon, Europe!) does not actually get clothes dry, though hopefully the moist heat was sufficient to nuke any remaining bed bugs.
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And figuratively, as this adventure comes to a close, we’ve been wrestling with the emotions that always come with transition. Our minds start going to the next thing and everything in the present starts to feel like drudgery, all the more frustrating when we should still be enjoying where we actually are. But we’re tired after a lot of logistics and change, and could probably use a date night and a sleep-in day, too (we’re comin’ your way, Grammie!).
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We’ll head to the airport tomorrow morning at 7:30 and spend about 8 hours on a plane to Boston. After which, I think I may take some time away from social media to rethink my approach. Do my #captionovels work on a platform like Instagram? Should I reorganize the blog and build on that? Or maybe compile everything that’s there into some other format? Am I fishing for people to tell me to keep doing it one way or another? Will the deafening comment silence below confirm that my captions are TL;DR? 😂 Honestly, I am open to input/advice and appreciate everyone who either takes a quick glance at a pic and likes or reads to the very end... 👋
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Oh and as a bonus for you determined few, I’ll clarify that we were so tired today that we let the girls “play ghost” by running up and down the hallway with their blankets on their heads. What could go wrong? #sisterhoodofthetravelingparents

Yesterday’s post was about airing dirty laundry, today’s is about carrying around baggage. And yes, once, again, imma break it down both literal and figurative-like...
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After all our deliberation about which actual baggage to bring on this 10 week European adventure, we actually ended up with a pretty good system. In addition to the small daypacks we each carried, we had two NorthFace Basecamp duffels that we strapped to two folding luggage carts (search Amazon for “Samsonite Luggage Compact Folding Cart” for a great, cheap one). We could get place to place with one car seat attached upside down on top of each bag/cart. Once we checked in at the airport, the kids could sit in the seats and be wheeled through the airport, or we could load the carts up with backpacks. Oh, and another nice benefit of the duffel-on-a-cart approach was that the bags could easily be folded away in our camper or pulled out to haul an oversized load to the laundromat (or even back from the grocery store). #yesididboth I even used the cart to bring the cassette toilet to the dump a couple times!
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And for the other kind of baggage, I’m still trying to figure that stuff out. I completely agree with those of you who commented on the convenience of staying up to date through IG (I don’t often click the blog post links either) and appreciate the support from those who said encouraging things. I think the answer lies in the idea of “micro-blogging,” effectively what many of us have found ourselves doing after falling behind on full blog posts, I just want to develop a way to collect, consolidate and organize those segments from IG into a format that makes it easier to jump back to a specific place or time or even read from the beginning. I have some ideas and now that we’re back in the US, will be playing with some solutions. Keep ya posted. .
#travelluggage #familytravel #travelwithkids #emotionalbaggage