Re-entry Report!

France was amazing

I have been to France 3 times.  Twice to Paris, both times a bit "meh".  Am I allowed to say that?  I'm saying that.

Once to the Loire Valley.  Mistakes were made on that trip - it was holidays in France, everything was closed.  I was pregnant and could not eat cheese or wine.  It was a bit.. Meh.

I planned this trip a few months ago - I used ChatGPT to find a location most of my family could meet. It needed to be accessible from Chicago, San Francisco, Rennes (France), and London and had temperatures above 10 degrees and it picked out south of France.  A friend of mine had visited Arles last year and had an amazing time so I decided to follow in her footsteps.  Quite literally - I stayed in the same house.

(actually, short aside, I booked another town that had a cheaper AirBnB, and a week before we flew out I read about the town and realized it was possibly not nice at all and decided to rebook the AirBnB my friends had instead)

The big kids and I stayed overnight at Gatwick airport because we had early morning flights.  We flew into Marseilles airport and then took a bus and a train to Arles. Arles is a cute little town in the Provence region.

I would like to someday do a full recap of the trip BUT the short recap is:

We ate a lot of Pain au chocolat, cheese, and fresh bread

We visited a super cool art building with a two story indoor slide:

There are amazing beaches nearby and it was sunny and 19c/70f one of the days

The house had an hot tub!

The kids had ice cream and rode a carousel at least half the days

We saw flamingos! A lot of flamingos!

And a Roman colosseum

And a giant fortress/castle built into a mountain

It was a super awesome trip.  That area in France is great and I'm hoping to go back again next year.

reentry has been... OK.  Busy.  the kids went back to school on Wednesday and are very tired. I had to go to London today for work and I think I am living on adrenaline.  I'm mostly caught up on laundry and mostly caught up on work.  I planned play dates for my the kids on Saturday (each are having a friend over) so hopefully we can have a bit of a calm weekend.

Twins definitely missed me after 5 days away. They got out for some trailer adventures with Andy:

I'm ready to go back to France now.