The Best of Claude

Claude called last night and mentioned that he had been on NoCrowds but could not find himself.
You might have thought he was having an existential moment but actually it was a reasonable thing for him to say considering how often I have told this charismatic Frenchman that he was one of my main sources of NoCrowds inspiration.

Since the references were all buried in the archives, I promised to send him the links to the stories where his uncompromising attitude and good advice had been mentioned but after producing the list I thought, wow, these are some of my favourite posts, some dating as far back as June 2005. Why not produce a “Best of Claude” list for everyone to enjoy?

And so, I did:

Late Nights in London Museums

Jardin d’Acclimatation

Beyond Airports

And here are contributions from Claude’s wife, Fanny.

No Romantic Life with Gustave Moreau

The Museum of Romantic Life

I had so much fun looking through the archives that I'm glad I didn't mention to Claude to try the search function for NoCrowds which can be found on the upper left hand corner of the site but even if you are not looking for yourself, it's an easy way to find what you need.

So How Was Your Vacation?

Labor Day in America has come and gone. School started today in Britain. The summer is over and after six weeks of non-stop travel, I’m back at my desk in London and even though the piles of unpaid bills and letters with bad news are bumming me out, home looks pretty good. It’s nice to be back.

Did I have a good time? You bet I did. Beaching and agri-tourism in North Carolina, driving through France, hanging out in Spain and Paris – all in all, it was a brilliant summer. Did I avoid the crowds? Well, I tried and here are just some of the things I learned this year about crowd-free summer travel:

1) Take your young children to Paris in August

Eloise and I spent 3 days together in Paris and once again I was blown away by how fabulous Paris is for young children.

On Day One we shopped for chic and inexpensive things for autumn and then headed over to the Conciergerie, a former royal palace and prison, to see Marie Antoinette’s last residence before she got the chop. There was lots of gory and vivid stuff from the Revolution’s “Reign of Terror” which Eloise enjoyed and no crowds which pleased me. (n.b. – A combo ticket is on offer with the neighbouring Sainte Chappelle which we bought but for now, I would give that a pass. The chapel is being renovated, the crowds were oppressive for such a small space and the amazing experience that I remember from my youth was incredibly flat. “Nice chapel, Mom, was Eloise’s polite response.)

On Day Two, we spent the entire day in the Luxembourg Gardens. We sailed boats on the fountain and because we managed to conspicuously capsize ours (don’t tell my father the naval officer), we met lots of other children from all over the world. Eloise beat her record on the carousel with the rings, we had superb cotton candy ( according to Eloise) and we managed to squeeze in the 4:00 pm performance at the famous puppet theatre. I thought it was one of the best days I had spent with my daughter in a long time. It was relaxing for me, entertaining for her, absolutely beautiful and the price was right.

On Day Three, we went to the Jardin d’Acclimatation in the Bois de Boulogne. This old fashioned park with its rides and playgrounds and menageries is the nicest “amusement” park you can imagine and once again we spent the day in beautiful and relaxing surroundings which thrilled and delighted Eloise. If we had had a fourth day, we could have happily filled it at the Jardin des Plantes with its museums, zoo, maze and gardens.

It may seem counter intuitive to head for a big city with a small child and I’m sure you’ve heard a million times that no one goes to Paris in August but we had the most awesome time and best of all, we had the place all to ourselves.

2) North Carolina Beaches

North Carolina beaches in July and August are insanely better than anything in Europe. Yes, yes, I know the food and hotels in Europe are superior, but if the goal is blissfully warm water, consistent weather, mile after mile of empty, pristine beaches, no traffic jams, no parking problems and super polite natives during peak periods, North Carolina wins big time. Bald Head Island (my cousin has a great house there which she rents to nice people), Ocracoke Island, Atlantic Beach (getting built up but rent something at Pine Knoll Shores and you’ll be fine), and Duck are places you should check out for next summer if you are looking for very nice beaches with no crowds.

3) Fly Direct, Board Early, Boycott Northwest

This is a cautionary tale but what’s the use of having a bully pulpit if you don’t use it. To save a few dollars, my frugal husband flew to North Carolina with Northwest Airlines via Detroit. On the return flight, after checking in and being issued a boarding pass, the last 20 passengers in line were denied boarding because, according to Northwest, “the flight was overweight”. Now I’ve heard a lot of lame excuses in my time but this takes the biscuit. The whole scene was like a Mel Brooks movie with one enraged man being carried away by the police screaming “take some fat people off the plane and we can all fly!”

My husband was then re-routed over Cincinnati, missed the connection and had to wait 24 hours at a Marriott Courtyard before catching his flight to London.

And the compensation from Northwest? A $100 voucher on his next flight with Northwest- as if! Of course we’ll be taking this matter up with the management of what may be the world’s worst airline so watch this space.

Au Revoir Kate & Eloise

At 7:00 yesterday morning, Eloise bounded out of bed, eager to return to school, her friends and her life before the Kate/Eloise Project. On our walk to school, I asked her to recap the highlights of what we had done over the last 21 days. “Do you want the truth, Mom?” Probably not, I thought. “Of course”, I replied.

“The Chinese exhibition at the Royal Academy (China: The Three Emperors, 1662-1795 at the Royal Academy of Arts which closed on April 17) was the best thing we did.” There was stunned silence from me as I surely had not expected that answer. Eloise explained. “It was the kid’s audio guide. It was fabulous. The stories were really interesting and I liked looking at the stuff they were talking about. It’s the first time you and I took the same amount of time to finish a museum. I liked the place too. You can get a nice cup of tea there.”

We discussed the other highlights:

The Palaeontology Museum in the Jardin des Plantes was fun because it is so old and funky. We hope they always leave it that way.

Basildon Park, where they filmed the recent Pride and Prejudice movie, was OK but not as much fun as Jane Austen’s real house and, thanks to the filming, way too crowded .

Musee Jacquemart Andre was a nice museum and had done everything right by offering a treasure hunt in English but the prize for completing the treasure hunt was disappointing.

The treasure hunt at the Cabinet War Rooms & Churchill Museum was good and so was the prize. Eating lunch at Inn the Park in St James Park afterwards was fun.

The Jardin d’Acclimatation was excellent and some of the rides were good enough to make Mac (Eloise’s older brother) feel really sick.

Re-reading the first post from the Kate/Eloise Project, I am reminded that we promised to deliver an epic piece of writing that would improve the family travel experience and now I am scratching my head as to how to deliver on that commitment. OK, here goes.

The Collecive Wisdom of the Kate/Eloise Project

Reverse the Roles - Eloise and I worked best when I presented the options of what we could do and she made the decisions. What she learned is that not all choices work out exactly as you think they will (the disappointing prize at the Jacquemart Andre or the lack of Keira Knightley at Basildon Park) but if you own the decision, you can always find something to like if you are in the mood to look for it. What I learned was to reverse the roles. It occasionally made me nuts but it was very rewarding.

Play it by ear – We had more fun when we took our decisions on what we should do on the day. Chopping and changing our plans was a welcome relief from life during school term. We followed our whims and it was fun. Also, there’s something to be said about only doing things you can do on short notice. Activities that demand lots of advanced planning tend to be crowded.
Children should write the reviews - It’s a blindingly obvious observation but in looking through the 4,973 travel guides for children on Amazon and dozens of the 69,300,000 websites offering advice on travelling with kids, I couldn’t find a young author. Thinking back on the fact that I would never had predicted that Eloise’s favourite activity during the Project would be a sophisticated and immense exhibition of Chinese art nor that her favourite West End show would have been the Blue Man Group, I’m beginning to think that the reason children often are bored and disagreeable when travelling is that we don’t have much of a clue of what they like, although, as Eloise pointed out, we think we do. I’m also beginning to think that what the world needs now is a children’s version of Trip Advisor. Maybe the Kate/Eloise Project has a second life.

Children prefer apartments – OK, there should be full disclosure here. We have a fabulous apartment in Paris which we rent to vacationers via the excellent agency, Rentals in Paris. But that is precisely where Eloise and I learned that renting is the best way to go. From Eloise’s perspective, it feels more like home, there is normally more space and most importantly, when Eloise has had enough of being a tourist, we can stay in our temporary home and eat a “home cooked” meal. I like the apartment option for similar reasons plus it gets you closer to the lifestyle of the country and is almost always cheaper than two rooms in a hotel.

Children like contests – Eloise will agree to do almost anything as long as there is a treasure hunt, a maze or a contest attached to it. The English are really the masters at this and it is the rare museum or stately home that does not offer an activity for young visitors. In a pinch, you can make up your own. For example, thanks to good advice from J.G. Links in “Venice for Pleasure”, Eloise and I furiously competed for the “Who Can Find the Most Madonnas” during our visit to Venice. This simple device gave us both a lot of satisfaction. I was shocked at how many churches she was willing to visit to win the contest.


So I guess that’s it. One child, 21 days of holiday, 2 cities and a budget. Eloise is now back in school. I am now back at my desk. Thank you, Julie Powell of the Julie/Julia Project for the idea and thank you Eloise for your enthusiasm and high spirits. As the old Italian proverb goes, “Good company on the road is the shortest cut.”

Jardin d'Acclimatation

I hate amusement parks. Eloise loves them. For her, they are pleasure palaces of excitement and gratification. For me, they are money grubbing, soul destroying hell holes. Yesterday, as we were driving around a blissfully empty Easter Monday London, a representative of the Global Association of Theme Parks (or something like that) was on the radio extolling the virtues of her employer. “Theme parks are wonderful places for multi-generational experiences … where families have a chance to communicate … if you calculate your spend per hour, it represents excellent value for money.

“Dear God”, was my agitated response, “as a species, we are doomed.”

But then I remembered our experience last week in the Jardin d’Acclimatation. Located just outside the walls of Paris in the northern part of the Bois de Boulogne, the Jardin d’Acclimatation offers exactly what that disturbing woman on the radio suggested parks could provide. It’s the kind of place where lovers of nostalgia (me) and fans of Nintendo (Eloise) and everything in between can enjoy themselves. Even our 18 year old son, Mac, had a pretty good time accompanying his sister on this expedition.

Let me set the scene. The park was opened in 1860 by Napoleon III and his Empress Eugenie and if you squint a bit, you get a sense of the original belle époque atmosphere. There are canal boats in a “Peter Pan like” lagoon, elegant wooden horses which “canter” along a large ring, an old fashioned house of mirrors, a puppet theatre, zoo animals and more thrilling rides such as a roller coaster, bumper cars and twisters for the older children. Even the ubiquitous “shooting gallery” seemed more benign, and the attendants less like “carni folk", than in other places. The landscaping is lovely, the atmosphere bucolic.

As was the case all week, Eloise was impervious to either the aesthetics or the history lesson but she thought the Jardin d’Acclimatation was first class. She enjoyed the rides, ate some junk and tried to win something in the shooting gallery, which, of course, she did not win. Mac sauntered along, sucking on his beloved Coke, demonstrating a jolly tolerance for the old fashioned quaintness of it all. Jeff paid the bills in a better mood than he normally is in when shelling out cash( after all, this is France and the place is subsidised by the state – well, what isn’t in France?) We were there when the French children were in school. The place was empty. It was fabulous.

After our visit, we drove out to visit friends in the lovely western suburb of Villennes-sur-Seine. “So what did you do today, asked Claude?” When he heard we had visited the Jardin d’Acclimatation his eyes grew misty. “I love it … ah, the little canal boats … it reminds me of my childhood … how charming.”

And so, dear disturbing lady of the airwaves, I’ll buy your argument in so far as it extends to one old fashioned amusement park on the outskirts of Paris. Spare me and my family the pre-packed “multi-generational” experience. Give me, instead, a glorious afternoon in the northern corner of the Bois de Bologne that can remind us all of the delights of being a child, even if we have not been one for decades.

Jardin d’Acclimation
June to September daily 10 –7; October to May daily 10-6
Located in the Bois de Boulogne 16e
Tel: 01-40-67-90-82
http://www.jardindacclimatation.fr/

Admission €2.50 (rides are extra) free for children under 4

Take the little train from Porte Maillot through the Bois de Boulogne which leaves roughly every 10 minutes when the park is open