We made it!

Bon Jour!  We made it to France!

As I type, we are on a train hugging the coast of southern France headed to Italy.  We had a very long travel day yesterday.  We went from Nashville to Detroit to Amsterdam to Marseille, France.  When we got on the big plane to Amsterdam, the kids loved the personal TVs in each seat with lots of choices for movies. They did not enjoy trying to sleep on a plane overnight.  Who does?  I think they got a few hours of sleep.  Needless to say, Amsterdam was a hot mess for my kids.  We only had an hour and 20 min to find a bathroom for one of them to throw up in, some kind of breakfast and get all of us to our gate.  We made it with just a few minutes to spare to get everyone settled on the big plane.  We had to ask someone to switch seats because the airlines had split us up.

When planning for this trip, we decided to go straight to Italy the next day to start our family trip.  This means we arrived in Marseille in the afternoon and stayed one night and woke up to catch an early train.  I knew the hour in Amsterdam connection was short and it was likely that our checked bags may not make it with us.  That is the reason I packed a week worth of clothes in a carry-on bag for each person and we all had a backpack for our personal item. It was a pain to get all that in and out of planes, ect but I am glad we did it.  When we got to Marseille, they put our name on the monitor at the baggage claim to go talk to the info desk.  They told us that our checked baggage was indeed not there and we should have it in a few hours.  It is now the next day and we had to leave and still have not seen the bags.  The Mitchells  are going to get it and keep it for us.  Thankful we did not have to cancel our train tickets we already bought for Italy!

Ruth Mitchell picked us up from the airport and we went back to their place to grab some food and hang out.  Amelia made fast friends with their daughter, Mary Ellen who is 11.  We went to the grocery store to get a few things and then to our apartment.  This is the apartment we are going to stay in for a couple weeks.  We had already looked up the address on www.maps.google.com and dropped the little man on the address to get the street level to see the things around us.  So we knew there was a little pizza place on the same block so we were planning to try it that night.  All the kids were excited about this pizza!  We turned in early and had a good night sleep.  The jet lag is not too bad right now.  We did all take this stuff called “No Jet Lag” pills.  We used these when we went to China to get Amelia and swear by them.  (So far so good this trip.)

I am going to go now and enjoy the view out my window of the French countryside.  Au Reivor