By Crystal Lowery of Creepy Ginger Kid
Hello, fellow toddlers of the world! It’s your favorite travel blogger here to tell you about my recent trip to France.
My parents took my brother and me on a road trip to the Loire Valley over summer break. Long car rides can be boring, so I invented a game called “Sing as loudly as you can until your brother starts crying” to amuse myself. Any song will do, but for the sake of irony, I recommend “Happy” by Pharrell. I played this game all the way from Calais to Chartres (pronounced: /shart/ as in what I did in my pants every time we had to wait in a long line.)
The Loire Valley is known for its castles, so my mum paid 80 Euros in admission tickets to visit them. She said they were historical treasures. I don’t know about all that, but I do know this pole outside of Chateau de Chambord was pretty freaking cool.
Just a heads up if you ever travel to Chateau de Chambord: strollers are not allowed inside, so your mom may ask you to walk. My suggestion is to complain about being tired until she carries you up the twelve flights of stairs, but be sure to escape from her arms whenever you enter a room with antique ceramics on display because Louis XIV would have wanted you to touch his plates.
Adults have a mysterious affinity for eating dinner in European town squares. Something about the quaint, picturesque buildings makes grown-ups want to sit on open patios with drinks and bread. But who has time for restaurants when European town squares also have fountains in which you are supposed to run?
We spent our nights tent-camping in the rain because my dad likes to tread dangerously close to divorce territory with his half-baked ideas. Tents are basically personal bounce castles. The point is to throw one’s body around from wall to wall like a demon-possessed kangaroo auditioning for Australia’s Olympic rhythmic gymnastics team.
Only a thin veil of flimsy fabric separated me from my parents each night–they knew it, and I knew it–so I used this lack of bedtime enforcement to perfect my back flip whilst using the window cord as an apparatus ribbon. My Olympic dream seemed as close as my brother’s head when I did a split leap over his pillow.
The other thing about camping is everyone pees in the bushes after dark. It is an unspoken rule, which requires discretion. Since rich French food didn’t agree with Mom’s tummy, she tried to have a sneaky, quiet pee behind the tent but instead woke up the entire campsite when relaxing her bladder only to release a jailbreak of screaming farts into the silent sky. The next morning she avoided eye contact with other campers. Don’t worry, I made up for her lack of social skills by introducing myself as “butt crack” to everyone we saw.
We’re home now and Mom has put the tent up for sale on eBay. I guess that means we aren’t going to travel again anytime soon.
A version of this post first appeared on Creepy Ginger Kid
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About the Author
Crystal Lowery is an American mom working in England. By day, she does medical research, by night she wrangles two small children, a boy and a girl. She has made millions laugh on The Huffington Post, Scary Mommy, Sammiches & Psych Meds, In the Powder Room, Mumsnet and others. You can find her blogging at Creepy Ginger Kid and she’d love for you to follow her on Facebook.